The slightly too early Detroit Lions All-Decade defense

Last week was all about the top Detroit Lions offensive players from the past ten years. Here’s a look at the other side of the ball.

With 2020 suddenly just a few months away, last week I got an early jump on the Detroit Lions All-Decade team. There’s still one final year left before we flip into the new (potentially roaring) 20s, but for most positions on here, I feel like the players involved have already stated their case for recognition.

If Matt Patricia’s much-talked about retooling of the defense goes as planned, we could possibly see a number of the current players included on the next All-Decade team. For now though, I have everyone basically penciled in.

My criteria for inclusion on this All-Decade team:

• At least four years with the Lions during the 2010s (when I list players below, all will start with 2010 even if they were on the team before then).
• Pro Bowl and All-Pro selections help out a ton.
• So does longevity and reliability (they say 80% of life is just showing up, after all.

Alignment schemes and positions seem to be pretty flexible nowadays, but the Lions have been a 4-3 team for a long time now, so I’ll use that for the sake of simplicity. I’m being old-fashioned and using ‘defensive end’ rather than ‘edge’, and I’m not including nickelbacks or slot corners, also to keep things simple.

Here are the defensive selections for my slightly too early Detroit Lions All-Decade team…