What if the Detroit Lions are better than expected?

The point of no return

This past week two press conferences were held on opposite sides of the country. One in Detroit to welcome Jared Goff as the Lions’ new quarterback. The other was in Los Angeles where Matthew Stafford was greeted as the Rams’ new signal-caller.

What Matthew does and accomplishes in Los Angeles will now be his own story. It no longer has anything to do with Detroit. However, I thought that it was very interesting when Matthew was asked by the Southern California media if the fact that he was now a Ram had sunk in yet.

Matthew replied that when the NFL new year had dawned, that was when he really thought about how he was at the point of no return. Matthew Stafford will now be synonymous with the Rams for better or worse.

I appreciated Matthew’s ‘point of no return’ reference because that is exactly how I was thinking about it myself. For the sake of a rebuilding Lions team and his own sake, the trade of Matthew Stafford was necessary.

Could Matthew have led Dan Campbell’s team to greater heights than Jared Goff will? I think that goes without saying given how much Matthew carried this franchise for a dozen years, but that doesn’t mean this would have been the year the Lions reached the Super Bowl.

As a matter of fact, considering the realistic expectations for the Lions to fall flat on their face next season, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine, outside of missing time with an injury, how Matthew wouldn’t make Detroit better.

But the whole point of this rebuild is to construct a team that is capable of competing for championships. A complete team that not only has the ability to move the ball and score points but can also choke off opposing offenses giving the Lions the ability to win low-scoring slugfests.

This next season is only the first step on the journey to the team that Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell hope to field three years from now. A team they expect to be pretty competitive. However, could the Lions find a way to be more competitive than expected next season?