For almost the entire 2024 season, it felt like we were going to see the Philadelphia Eagles go to Detroit for the NFC Championship Game. Then the Lions got whomped in the divisional round by the Washington Commanders, and we were all robbed of watching what would’ve been an awesome game.
This year, the "game that never was" will finally happen in Week 11, when the Lions come to Philadelphia. The stakes are obviously going to be lower than a trip to the Super Bowl, but there’s a pretty solid chance that this game will have some major seeding implications when it comes time for the postseason.
What should Eagles expect from marquee showdown with Lions in 2025?
The Lions are a very likable team. They have a fun head coach, a quarterback who was abandoned by the team that drafted him and absolutely zero ego. On top of that, they didn’t vote to ban the Brotherly Shove. They’re cool.
A bunch of the players from last year’s Lions are the same, but unfortunately, their coaching staff is a whole lot different. Very early into the offseason, they lost their offensive and defensive coordinators, Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn, to head coaching jobs with the Bears and Jets respectively. A lot of their success was due to those guys being awesome.
Their new offensive coordinator is John Morton, which is kind of interesting given his track record. The last time he was an offensive coordinator was for the Jets in 2017 — a team with a truly horrendous offense. Since then, he’s taken some offensive assistant and passing game coordinator jobs with the Raiders, Lions and Broncos.
He did well with Broncos rookie QB Bo Nix last year, but other than that, his resume is pretty uninspiring. You have to imagine that he’s going to be a major downgrade from the creativity of Johnson over the last three years.
The new defensive coordinator is Kelvin Sheppard. At face value, this seems like a good move for consistency’s sake: Sheppard’s only coaching job at the NFL level has been as Lions linebackers coach, which he began in 2021. That’s the same year that Glenn took over as their defensive coordinator.
If you’re looking to try to keep the same defensive identity and scheme that works for the players that you have, then getting a DC who will probably run a similar defense is a good idea.
Now, as far as the players go, their big additions were cornerback D.J. Reed in free agency and DT Tyliek Williams and guard Tate Ratledge in the first two rounds of the draft. Reed and Ratledge are guys they are hoping will replace players who left in free agency, and Williams should just be a good defensive tackle when he lines up with star edge rusher Aiden Hutchinson.
The Hutchinson of it all is what the Lions have to be focusing on this season. Per FTNFantasy, “The Lions had the sixth-worst total of defensive AGL (Adjusted Games Lost) ever measured, going back to 2001.”
They were simply annihilated by injuries last year. Hutchinson broke his leg clean in half in Week 6, and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Detroit ended up having over 20 guys go on the IR, and a lot of them were really key players on defense.
You have to think that the Lions' injury luck is going to even out next year, but it’s tough to say because of the way they play ball; Dan Campbell doesn’t exactly preserve his starters when games are out of reach. Last season, the Lions won eight games by 14 or more points, but Jared Goff would never come out. Their backup quarterback, Hendon Hooker, took a total of 33 snaps the entire season. That feels like playing with fire. Hell, Hutchinson’s injury happened when they were up 34-6 over the Cowboys.
To be fair, a lot of their injuries (Hutchinson’s leg and Carlton Davis’ broken jaw) were freakish, but still: Why put guys at unnecessary risk if you don’t need to?
One thing that the Eagles have done tremendously under Nick Sirianni is staying healthy. When they went to the Super Bowl in 2022, all 22 starters were available, and in 2024, 21 out of 22 starters were available.
Hopefully 2025 is a healthier season for the Lions, and hopefully, the game in Week 11 is early enough that the wear and tear of the season won’t have taken its toll yet. But if the Lions want to have a crack at the Eagles in the playoffs, when the games really mean something, they’re going to have to put aside Dan Campbell’s awesome but diabolically cavalier commitment to keeping his foot on the gas.
He might want to chew knee caps or whatever, but maybe he should save that for the postseason. It’s hard to chew knee caps if your team doesn’t have any knee caps left themselves.
So as far as what the Lions did this offseason to prepare themselves for the Eagles: We don’t quite know yet. As far as coaching and the roster goes, it looks like they’re trying to maintain rather than build.
They changed their coaching staff, and you have to imagine two guys who are brand spanking new at it won’t be as good as the two guys who had been doing it at a very high level for the past three years. Their roster has been upgraded, but there haven't been any above-the-fold additions.
It really comes down to what Campbell learns in the offseason. His in game decisions, passion and demeanor make it seem like he’s a wild card, but those decisions are pretty analytical. Hopefully he looks at the analytics for offseason training and in-season injuries. We just won’t find out until everything actually happens.