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Eric Woodyard
ALLEN PARK, Mich. — Lions coach Dan Campbell feels this is the deepest roster he has had entering a season during his tenure in Detroit.
“Year 5, this is the best we’ve felt about it from top to bottom,” Campbell said. “Now, that being said, there’s still holes, but I bring this up all the time, every roster has holes. You’ll never have it exactly where you totally want it, but from where we’ve come, year after year, we’ve taken it another level.”
With cut-down day on Tuesday, both Campbell and general manager Brad Holmes will have some difficult decisions to make, but he likes where they stand on offense, defense and special teams heading into their Week 1 matchup at Green Bay on Sept. 7.
Since Campbell and Holmes arrived in 2021, the Lions have gone from a 3-13-1 record in 2021, to 9-8 in 2022, to 12-5 in 2023, to a record-setting 15-2 mark in 2024.
The Lions led the NFL in points per game last season (33.2) for the second time in franchise history, but they lost both coordinators to head coaching jobs: Offensive coordinator Ben Johnson left for the Chicago Bears; defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn was hired by the New York Jets.
Still, Campbell is confident in his squad. Veteran quarterback Jared Goff leads the offense, along with first-team All-Pro selections Amon-Ra St. Brown, Kerby Joseph and Penei Sewell.
Detroit’s defense was ranked seventh in the NFL in points per game allowed (20.1), despite having a league-high 16 players on injured reserve last December. Collectively, Campbell also feels the defensive unit, led by first-year coordinator Kelvin Sheppard, ranks among his best.
“I think it’s certainly up there,” Campbell said. “I mean it’s a real good unit. We stay healthy, we continue to grow, get better, we learn from our errors. We’ve got guys that are playmakers. We’ve got guys that are smart. We can make a lot of checks. We can get into a lot of different calls. We can create turnovers. So, we’ve just got to stay healthy and we’ve got to keep getting better.”
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