The Detroit Lions assembled one of the greatest coaching staffs in the league amid the turnaround spearheaded by Dan Campbell, but their once-mighty staff has been poached as much as possible following both of their coordinators getting much-deserved head coaching jobs.
Offensive coordinator Ben Johnson took wide receivers coach Antwaan Randle El and assistant quarterbacks coach JT Barrett with him to the Chicago Bears, while Aaron Glenn hired away passing game coordinator Tanner Engstrand and tight ends coach Steve Heiden after joining the New York Jets.
The Lions moved quickly to replace those names, hiring John Morton as OC and promoting linebackers coach Kelvin Sheppard to DC. Their ability to recover from this loss could be viewed as fairly impressive by some, but executives around the league believe these losses could be enough to knock them off their perch in the 2025 season.
An unnamed NFL executive told Mike Sando of The Athletic that Detroit "scares" him due to the turnover on this staff. Another exec compared the Lions losing Johnson to the Rams parting with Sean McVay and added that missing Glenn could lead to a noticeable decline in performance from some of the role players on defense.
NFL executives believe Lions will regress in 2025 after losing coaches
Morton has had success calling plays in the past, and he has studied at the foot of Sean Payton for years. Sheppard is an internal promotion who could run a version of what Glenn installed during his time with Detroit. As far as replacements go, Detroit has done a fairly solid job.
The roster Campbell and GM Brad Holmes have constructed, which has a top quarterback in Jared Goff locked in and some of the best skill position players in the NFC, should be good enough to keep Detroit in the title contenders tier despite losing some of their well-respected masterminds.
The Lions aren't the first team to lose many of their top coordinators in quick succession. The reigning Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles lost both Shane Steichen and Jonathan Gannon to new head coaching opportunities, and they were hoisting the Lombardi Trophy two years later.
There are reasons to expect that Detroit won't win 15 regular-season games in what is a very competitive NFC North, but they shouldn't be discounted as contenders due to how well Campbell and Holmes have set this team up for success, irrespective of the names at the control sticks.