When the Detroit Lions traveled to Atlanta to open the 2008 season, they did so with unrealistically high hopes.
Not only were the Lions coming off a 4-0 preseason that included a win over the reigning Super Bowl champion New York Giants, but a season earlier they went 7-9 in what marked the high point of the Matt Millen era.
Those expectations, which were quickly dashed in their opener, when Falcons rookie Matt Ryan threw a 62-yard touchdown pass on his first NFL attempt, were perhaps the biggest difference between the 2008 season and the one the Lions are waist deep in now.
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Expectations for this year’s Lions were appropriately low, with Las Vegas oddsmakers setting their over-under win total around five games. With a new coach, a new general manager and one of the youngest rosters in the NFL, the Lions were clearly in the early stages of a rebuild.
The Lions (0-7) face the Philadelphia Eagles (2-5) on Sunday as the only remaining winless team in the NFL.
Their seven losses have come by an average of 10.3 points. They rank last or in the bottom third of the league in scoring, total and red zone offense and defense. And injuries have left them without arguably their two best players, Frank Ragnow and Romeo Okwara, for the rest of season.
But as hopeless as the Lions seem in the near-term — they are underdogs in every game remaining on their schedule, including Sunday, when the Eagles are favored for the first time all year — there is no comparing this year’s team to the 2008 team that set an NFL record for futility (later to be matched by the 2017 Cleveland Browns).
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This year’s Lions are better and younger at almost every position, and while that has not meant a thing record-wise yet, the feeling inside the building is that wins — plural — are coming.
“It’s going to turn,” Lions quarterbacks coach Mark Brunell said Friday. “It’s going to turn. And I hope it starts in a couple days.”
Brunell and others point to Lions coach Dan Campbell’s leadership as reason to believe the organization, despite its record, is on the right track. And Campbell, a player on that 2008 Lions team, and his staff are one of many areas where the 2021 team trumps its 2008 counterpart.
Where the 2021 team is better
The Lions were in win-now mode 13 years ago, when Rod Marinelli was entering Year 3 of his tenure as head coach and Millen was in the eighth and final year of his regime. Fans had grown restless after a decade of futility following Barry Sanders’ retirement, and the Lions built an old defense full of Tampa Bay Buccaneers castoffs like Chuck Darby, Dewayne White, Ryan Nece, Brian Kelly and Kalvin Pearson.
That defense more closely resembled the one the Lions put together last year in the final year of Matt Patricia and Bob Quinn.
This year’s Lions do employ several veterans on one-year contracts (Alex Anzalone, Charles Harris) and players past their prime (Nick Williams, Trey Flowers, Michael Brockers). But there are a host of rookies playing significant minutes in key spots. Day 2 draft picks Alim McNeill and Levi Onwuzurike have been fixtures in the defensive line rotation most of the season. A.J. Parker starts at nickel cornerback. Jerry Jacobs has joined him as an injury replacement (for another rookie injury replacement) at the second outside corner spot. And Derrick Barnes is sharing time with Jalen Reeves-Maybin at middle linebacker.
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Both this year’s defense and the 2008 model lacked high-end playmakers, but while the 0-16 team counted just one first- or second-year defensive player as a part-time starter (Cliff Avril) and had two others in rotational roles (Jordan Dizon, Andre Fluellen), this year’s team has a clear focus on the future.
Positionally, this year’s Lions are better than the 2008 team at most spots.
Jared Goff, despite his struggles, is a superior player to the Jon Kitna/Dan Orlovsky/Daunte Culpepper trio the Lions trotted out in 2008. Kitna was a similar game manager-type, but the Lions shut him down after four games with a short-term back injury. Had they kept Kitna active all season, I believe the Lions would have won at least one game.
The D’Andre Swift/Jamaal Williams tandem is better than the Lions’ 2008 backfield, though Kevin Smith ran for nearly 1,000 yards that season as a rookie third-round pick. T.J. Hockenson is a far better tight end than anyone the Lions employed in 2008, and defensively this year’s Lions are deeper and better up front and younger and more talented in the back end.
As badly as the Lions have struggled to push the ball downfield at times this season, their offense is better and more versatile than the 2008 one that had Jim Colletto as offensive coordinator. Players joked about how basic Colletto’s playbook was during the season, with one telling me at the time it wasn’t much more complicated than what he ran in high school.
Both Colletto and young defensive coordinator Joe Barry were overmatched in 2008, though players respected Marinelli much like they do Campbell now, and that staff did have some talented young assistants in key spots (Shawn Jefferson as receivers coach and Joe Cullen on the defensive line). This year’s Lions have a similarly young staff, with rising stars like Aaron Glenn at defensive coordinator and Aubrey Pleasant coaching the secondary, and respected veterans Hank Fraley and Todd Wash coaching the offensive and defensive lines.
Where the 2008 team was better
As good as Swift and Hockenson are, the Lions have been atrocious offensively this year. They have not scored more than 19 points since Week 1, and needed two scores in the final 2 minutes of that game to do it. And they lack game-changing personnel, especially in the receiving corps.
It is easy to forget, but the 2008 Lions had a bone fide star in Calvin Johnson, a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer and one of the most unique talents to ever play in the NFL. Johnson had a dominant second season in Detroit, catching 78 passes for 1,331 yards and 12 touchdowns, and was passed over for the Pro Bowl that season only because of where he played.
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In a league where true difference makers matter and are hard to find, Johnson was a clear pillar to build around for the future.
This year’s Lions do not have that obvious a foundational piece. Swift is a dangerous player, but he plays a position with a traditionally short shelf life and his contract is such that he may not be around by the time the Lions get good. Hockenson is in a similar place contractually, and has not dominated the Johnson did when all the attention was on him.
Rookie offensive tackle Penei Sewell is perhaps the 2021 Lions’ version of Johnson in that he is a tremendous talent with incredible upside. But seven games into his career, it’s far too early to put Sewell in the same category.
In fact, the Lions’ 2008 offense line was similar to this year’s group. Jeff Backus and Dominic Raiola were steady veterans but not stars, and the Lions played rookie first-round pick Gosder Cherilus at right tackle. The line was supposed to be the strength of this year’s team, and while it has played mostly well, injuries to Ragnow and Taylor Decker have kept it from reaching its full potential.
The talent at linebacker is similar now to what the Lions had in 2008, and as good as the Lions have been on special teams this season, that year’s team had the reliable Jason Hanson, Nick Harris and Don Muhlbach as its specialists.
The future
Campbell played just one game for the 2008 Lions before an injury ended his season. He has declined to compare his team now to the one he played for then because he spent most of 2008 away from the team rehabbing at his home in Texas.
Ultimately, while this year’s team seems more talented than the 2008 version and has been perhaps more snake-bitten, losing twice on long, last-second field goals, both are in similar spots.
The 2008 Lions averaged 16.8 points per game, while this year’s Lions average 18.3. (Across the league, teams average 1.6 points per game more now than they did in 2008). This year’s Lions are keeping games closer, but losing by an average of 10.3 points per game (compared to the 15.6 points per game they lost by in 2008) is hardly noteworthy.
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The Lions kicked their rebuild off in 2008 by firing Millen early in the season and promoting Martin Mayhew and Tom Lewand as his replacements. Mayhew traded Roy Williams for first- and third-round draft picks (plus a swap of late-rounders) to add future capital, and his decision to bench Kitna was a greater-good move that helped ensure the Lions the No. 1 pick in the 2009 draft, where they took Matthew Stafford.
Stafford had 12 good seasons in Detroit, but never won a playoff game, and Brad Holmes, in his first act as general manager, dealt Stafford to the Los Angeles Rams for a third-round pick in the 2021 draft and two future No. 1s.
The Lions are banking on those extra picks to help get this rebuild right, though the singular focus of Campbell and his players is on getting a win now and avoiding the infamy the organization suffered through 13 years ago.
“(A win against the Eagles) would be big. It just, it would be,” Campbell said. “Knowing that you get a win and now we’re going to be able to heal up (during next week’s bye) and rest and kind of reset our clock if you will, get everything back mentally, physically, emotionally. I think it would be big.
“I think you kind of — you’re turning over a new leaf, if you will. You’re validating what you’re doing and where you’re going.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.