Pride of Detroit
Four weeks into the NFL season, the Detroit Lions are 3-1, sitting atop an NFC North they’ve won the past two seasons. At the conclusion of Week 1’s disastrous performance against the Green Bay Packers, there hardly seemed to be a reality in which the Lions would have a winning record and a point differential of +49–the biggest in the NFL.
But heavy is the head that wears the crown. A quick trip down I-75 will wrap up the Lions’ two-week tour of what Ohio has to offer professional football, but things only ramp up from there. First, a date at Arrowhead to play the reinvigorated Kansas City Chiefs, and then after that, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on “Monday Night Football.” It’s not getting any easier for the Lions before the bye, but it’s cool, Lions fans can relax: Dan Campbell has got this.
After this 34-10 handling of the Cleveland Browns, a win that feels so emblematic of what’s come to define the Detroit Lions under Campbell, it’s worth remembering how unlikely this all once seemed. In Campbell’s first season, Detroit battled their way to a 3–13–1 finish in 2021, tied for the second-worst record in football. The roster was thin, the depth chart constantly in rotation, but beneath the ugly box scores, something had taken root. The Lions attempted—at the time—a record-setting 41 fourth downs in 2021, a stubborn refusal to back down that embodied Campbell’s ethos: Detroit wouldn’t win often, but they would compete.
A competitive spirit wasn’t enough after a miserable 1–6 start to the 2022 season, but the Lions won eight of their last 10 to finish 9-8, their first winning season since 2017. The team didn’t make the playoffs, but they sure as hell kept the Packers out, and the turnaround was remarkable. That locker room didn’t fracture, ownership didn’t waver in their support and trust in Campbell: it was galvanized. Their identity had crystallized.
The transformation was undeniable in 2023. Detroit won 12 games, captured its first division crown in over 30 years, and finally broke the franchise’s 32-year playoff drought with a Wild Card win over the Los Angeles Rams. They followed that up with another postseason victory over the Buccaneers before dramatically falling to San Francisco in the NFC Championship.
If 2023 was a breakthrough, then 2024 was their coronation as one of the big players in the NFL. The Lions went 15–2, the best regular season in franchise history despite suffering historically awful injury luck. They set a franchise scoring record, went a perfect 6–0 in the NFC North, and collected eight road victories—also a franchise best. For the first time in decades, Detroit wasn’t sneaking up on anyone: teams came into matchups with the Lions expecting to face one of the best teams this league has to offer.
That growth—3 wins in 2021, 9 in 2022, 12 in 2023, and 15 in 2024—wasn’t a coincidence. It was a straight-line trajectory of a program ascending from the league’s basement...
