Pride of Detroit
With so many changes in the offseason for the Lions, which three Secret Superstars will help to maintain Dan Campbell’s standard?
“Brain Drain.” It’s the one term that every Lions fan is already sick and tired of hearing.
Of course, when you lose two of the best coordinators in the NFL in Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn to their own well-deserved head coaching jobs, that’s going to be a story. It doesn’t help that center Frank Ragnow, one of the NFL’s best, toughest, and smartest players at his position, recently decided to retire. That is a lot of IQ points walking out the door in the offseason.
So now, it’s up to new offensive coordinator John Morton and new defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard, along with whomsoever plays center in 2025 and beyond, to pick up the slack. One thing the Replacements will almost certainly have is a better and more fortunate injury situation, because regression to the mean should kick in, and the Lions won’t have an astonishing 24 different players on injured reserve (WOOF) as they did at various points throughout the 2024 season.
There’s still Dan Campbell. There’s still a dynamic offense, and the fact that Morton worked his way up from senior offensive assistant to passing game coordinator to his current position, which gives him an intimate knowledge of the Ben Johnson playbook, along with the opportunity to riff on it in his own ways. There’s still a defense that will benefit immeasurably from a cleaner bill of health, and the fact that Sheppard has been with the franchise since 2021 as a linebackers coach. So Glenn’s schematic and motivational tactics are not unfamiliar.
And finally, there’s a team that went 15-2 in the regular season before the injury stuff became officially ridiculous, the thing just ran out of gas, and what happened against the Washington Commanders in the Divisional Round.
Brain Drain is real, but so are the Lions in spite of it. If the 2025 team is to capitalize on the Super Bowl dreams that were so present in 2024, they’ll need the entire roster to make that happen. In the continuation of our “Hidden Gems” series, we look at three players who could be (or already are) Secret Superstars for the Lions — one underrated veteran, free-agent signing, and draft pick.
Since he came into the NFL as a third-round pick out of Illinois in 2022, Kerby Joseph has more interceptions than any other player in the league — 17, including and especially the nine passes he picked off in 2024. But that may not be his most important statistic. The most pertinent number in Joseph’s career so far? Over the last two seasons, and a total of 1,450 coverage snaps and 89 targets, he’s allowed just two touchdowns — none in 2023, and two in 2024.
There are defenders who are boom-or-bust when it comes to interceptions. Cornerback DaRon Bland of the Dallas Cowboys had nine interceptions,...
