Pride of Detroit
The Detroit Lions roster cuts are set to start at any moment. But before the team gets to their initial 53-man roster for the 2025 season, our staff made their final predictions for the players on the roster bubble.
Before we get into our final predictions, I think it’s always fun to look back just six weeks ago and see how different our predictions were then. You can see our Week 1 Bubble Watch selections here.
Now onto our final predictions for the Lions’ 2025 53-man roster on offense.
It’s no surprise that our entire staff has opted to keep only two quarterbacks. Coach Dan Campbell more or less said that Kyle Allen won the backup job, and when asked about the decision regarding Hendon Hooker’s spot on the roster, he didn’t exactly sound like keeping a QB3 was on his mind:
“How much development do you believe there still is? Sometimes does the player need a change of scenery? What about our own depth in other areas? I mentioned this the other day, relative to that – all right, maybe there is room to grow. Is that worth it for the depth we need at O-Line, D-Line, receiver, DB?”
Yeesh.
Despite a strong preseason, Jacob Saylors never made it onto our Bubble Watch series. I do believe he is a candidate to make the practice squad.
Neither Meeks nor Lovett did much in the preseason finale to make a good final impression, but it appears that things have been trending in Meeks’ direction for the past few weeks. And with other roster bubble players not impressing against the Texans, it appears our staff was more willing to keep seven receivers. Four of our 11 voters had Detroit keeping the extra wideout, while everyone has them keeping at least six.
Zylstra is now a unanimous in after playing sparingly in the preseason finale. Interestingly, Max Gerber has them keeping four tight ends, which is certainly a possibility if they like Horton’s ability to play fullback. It’s not an option we’ve discussed much this preseason, but Horton can also contribute on special teams, so I’m not counting it out.
