Pride of Detroit
To say the Detroit Lions’ season got off to a rocky start would be offensive to rocky starts. Their first half of football felt like the transition from a paved road to a dirt one in Michigan during March: equal parts jarring and maddening. How could you forget the sign clearly posted ahead of the back road? “Offensive Line Under Repair.” Frank Ragnow was (is?) missed right now in the middle of this offensive line. Detroit started the offseason with Tate Ratledge assuming the mantle, but it wasn’t long until they decided that it was Graham Glasgow’s job instead. Glasgow looked like the team’s second choice at times on Sunday.
“Well, I think they’ve come a long way, that’s for sure,” Dan Campbell said about the offensive line congealing prior to the start of the regular season.
“You know, you see a ton of growth with those five [starting offensive linemen], and really we’ve had them together now since, what was that, about a week into training camp? And then we made the move of Graham [Glasgow] back to center. So they’ve been working together now for over a month, and so you do see the growth. There’s that communication that takes place that is big with those guys. So it’s good, I feel really good about it.”
After Sunday, you couldn’t fault anyone who doesn’t share in Campbell’s initial enthusiasm about the reworked offensive line. But it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish.
“I also know we’re not done—they’re not done,” Campbell wrapped up his preseason assessment of his starting offensive line. “And that’s encouraging, I say that in a good way. Like, man, there’s so much growth left to take place, with not only those two [Mahogany and Ratledge], but them collectively as a unit, so that’s pretty exciting.”
This was Glasgow’s third start at center since 2023. It was Christian Mahogany’s third start of his NFL career. Tate Ratledge didn’t look like a rookie on the other side of his first set of regular season snaps. Week 1 isn’t the finish line, and Detroit’s reworked offensive line struggled in its first outing, but it’s going to need to coalesce sooner than later to get the offense up and running—literally.
While protection wasn’t the only issue, it set the tone for an offense that never found its rhythm.
After watching the first 30 minutes of offense for Detroit, Sam LaPorta’s involvement in the first drive after halftime was a sight for sore eyes. A big grab and run of 32 yards by LaPorta got them into Green Bay territory, and then a 16-yard catch got Detroit into the red zone for the third time of the day—and a fiery LaPorta got up looking to spark some more rhythm and momentum, something absent from the Lions offense all game long. It was one step forward, two steps back—sometimes 6 yards back on second-and-goal, sometimes it was nearly being driven back into their own endzone. But...
