Lions Primed to Show Rest of NFL Blueprint to Turn Rebuilding Roster into a Contender

I've been covering this sport for 16 years, and in that span I've almost never had the opportunity to write this sentence, so I'm going to savor it: The Detroit Lions are doing everything right.

Sure, the Lions still haven't won a playoff game in more than 30 years. And sure, they're still coming off an eighth consecutive season with a single-digit win total and a sixth consecutive non-playoff campaign.

But just 15 months ago, the Lions were coming off a three-win season in which they were the league's fifth-worst team in terms of DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average) at Football Outsiders. They hadn't won more than six games in a single season since 2017.

In January 2021, the Lions essentially decided to start from scratch with a new promising general manager (Brad Holmes from the 2018 NFC champion Los Angeles Rams), a new inspiring head coach (Dan Campbell from the perennially competitive New Orleans Saints), and a new quarterback (Jared Goff, also from the Rams).

In the process of moving on from longtime good-not-great franchise signal-caller Matthew Stafford, they collected two extra first-round picks as well as a third-rounder. And while seeing Stafford raise the Vince Lombardi one year later in L.A. couldn't have been easy, that team was on the brink and this team was not.

Stacy Revere/Getty Images

Even if the new regime wasn't in Detroit for the preceding decades of pain, Holmes and Co. knew they had to play the long game. But the turnaround is already glaring for a Lions team that endured those aforementioned growing pains in 2021 before posting a 9-8 record and rising to the top 10 in DVOA during a shocking 2022 showing.

Now, with the heart of 2023 free agency in the books and the draft beckoning, and with the Lions even better on paper while possessing two first-round and two second-round selections in said draft, many sportsbooks list as few as three NFC teams—typically the San Francisco 49ers, Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys—with better Super Bowl odds than Detroit.

How did the Lions get it so right so quickly? For starters, they didn't take half-measures.

Few would argue Stafford was the primary problem, if the problem at all, with the old Lions. But there was a stale dynamic surrounding the franchise, and team and player needed fresh starts. Trading him away for a quarterback who was actually coming off a significantly worse season in terms of passer rating, QBR and yards per attempt couldn't have been easy, but they realized the value of more rolls of the dice in the crapshoot that is the draft and they couldn't resist.

Of course, they also got a lot younger at that critical spot (Stafford is seven years Goff's senior), and they generated long-term salary-cap space to better support their QB. Stafford's deal in Detroit was set to pay him $33 million in 2021 and expire after 2022. He now makes an average of $40 million a year, while Goff will cost the team just over $30 million each of the next two seasons and can be traded or released at a cost of just $10 million this year and $5 million next year.

Beyond that, they also bailed on tight end T.J. Hockenson before he was about to become expensive mid-rebuild, gaining even more Day 2 draft capital in the process. And in hindsight they were smart to move on from expensive veterans Kenny Golladay, Justin Coleman, Desmond Trufant, Jamie Collins and Trey Flowers—even if in some cases that meant short-term pain.

In Holmes' maiden offseason, they basically abstained from the free-agent market. That gave them a tremendous opportunity to assess the base roster left behind by the previous regime through a new lens and within newly established systems.

With a more stubborn approach, 2021 fourth-round pick Amon-Ra St. Brown probably doesn't emerge as a superb (and still cheap!) No. 1 receiver by the end of his sophomore campaign. Same general idea with Jeff Okudah and Tracy Walker III in the secondary, and with promising potential long-term Hockenson replacements Brock Wright and James Mitchell.

They've also remained disciplined while building the trenches and/or complementing Goff and Co. in the draft with prominent selections Penei Sewell, Aidan Hutchinson and Jameson Williams, while later selections Mitchell, Malcolm Rodriguez, Kerby Joseph and Alim McNeill look as though they'll be key contributors for years to come.

Mike Mulholland/Getty Images

Now, with all of that money to spend and draft capital in their back pocket, the Lions have slowly but smartly added experience and proven talent with this month's icing-on-the-cake free-agent pickups, C.J. Gardner-Johnson, Cameron Sutton, Emmanuel Moseley and David Montgomery.

Just like that, incredibly, it's hard to find a clear-cut weak spot on a young, balanced and deliberately built roster. It's also easy to get behind Campbell and his rah-rah staff. And for what it's worth, Goff is a No. 1 overall pick coming off arguably the best season of his career at age 28.

The Lions did it right. They didn't shy away from bold moves geared toward the future, they trusted in the math when it came to strategizing free agency and the draft, and they remained patient and unemotional throughout the journey.

It's taken some time overall, but not for this regime. Holmes and his staff have built a contender, practically from scratch, in a two-year span. And if the Lions can deliver in this draft and in 2023 in general, we'll have a new model for how to get a rebuild right.