Recapping Detroit Lions' notable injuries, looking for themes, and comparing team's issues to the rest of the NFL
Allen Park — With a few weeks to marinate on the Detroit Lions’ season, let’s talk about the team’s injuries and their impact on missing the playoffs.
With each new injury that cropped up throughout the season, there was inevitably a fresh wave of comments on social media about the need to investigate the team’s training staff and/or the intensity of coach Dan Campbell’s practices.
The latter cropped up again this week. During a recent episode of the “St. Brown Brothers podcast,” 49ers linebacker Fred Warner was critical of Detroit tackling during some of the team’s allotted padded practices.
“See, at some point, old Dan is going to come to his senses, man,” Warner said, “and be like, ‘Listen, this ain’t making nobody better, brother. We can still get our work in without bringing guys to the ground.’”
That sentiment is understandable, given that this was the second consecutive season in which it felt the team was decimated by injuries.
But before we go any further, we have to make sure we’re not missing the forest through the trees. Football is a violent game, and every team deals with injuries to some degree. Has Detroit had it worse than the competition?
In some ways, yes, others, no.
Let’s start with 2024, when it was as bad as you thought, at least on one side of the ball. Detroit’s defense suffered more injuries than any team in the league, headlined by the season-enders for starters for Aidan Hutchinson, Marcus Davenport, Alim McNeill, Derrick Barnes and Carlton Davis.
Yet, Detroit’s offense came through the year relatively unscathed, with no starters hitting injured reserve during the season.
This year, only the Chicago Bears had players miss more games due to injury, according to Sports Information Systems.
However, not all injuries are equal. The data-driven publication also weighs the value of the injured players, using the Expected Points Added metric. Through that measure, the Lions ranked 10th worst this season, well behind the league’s most snake-bitten franchises, Arizona, Washington and San Francisco.
Yes, the 49ers, who regularly show up near the top of the list, despite never tackling during practices.
It is noteworthy that the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots, this year’s Super Bowl participants, finished with the least and third-least injury-affected roster. The other conference championship finalists, the Los Angles Rams and Denver Broncos, were also top-five.
So, yes, injuries hurt the Lions in 2025 more than the average team. And it probably did have an impact on the win column, with only two of nine teams with a higher injury score — San Francisco and Buffalo — qualifying for the postseason.