ALLEN PARK — The Detroit Lions are fresh off a historic season. They won their first division title in over 30 years and multiple playoff games for the first time in the Super Bowl era while making the conference title game.
Brad Holmes, the team’s general manager, said this season was no cute Cinderella story, and they’ll be back on this stage. Head coach Dan Campbell reportedly told star pass rusher Aidan Hutchinson in their exit interview that the Lions are going to the Super Bowl next season.
And oddsmakers seem to agree with that thinking, with the Lions among the six favorites to win next year’s Super Bowl. Caesars Sportsbook has the Lions with the sixth-best odds (+1300) to win it all next year. FanDuel is the highest, as the Lions have the fourth-best odds (+1200). DraftKings has them fifth (+1200).
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FanDuel has the four teams from this year’s conference title games as the favorites, with the San Francisco 49ers considered the top option. Caesars has the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals joining them in front of the Lions, while DraftKings just has the Bills in front of this year’s reigning NFC North champs.
The hype surrounding the Lions and their future chances certainly makes sense.
Dan Campbell has established himself as one of the NFL’s top head coaches. And no matter what Brad Holmes thinks people are saying, the general manager has hit home run after home run in his first three drafts around these parts.
The Lions have one of the five youngest rosters in the league. They are among the five teams with the fewest snaps to pending free agents. And coordinators Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn are back to run the offense and defense, with Jared Goff ready to roll after another borderline elite season under center.
They have young cornerstone stars on both sides of the ball who continue to improve in Penei Sewell, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Aidan Hutchinson. The Lions got stud rookie showings from Sam LaPorta, Jahmyr Gibbs and Brian Branch, with linebacker Jack Campbell getting much better down the stretch, too.
And the Lions were 30 minutes of competent football from reaching this year’s Super Bowl. They led 24-7 over the 49ers at halftime of the NFC title game, then watched that slip away in a hurry, with bounces off facemasks, uncharacteristic fumbles and failed fourth-down attempts dooming them.
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“Look, it’s only going to get better. OK? We’re only going to get better, all right? I don’t want anybody to think this was a one-shot, Cinderella, magical journey that just happened,” Holmes said after the season ended. “No. It’s real. This was — This is exactly what was supposed to happen. I understand that based on history, from what’s happened in the past, like I understand that you have a season like this, it’s easy to feel like this was kind of a one-shot, magical, lucky, cute story — which I’m tired of hearing. It was none of that. It’s easy to think that.
“But, no. Every move that me and Dan make, it has been made to sustain what we are building. Every single move, and I would say every single move we make and every single move we do not make, is to sustain what we have been building. It’s real. Look, it’s all to normalize what we’re doing. This is to normalize it.”
