With the price of success comes other teams wanting your people, and the Detroit Lions (fueled by losing both coordinators) have lost a total of seven assistant coaches from last year and one key front office piece is leaving.
Free agency will bring some player losses from last year's roster, big and small, with new faces ideally replicating the performance of any key players who are lost.
The Lions probably won't go 15-2 again next season, but they should still be very good and they are the favorite to win the NFC North in 2025 until further notice. The core players who have driven the team's success the last couple seasons will remain in place.
Bold prediction has Lions being uniquely dominant again 2025
Fueled by three blowout wins (47-9, 52-14 and 52-6) and their two losses being by a total of 10 points, the Lions lapped the field in point differential last season (+222). The team with the next biggest point differential was the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles (+160). Two other teams were above +150 (Baltimore Ravens and Buffalo Bills, each +157).
A +200 point differential for a season is rare. The Lions' differential comes in as the 25th-highest in league history, which goes back to 1920.
As part of his bold predictions for each team next season, Kyle Soppe of Pro Football Network expects the Lions to dominate again.
"For just the second time since the NFL/AFL merger in 1970, a team finishes consecutive regular seasons with a +200 point differential"
"The 2024 Lions scored 564 points and allowed 342 (+222), resulting in a point differential that was 62 points clear any other team during the regular season, a level of domination that is difficult to overstate."
"And I like it to continue in a way that we haven’t seen outside of the 1975-76 Pittsburgh Steelers.
"We have the Lions being defense-heavy in April at the NFL Draft and could inflate their point differential with home games against the Cowboys, Giants, and Browns this year. This fan base wants a different end to their season — only time will tell on that front, but their dominance in 2024 looks to be no fluke and could well be repeated this season."
The 1975 Steelers had a +211 point differential, followed by a +204 point differential in 1976. The 1975 team won their second of back-to-back Super Bowls, and the 1976 team went to the AFC Championship Game. If the Lions have a +200 point differential again next season, ideally they'd also win at least a playoff game or two.
If only based on history, Soppe's bold 2025 prediction for the Lions feels unlikely to come true. But it stands as a profession of faith they won't have a noticeable drop-off next season.