Detroit, MI

Detroit Lions among oddsmakers’ top favorites to win next year’s Super Bowl

Published

2 years ago

February 12, 2024

Detroit Lions among oddsmakers’ top favorites to win next year’s Super Bowl

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.

Lions’ approach to free agency ‘will be different’ with extensions on horizon

Lions ‘fortunate’ to keep coordinators, but know it all starts with Dan Campbell

“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.”

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Detroit, MI

Detroit man accused of fatally shooting two men in Tennessee

Published

12 hours ago

January 12, 2026

Press Room

Detroit man accused of fatally shooting two men in Tennessee

A Detroit man suspected of fatally shooting two men on a Tennessee highway in November was arrested Monday in Michigan, authorities said.

Dashonn Moten, 28, of Detroit was indicted on 17 criminal counts, including two counts each of first-degree murder and felony murder, Knoxville, Tennessee, police said in a social media post.

Moten is accused of killing Troy Hutchison, 33, of Atlanta and Rodrell Jeter, 25, of Detroit during an incident on the morning of Nov. 16 on Interstate 640 in Knoxville.

Moten also faces one count of attempted murder related to a third victim, a 22-year-old Detroit man, who was critically injured in the shooting, authorities said.

Detectives believe the victims were traveling from Detroit to Atlanta in a light-color Ford Bronco with a Michigan license plate, according to a press release issued in November. At that time, police were unsure of a motive or the relationship between the suspect and the victims.

Two days after the shooting, the Bronco was found abandoned in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, police said.

Moten was identified as a suspect based on an investigation that included dozen of interviews, a review of cellphone records and anonymous tips, authorities said.

U.S. Marshals took him into custody Monday in the Detroit area, according to authorities. He is expected to be extradited to Knox County.

mreinhart@detroitnews.com

@max_detroitnews

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Detroit, MI

Detroit man arrested following manhunt for double murder in Tennessee

Published

1 day ago

January 12, 2026

Press Room

Detroit man arrested following manhunt for double murder in Tennessee

STERLING HEIGHTS, Mich. – A 28-year-old man from Detroit has been arrested for the murder of two people in Tennessee.

Troy Hutchinson and Rodrell Jeter were shot and killed Nov. 16, 2025, outside Nashville, Tennessee. A third man was hospitalized with critical injuries.

Police believe four men were traveling from Detroit to Atlanta in a Ford Bronco when the fourth man opened fire on the victims before leaving in the vehicle. The Bronco was found abandoned in Kentucky, just south of Cincinnati in Ohio.

Jeter and the man who was hospitalized were both from Detroit, while Hutchinson is from Atlanta.

A motive for the shooting remains unknown.

In late November, police identified the suspect as Dashonn Moten. He was indicted on 17 counts, including two counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and two counts of felony murder.

After nearly two months, Moten was arrested Friday, Jan. 10, in Sterling Heights and is awaiting extradition to Tennessee for his arraignment.

If convicted, Moten faces possible execution.

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Detroit, MI

Thompson: The new year brings a promising future for Detroit students

Published

2 days ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

Thompson: The new year brings a promising future for Detroit students

Detroit Public Schools Community District often gets a bad rap due to declining enrollment issues or longstanding challenges that led to the historic takeover of the school system before voters returned it to an elected board.

And in many cases, that is the lens through which the school system’s performance is examined and viewed across the state. But there are hidden stories of progress within a school system that is still struggling to define itself and to give young Detroiters hope for a meaningful future.

I saw that first-hand last week at Denby High School, part of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, on the city’s east side, where hundreds of young Black and Brown male students gathered in the basketball gym for the annual policing and prosperity forum.

The annual event initiated and led by tenacious Detroiter Sharlonda Buckman, the district’s assistant superintendent for family and community engagement, is one of the hidden jewels of the public school system and brings together male students from various high schools to discuss their interaction with law enforcement. On the panel were senior and junior police officers from the Detroit Police Department, as well as the district’s public safety chief, Labrit Jackson, all of whom took hard questions from the students about how to navigate the complexities of the criminal justice system.

Before the start of the forum, I met three students: 17-year-old Justin Montgomery, 17-year-old Exavier Ward and 16-year-old Wesley Lewis, all students of Denby.

The three of them live on the east side and are serious and determined students who believe they have an obligation to be worthy ambassadors of their communities.

“I just got a scholarship from Cleary University for track and field and cross country and I just signed the papers so I can be committed,” Ward told me. “I am excited for the new year and I’m ready to live my adult life.”

His parents are also joyful about his future because, “out of all of my siblings, I’m going to be the first one to go to college. I want to major in cybersecurity,” he says.

Montgomery is scouting Oakland University or Central Michigan University and is also interested in a trades school. He’s keeping his options open.

“I have been here for a while and I’m ready to get out of high school. The experience has been good for me,” he says.

For Lewis, graduating in 2027 will make him the first in his family to be committed to college. That alone keeps him upbeat for the new year as he prepares for the challenges and the pressures of being an 11th grade student.

“I’m really ready to go to college. I’m looking at Kentucky State University, Wayne State University and Michigan State University,” he says. “I probably would major in music in college because I currently play the piano. But sometimes I get nervous about college because I feel like it is going to be harder than high school.”

These impressive young men speak to the vitality of the school system and the need to continue to nurture and support them.

The forum on policing and prosperity reinforces that need.

“This forum is so important because we give the students an opportunity to have a voice and talk about the things that are important to them and how they interact with law enforcement,” says Marty Bulger, the district’s senior director of male mentoring.

“Even a more dynamic piece is the fact that because the city has seen a reduction in violent crime, we believe as we reach our young people, we will continue to see a decline. These young men are our future leaders.”

X (formerly Twitter): @BankoleDetNews

bankole@bankolethompson.com

Bankole Thompson’s columns appear on Mondays and Thursdays in The Detroit News.

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