What a difference a year makes.
This time a year ago, the Detroit Lions were among the heaviest favorites to win the Super Bowl, coming off a 15-2 season. One 9-8 season later has many again skeptical the Lions can amount to anything meaningful. That includes some NFL executives.
Mike Sando of The Athletic polled six NFL executives, and asked them to rank every team in the NFC. Unsurprisingly, the Los Angeles Rams ranked first after the Myles Garrett trade and the return of legendary defensive tackle Aaron Donald. The reigning Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks are right behind them in second.
It takes more scrolling than expected to finally reach the Lions in eighth place, with an average ranking of 7.2. The Lions serve as the dividing line between the top half of the NFC and the bottom half, as the ninth place New Orleans Saints, the Lions' Week 1 opponent, had an average placement of 10.7 -- the largest drop-off between two adjacent teams.
The Lions were ranked as high as fifth, with only one executive labeling the Lions as Super Bowl contenders. Another executive ranked the Lions as low as tenth, saying, "They are teetering on the seesaw of whether they're going to go into one of those two-year dips to restock the roster with draft picks."
A different executive had concerns about the defense and offensive line, saying, "Offensive line is still a concern for me with those guys, but I like what they have in place on that side of the ball." The executive continued, "Defensively, I think it's going to be a struggle to produce the style of play they need."
This isn't the first time the executives Sando surveyed were down on the Lions. Back in April, Sando asked executives to critique each team's free agency, and they were left largely unimpressed with the Lions, with one saying, "They did not do anything notable from a personnel standpoint outside of some special teams guys they added."
They have WHO comfortably ahead of the Lions?!
It's perfectly fair to not be too high on the Lions going into 2026. Having the Lions at eight, however, will lead to some eyebrow-raising choices.
Per these rankings, the Lions are slotted at third in the NFC North. The Chicago Bears lead the way in the division at fifth, with the Green Bay Packers just ahead of the Lions in seventh and the Minnesota Vikings all the way back at twelfth. One executive went as far as ranking the Bears as the top team in the NFC thanks to their "elite" head coach in Ben Johnson and rising stars like quarterback Caleb Williams.
NFC North predictions have been all over the place this offseason, so this is nothing new. Curiously, these executives also had the Dallas Cowboys as the fourth best team in the NFC, with half calling them Super Bowl contenders.
READ MORE: One Lions offseason strategy is in full display with 53-man roster stat
Strange. The very same Cowboys that finished 7-9-1 last season and gave up the most points in the league after trading star EDGE Micah Parsons? The Cowboys had a really nice draft, headlined by safety Caleb Downs falling into their lap, but this ranking feels very generous compared to how harsh the same executives were with the Lions.
One executive considered ranking the Lions ahead of the Cowboys, but didn't, pointing to the uncertainty surrounding the Lions' offense under new offensive coordinator Drew Petzing compared to the "continuity" with the high-scoring Cowboys' offense. Mind you, questionable play-calling didn't stop the Lions from beating the Cowboys by multiple touchdowns last season at a time when hardly anything was going right for Detroit.
But most preseason predictions and power rankings end up wrong, one way or another, anyway. Head coach Dan Campbell can show these rankings to his team and remind them that they have doubters everywhere, and to motivate them to prove those doubters wrong.
Not that this team needed any more bulletin board material than they already have.
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