Pride of Detroit
Predicting which Detroit Lions player on offense will be most improved for the 2025 season.
In order for the Detroit Lions to maintain success these days, they are going to need their own players to develop each year. With limited cap resources and draft picks slated at the end of each round, they simply aren’t going to be able to add talent like they were in general manager Brad Holmes’ first few years in Detroit.
That’s not exactly a problem. That’s the expectation. It’s why Holmes has said from the beginning that the best way to build sustained success is through the draft. But the margin of error is shrinking on draft day, and it’s not just up to Holmes to find the right players. It’s on the players and coaches to realize their full potential once they land with the Lions.
So today’s Question of the Day is:
My answer: We’ve already heard hype about players like Jahmyr Gibbs and Jameson Williams taking a huge step this year, but it feels like both have already improved significantly in their young careers. I’m looking for a more drastic jump from low-to-mediocre production to medium-to-significant production.
That doesn’t leave many candidates, considering Detroit’s offensive roster is expected to be mostly the same from last year, and players like Jared Goff, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Sam LaPorta, and Penei Sewell are already at the top of their game. The only shakeups are on the offensive line, but that does afford a few young players the opportunity to shine in ways they didn’t in 2024.
At the top of that list is Christian Mahogany. Don’t get me wrong, in the limited role he played last year, Mahogany was fantastic. He was a menace in the run game, and more than adequate as a pass blocker. His 91.5 PFF grade was actually third best among all NFL guards last year.... but it was on just 144 total snaps. He played 75 snaps in the regular season—the equivalent of a single game.
That’s why Holmes told the media to pump the brakes on expecting him to waltz right in and take a starting role in 2025.
“It’s a small sample size of the starts that he played,” Holmes said this offseason. “They were promising, they were encouraging. We do feel like he has starter level ability, but he is still a young player, so we still need to make sure that he has competition, and it’s part of — we bring (Ka)Yode (Awosika) back and we’ll still be looking at possibly another veteran to add, and you still have the draft. Look, I’m not saying it’s always going to be in the sixth round where we got Mahogany, but you just never know when we’re going to be able to get one of those guys.”
The Lions did add Tate Ratledge in the second round of the draft, who would have pushed...
