The Detroit Lions entered the 2025 NFL season as Super Bowl contenders.
Unfortunately, some of the concerns pundits and supporters had prior to the season have popped up over the past couple of weeks.
After the conclusion of the trade deadline, the Lions are considered NFL trade deadline losers.
With the trade deadline in the rear view mirror, the prevailing sentiment is general manager Brad Holmes missed an opportunity to improve the team.
Detroit’s offensive line suffered an injury to left guard Christian Mahogany, leaving the unit, which was already struggling with consistency this season, weakened.
According to Sports Illustrated NFL writer Conor Orr, “As uneven as this season has been so far, the Lions are solidly one of the four or five best teams in the NFL. The Lions are going to be missing both of their anchor tackles against the Commanders this weekend and just had Christian Mahogany knocked out for the season. Even though Trevor Penning was the only offensive lineman that moved, and Penning has certainly struggled at times, he did provide guard/tackle versatility and could have been an essential depth piece for Detroit as it progressed deeper into the season.”
Dan Campbell was asked earlier this week if there was a common thread between the communication issues on offense.
“Sometimes it’s you get in a rough spot, and normally we get ourselves out of it. You hit a rough patch in a game, no different than a season, right? And you’ve just got to get out of it. It swelled up a little bit on us. It kind of – one thing compounded into the next error,” said Campbell. “And then you start looking for things that aren’t there, and so it was just kind of, man, went from one thing to another and it just started to build. We never really got in a true rhythm, and then when we did, we’d have a penalty that really hurt us and took us out of manageable downs. So, like I say, credit to those guys. They earned that win.
“We didn’t even get close to earning that win. But at the end of the day, we had a chance to win that game. And really, those critical errors I talked about, take one of those away. You may not feel great, but you’re walking away with a win,” Campbell added. “Any one of those whether it was the special teams errors, whether it was defense and the sudden change, whether it was offense on a penalty going into the red zone. It’s literally one play. Man, we just clean it up.”
Late in the day, the Los Angeles Chargers were able to swing a deal for New Orleans Saints guard Trevor Penning to aid their ailing offensive line. The cost was only a 2027 sixth-round pick.
“Lions fans feel differently, but I thought the team simply met its depth threshold at certain positions down the stretch a year ago,” writes Orr. “The Lions play at an exhausting pace both mentally and physically and while some of the team’s signature wins of the Dan Campbell era have taken place with razor thin, back-of-the-roster players, this was a chance to move some draft equity and see if Campbell’s culture could foster a turnaround for someone like Penning.”
