Detroit needed a last-minute stop to beat New Orleans by one, and our model still makes the Lions the class of the NFC
Updated
Thirty-one to thirty in overtime against the Saints at home is not the score a thirteen-win team is supposed to post in Week 1, and it is worth saying that plainly before saying everything else. Detroit won, the offense scored 31, and when we re-ran the season with the result seeded in the Lions came out exactly where they were in July, at 13-4 with a 98 percent playoff chance. The title odds slipped from 15 percent to eleven and a half, which is still the second-best number in football, and the reason for the slip is the one thing New Orleans showed on Sunday. Tyler Shough threw for 410 yards and Chris Olave caught ten balls for 182. This defense can be scored on.
The offense remains a nightmare, and the projection loves it more than it did in the summer. Jared Goff's line climbed to 4,251 yards and 30 touchdowns against just seven interceptions behind a passer rating near 103, up from the 28 scores and 99.6 rating we had in July. Amon-Ra St. Brown holds at 109 catches for 1,281 yards with nine touchdowns. Jameson Williams provides the vertical element at 71 catches and 951 yards. Sam LaPorta's projection jumped from 47 catches to 74 for 817 yards and eight scores, a tight end becoming a featured target again. And Jahmyr Gibbs, who ran for 156 and two scores on Sunday, is now the most productive back in our numbers at 1,544 rushing yards and 19 touchdowns with 57 catches on top. The unit projects for 454 points, second in the league, and the second-most yards. A defense cannot account for all of it, and the Saints could not.
The defense is where the July preview and the September re-run part ways, and the honest thing is to say by how much. In the summer we graded the unit second in the league and projected it to allow 273 points. After Week 1 our model has Detroit allowing 318, tenth in the league, and giving up the eighth-fewest yards. That is a very good defense. It is not the suffocating one we described in July, and the difference is a secondary that Tyler Shough and Chris Olave attacked successfully for four quarters.
The front is still elite. Aidan Hutchinson had two sacks against the Saints and projects for nearly 20, the most of any player in our numbers, and the team total of 51 sits fifth in the league. Derrick Barnes adds seven and a half, Alim McNeill and Tyleik Williams push from the interior, and a unit that generates this much pressure will still end a lot of drives on its own. The 12 or 13 interceptions the model projects are the sign of a back end that makes plays when the front gets home and gives up yards when it does not.
The division is the reason the record did not move even as the title odds did. Chicago hung 59 on Carolina and our model moved the Bears from eight wins to nine with a top-five offense. Minnesota beat Green Bay and holds at six. Green Bay lost that game and fell to eight. When we ran the rest of the season Detroit won the NFC North comfortably and by a wider margin than it did in the summer run, because the Packers took a step back and nobody else in the division has the roster to close a four-win gap.
The market opened Detroit around twelve wins, and in July our model sat a win above it. It still does. Thirteen wins is a lean grounded in an offense that just got better in our numbers and a defense that, even after giving up 30, still grades top ten. There is no flag here, only a note that the Lions are more of an offense-first team than the summer preview suggested, and offense-first teams with this much scoring are usually fine.
The path to being wrong is the one that has haunted this franchise for years, and it is injuries. A roster this deep absorbs a loss or two, but a rash of them to Goff, Hutchinson or St. Brown pulls even a juggernaut back toward the pack. The path to a shorter January is the New Orleans game becoming a template rather than a warning, a secondary that good quarterbacks can move on and a defense that has to outscore rather than suffocate. Both are risks. Neither moves the regular season number.
The next month tests the defense before it tests anything else. Detroit goes to Buffalo in Week 2 against an offense that just scored 36 in Houston, hosts the Jets and their top-six defense in Week 3, then travels to Carolina and Arizona, two teams our model has losing records but whose passing games looked better than their grades in Week 1. When we ran that stretch the Lions were favored in all four by a comfortable margin, Buffalo included. A 4-0 start is the expectation. The Bills game is where we find out whether a secondary that gave up 30 to New Orleans can hold Josh Allen under it.
So we take the over and mean it, with one eye on the back end. Detroit has the best offense in the conference by a distance, a pass rush anchored by the most productive edge in football, and a division it should win going away. The Saints game was a reminder that the defense is very good rather than historic. Thirteen wins and a bye was the projection in July, and it is the projection now.
