2025 Detroit Lions Season Preview

Posted on September 6, 2025 by Jeff

Well…better late than never. Last year I wrote Super Bowl or bust…and it was definitely a bust after an awesome regular season. After having a clean year injury-wise two years ago, last year was a disaster and it finally caught up with them in the playoffs. That stuff is going to happen, but the message is still going to be the same. Super Bowl or bust. This team is in the prime winning window and I do not care what anyone else says…it has not closed and is not closing. Everyone and their brother wanted them to get another pass rusher and Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell did not do that. First of all, they have to pay Hutchinson and a slew of other guys so they need to conserve their cap and cash. Second of all, you have to trust them. I hated the Hendon Hooker and Brodric Martin picks at the time and they thought they were right to acquire them. Well, this year they cut both (and they only carried 50 guys across the roster deadline) and moved on. You have to put your full faith in a crew that is willing to cut guys that were “their guys” and admit they were wrong and move on. The worst thing a coach or manager can do is hold onto a guy for too long thinking they can make it work or be unwilling to give up on “their guy.” Holmes and Campbell are clearly willing to call a spade a spade at all times. To only carry 50 players at the roster deadline because only 50 met their standard? Yeah, I’m all in and going to continue to trust them implicitly, even if I do not always like their picks…I suggest you do the same.

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2025 Michigan Football Season Preview

Posted on August 28, 2025 by Jeff

We’re just a couple days away from the fighting Bryce Underwood’s taking the field! I’m mostly kidding, but what a weird place the college sports landscape has become. Bryce was committed to LSU for forever and was definitely not coming to Michigan…until Michigan had a dreadful QB room and a Billionaires young second wife (third wife? fourth wife?) decided she could not watch another season with her alma mater having this go on again. What a world. How will the team look? After losing so many defensive studs to the draft it is hard to say that the defense is going to be much better, but it seems that instead of having a couple studs drive the bus up front, it’ll be a committee approach. How well that approach works, remains to be seen, but I’m cautiously optimistic about this squad…especially with the schedule.

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2025 Detroit Lions Draft Preview and Seven Round Mock Draft

Posted on April 23, 2025 by Jeff

As the Brad Holmes-Dan Campbell regime has taken shape and become established, it has gotten more difficult to write these posts. My love for the NFL Draft is still there. It’s most of the content I consume…but my trust in the Lions has grown. It sounds odd to say, especially growing up in the era that I did, but I trust them implicitly. Sure, they make mistakes and they’re not infallible (that trade up for Brodric Martin is not looking great). But their success and the way they have built this team gives me complete faith in the current crew. In the past, the NFL Draft was the Lions Super Bowl. And the picks were so important and in such premium spots, it was imperative they do a good job. You draw up a plan for them, you scout for them and you say “hey, take this guy, he’s awesome”…and then they go ahead and do something stupid like draft Eric Ebron. You felt like you had to have a hand on the steering wheel to keep them from crashing the car (and they still crashed it). That’s not to say I don’t have an opinion on what the Lions do (I always have an opinion)…but I’m more open minded with what they’re doing and trust their plan more. In the past, it was almost automatic rejection if they did not do what you wanted because they almost always made a mistake. There is still plenty of discourse about what the Lions are going to do and what their perceived needs are, but Holmes is going to take football players and typically go best player available. His track record really speaks for itself at this point and I am excited for the draft, but not nervous. It’s a calm excitement. A want to see the new players/pieces they’re adding to an extremely strong roster and foundation but not nervous that they might mess it up. Truthfully, the end of that for me was when they ended up with Brian Branch in the second round. I was so mad about the Jack Campbell pick at the time, I desperately wanted Branch at 18. And I was continually salty until they ended up trading up for Branch in the second round. That essentially made me feel like I can take my hands off the wheel and stop being such a helicopter parent. The Lions are all grown up now. They have their own house, a wife, a family and they can be responsible. And that’s a beautiful thing.

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2024 Detroit Lions Season Preview

Posted on September 6, 2024 by Jeff

Super Bowl or Bust. There’s no way around it. The gloves are off and this is now the goal. Whether they make it there or not remains to be seen but this is the new standard…and my god is that wonderful.

We’re going to keep this preview tight this year because this is not a team with many holes and there are not many question marks to discuss.

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2024 Michigan Football Preview

Posted on August 29, 2024 by Jeff

I almost decided to stop with the blog after Michigan reached the top of the mountain but I’ve decided to stick with this until the Lions win a Super Bowl. Three straight Big Ten Titles and a National Championship the last three years has been quite the sight to behold. Michigan has gone through plenty of adversity and distractions and still managed to fight their way through it. I think this team that is returning has a ton of talent given the number of players they lost to the NFL. There are four future first round picks for sure, and a lot more on the defensive side of the ball. The real questions all reside on the offensive side of the ball.

I’m sure plenty of people have questions about Sherrone Moore becoming the head coach without head coaching experience…but coaching those 4 games as an interim head coach of sorts last year certainly gave him enough experience. We will just have to trust that he was close enough with Jim Harbaugh to see how you should run a football program (and not run it in some cases). It also greatly helps with the continuity with this team and I think it’s a big reason that they did not lose a lot of players in the portal. Will it work out in the long run? I’d like to think so but it is certainly not a guarantee. Harbaugh certainly took as many people as possible when he left and as much as I love him for winning a National Championship…I cannot say that I’ll be cheering for him in LA after he gutted the staff. But I digress. The coaches they have are plenty qualified and there has been plenty of promotion from within. The most intriguing hire has been bringing in Wink Martindale…I expect the scheme to be the same but play calling will be different. Fortunately for Wink, they have an immensely talented defensive unit. It may not be as deep as last year, but the starting 11 can absolutely ball.

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2024 Detroit Lions Draft Preview and Seven Round Mock

Posted on April 20, 2024 by Jeff

Man, what an exciting year this past season was. As disappointing as that second half against San Francisco was, it’s hard to be disappointed by the season as a whole. I was thinking last year would be the first real shot at making the playoffs but never imagined they would be a full blown contender in year 3 of the Campbell-Holmes era. This coming season comes with big expectations and it all starts with nailing the draft. Last year they got crushed for taking Jahmyr Gibbs and Jack Campbell in the first round by almost everybody. Personally, I loved the players they took with their first four picks but wondered about the positional value of the Gibbs/Campbell picks…and naturally that went out the window rather quickly. As soon as Holmes started talking about them as chess pieces, you knew they had a plan in place for them and they could not be put in a typical RB/LB box. Like I’ve said many times, when you have that many picks early, you have to draft starters. The position doesn’t matter all that much. You have to draft guys that are every down players and contributing to the teams success, whiffing will kill you. This year, same thing, they have to hit on their first three picks. What do I want them to draft? Many things, but they have earned carte blanche with me…I trust them with whatever direction they go.

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2023-24 Detroit Lions Season Preview

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Jeff

After a hectic summer I did not really have time to put together a Lions draft recap or an NFL draft winners and losers post, so I’ll touch on the Lions draft a bit here. The cliff notes version for all of this is that any time you can draft four starters with your first four picks, you’re doing a great job. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Nothing will cook a team more than torching picks inside the top 50 of a draft. And when you have four of them, they absolutely and unequivocally must be hits, no matter what position they’re going to play. I totally get the arguments against the positional value of the players chosen and I admit that I did not love it at first either. But the key is to think the way Brad Holmes has laid it out. Jahmyr Gibbs and Jack Campbell are not just a running back and a MIKE linebacker…they’re chess pieces. Gibbs is going to catch a ton of passes and line up all over the field and Campbell can do just about anything on defense. Kirk Ferentz tried to get him to move to EDGE to help the pass rush last season at Iowa but he wanted to stay at MIKE because he thought he could help the defense the most there. That’s the kind of versatility you cannot teach and you definitely cannot teach his athleticism. And let’s be honest, if Brian Branch had been the pick at #18, everyone would have been ecstatic. So maybe just rearrange the order of the picks into a spot that fits your eye and be cool with it. Take solace in the fact that they drafted football players that are going to contribute early and often.

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2023 Michigan Football Preview

Posted on August 29, 2023 by Jeff

After a pair of improbable seasons, following the disaster that was the COVID season, it is safe to say that expectations for the Michigan football team are off the charts. I cannot remember a season where expectations were this high. Perhaps the 2007 season when Michigan was preseason #5 and promptly lost to App State and Oregon in consecutive weeks. Not the fondest of memories, but safe to say that Michigan’s strength of schedule this year won’t touch 2007. With the preseason #2 ranking comes lofty expectations, and I’m not sure I can say that Michigan is the second best team in the country right now. They do have the potential for it though, especially considering the fire power that they have on the offensive side of the ball, there will be few teams in the country that can keep pace with them offensively.

All of this comes after we had yet another offseason marred by Harbaugh to the NFL rumors. I think this is going to be the new normal and after the NCAA came for Harbaugh, it would not shock me if this was his last year in Ann Arbor. The self-imposed three-game suspension is not going to sit well with him (he characterized it as a baseball bat to the knee caps) and I do not think it will be something he will let go. On the plus side, this will give Michigan football a phenomenal rallying cry and another common enemy to rally around for this season. Something that Harbaugh does well with to say the least.

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2023 Detroit Lions Draft Preview and 7-Round Mock Draft

Posted on April 23, 2023 by Jeff

Well I think it is quite fair to say that nobody saw last season coming. I mean, I did because my preview predicted they would go 9-8, but if you did not read the preview you were certainly surprised! Actually with how the season started I would have told you they had a zero percent chance of going 9-8 and I felt dumb for being optimistic earlier on. Progress was being made but the results were not on the field. They hit rock bottom in New England and I thought that they would implode to be honest. Instead, everything started clicking and eventually they flipped a switch and could not lose. It seemed as though they would win out and finally break through into the playoffs. They’re already seen as the favorites for the division for this coming season, which is incredible to think about considering where they were at when they traded Matthew Stafford.

There is plenty of reason for optimism and this team has a great chance to make strides going forward, but there are still positions of need and holes to fill. I’m not a huge Jared Goff fan, but I also do not think it is time to draft a quarterback like Anthony Richardson or Will Levis. If CJ Stroud falls into your lap…now you have my attention. I get the argument that you may never pick at #6 again if all goes according to plan, but I would rather spend draft capital in the future and potentially overpay for an emerging mega-star than bank on developing someone. For every Josh Allen (who took three years and Stefon Diggs arriving to hit), there are hundreds of quarterbacks that cannot play. Why not trust in Jared Goff and continue to build around him and build up the defense before taking a crack on another QB?

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2022-23 Detroit Lions Season Preview

Posted on September 6, 2022 by Jeff

It is truly a shame the Lions are not on Hard Knocks every year. It is so much better watching when your team is the center of attention and definitely gets you ready and excited for the year. If anything, we’ve learned that the Lions seem to have a good (if not great) coaching staff in place with a good culture. Last year they had a brutally difficult schedule and I had zero expectations for the team. I cannot say that I expect this team to do much more than win at least 7 games…and hopefully they can surprise us and win a few more than that. One thing is for sure, if Jared Goff goes down, this team could lose every game they have on the schedule and that is a scary thought.

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