Behold! The Detroit Lions are the 2026 NFL preseason rushing champions!
And they didn’t even need Jahmyr Gibbs to help them lead the league with a 161.3-yard average per game!
OK, so I’m having a little fun with the meaningless nature of the NFL preseason, which is little more than a few exhibitions that let coaches and personnel departments evaluate a lot of back-end roster players in a game.
After all, when the Lions went 0-16 in 2008, they won all four of their preseason games, led the NFL in passing yards per play and points allowed. So a great preseason isn’t exactly an omen of great things to come.
But what may be the most encouraging omen for the Lions this year is that so few of their offensive starters even played in a preseason game.
Receiver
Isaac TeSlaa was the only skill-position player to get in a game, when he played 27 snaps in the first half of the second exhibition against Washington.
Even the starting offensive line, minus left tackle Penei Sewell, only played 15 snaps against the Commanders. This is all a sign of the roster growth and maturity coach Dan Campbell has spoken about.
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In short, the Lions have become a good team and it’s hard for players who are a step to two away from filling out a UPS application to crack this roster.
“A lot of competition, a lot of good players,” Campbell said Wednesday, Aug. 26. “And we're going to have to let go of some guys that are going to be able to go to other rosters and make some waves.
“That could happen. That's real, and that's hard to do. But yeah, this is going to be hard, man, on Sunday [for the 53-man roster cut down].”
Even then, Campbell believed he had “got some clarity” from the Lions’ preseason finale, a 25-16 victory at Indianapolis, on Saturday afternoon.
“I'll be honest with you, there's a couple that are a little muddy,” he told reporters postgame, before he watched the game film. “You think this is probably where you're going to go, but that’s why you play out the last one, that's why you give them a chance to go out and compete one more time because you want to see them again under the lights and see how they respond, and are they learning? Are they growing? In a couple of areas, guys did that.”
The two biggest areas of concern for the Lions remain the changing offensive line. The small preseason sample size from the starters doesn’t really give us enough to believe this unit will be better or worse than last year’s version.
The other concern is the entire defense that in 2025 gave up too many points, too many yards and was especially vulnerable against the pass. At least the defense, thanks largely to Aidan Hutchinson, Al-Quadin Muhammad (now in Tampa Bay) and Jack Campbell, was great on third down and sacking the quarterback.
A few more defensive starters played this preseason, compared to their offensive counterparts. Even without any starters against in Indy, the defense finished strong by holding the Colts to 229 yards, including just 34 yards rushing, and limiting them to 10% efficiency on third down.
And guess what? The Lions’ also finished the 2026 NFL preseason as rushing defense champions.
That’s definitely an encouraging sign and maybe a good omen for the defense. But for anyone who remembers the 2008 preseason, maybe it shouldn’t be too good an omen.
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on X @cmonarrez.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: This omen from NFL preseason might be most encouraging for 2026 Lions
