While it's a fairly new concept for the Detroit Lions' franchise, with sucess comes expectations. The 2025 season started with Super Bowl aspirations, even after the unique circumstance of losing both coordinators to head coaching jobs in the same offseason, and ended shy of the playoffs.
In 2024, the Lions earned the No. 1 seed in the NFC playoffs with a 15-2 record. But the upstart Washington Commanders came to Ford Field and dispatched them without a playoff victory.
After a strong finish to the 2022 season, the Lions went into 2023 with elevated expectations as a team that could make a big rise. They delivered on those expectations, winning the NFC North and two playoff games before losing to the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game.
After that loss to the 49ers, a game the Lions led 24-7 at halftime before falling one game shy of the Super Bowl, head coach Dan Campbell offered some sobering thoughts.
"I told those guys, this may have been our only shot,” Campbell said. “Do I think that? No. Do I believe that? No. However, I know how hard it is to get here. I’m well aware. And it’s gonna be twice as hard to get back to this point next year than it was this year. That’s the reality. And if we don’t have the same hunger and the same work — which is a whole ‘nother thing once we get to the offseason — then we got no shot of getting back here."
“I don’t care how much better we get or what we add or what we draft. It’s irrelevant. It’s gonna be tough. Everybody in our division’s gonna be loaded back up. And, you know, you’re not hiding from anybody anymore. Everybody’s gonna want a piece of you. Which is fine, you know. Which is fine."
Campbell's sentiment from just about exactly two years ago runs contradictory to general manager Brad Holmes' stubborn refusal to believe the Lions are in any kind of "Super Bowl window." The way this season went ought to change Holmes' tepid offseason mode, within reason, but time will tell about that.
One sentence absolutely sums up all of Lions' fans fears
Ahead of the conference championships games for this year, Brad Gagnon of Bleacher Report used one sentence to describe the 28 teams whose 2025 seasons were over.
Here's how Gagnon summarized the Lions.
"With zero playoff wins in the last two seasons, it's fair to wonder if something is missing here, and if big changes are necessary despite all of that talent."
READ MORE: Mel Kiper's latest Lions draft prediction has Dan Campbell written all over it
If Lions' fans fears about their team could be summed up in 29 words, it would look a lot like those 29 words.
A lack of playoff wins in each of the last two seasons is troubling, including missing the postseason entirely this year.
If something is truly missing that will keep preventing the Lions from getting to the Super Bowl, or even close to it again, what is it? Are there multiple things that could be considered "missing" in that regard?
The idea of big changes possibly being necessary to get over the proverbial hump is fairly vague, but aggressive speculators can take that to whatever level they'd like to.
For years, decades really, being a Lions' fan carried angst because the team was not very good. Now the angst is related to keeping the recent level of success going, and what it will take to get back to being a legit Super Bowl contender moving forward. Some people might say the latter angst feels worse.