The past informs the present. Don’t tell Jared Goff that, though. The star quarterback is sick of talking about last year’s Detroit Lions, the ones who tumbled to the bottom of the NFC North and missed the playoffs.
“It's not who we are anymore,” he said. “This team's different.”
So is the offense, in many ways. But it’s hard to forget that in 2025 it wasn’t the same juggernaut it was at the height of the franchise’s recent rebirth. Because they struggled to consistently execute, the Lions lost power and some of their edge as well. They've spent the past eight months trying to get it all back. But did they? That question looms over Goff and Co as the season opener Sunday, Sept. 13 (1 p.m., Fox) against the New Orleans Saints nears.
“We’ve got …
17 games to prove it, and it starts this week,” Goff said.
Last season, the Lions’ productivity yo-yoed from game to game, from drive to drive and even from down to down. They scored more than 30 points eight times and fewer than 20 on five other occasions. A messy performance in a 27-13 Week 1 loss at Green Bay was a harbinger for the lack of steady performance that was to come. It immediately damaged the public perception of former coordinator John Morton, who struggled to replicate the boffo results his predecessor, Ben Johnson, engineered. Morton was stripped of his play-calling duties mid-season, then fired in January. Not long after Morton’s ouster, Drew Petzing was brought in from the Arizona Cardinals to replace him and was charged with making the Lions’ offense a high-efficiency machine again.
Given the talented set of players he inherited, it wasn’t seen as an enormous undertaking. But it wasn’t exactly a small task either.
Under Morton, the Lions’ operation turned wonky. In a span of a year, their rushing success rate fell from 44.9% in 2024 to 40.7% in 2025 and their EPA (expected points added) per attempt flipped from positive to negative, according to NextGen Stats. The Lions, in turn, routinely went off schedule. Their average third-down distance increased from 6.2 yards in 2024 to 7.1 in 2025. The conversion rate, in turn, dropped from 45.7% to 38.8%. The regression of the ground attack was felt by Goff. His play-action throws decreased from 203, a league-high total in 2024, to 160 last season. The Lions’ per-play passing average fell from 7.7 yards to 6.9.
Petzing resolved to troubleshoot the problems by making the Lions’ attack as versatile as possible.
“If you’re going to be dynamic as a team, as an offense, you can’t lock yourself into this is the only way to be efficient because there is going to be weeks or matchups we may need to pivot or go in a different direction or do things in a different way,” Petzing said in February.
Petzing made that comment before running back David Montgomery was traded, Jahmyr Gibbs was anointed as “the bell cow” and the Lions reconfigured their offensive line with a series of big moves. All-Pro Penei Sewell flipped to the left end after rookie right tackle Blake Miller was drafted in the first round this past April. The Lions also made room for a new center. Right now, it is Juice Scruggs. But soon it will be Cade Mays, a free agent signee injured during training camp. The turnover at those positions has unfolded as left guard remains unsettled with incumbent starter Christian Mahogany and Ben Bartch, another offseason free-agent acquisition, splitting repetitions.
Add it all up, and the multitude of personnel changes are sure to have a cascading effect. But will it be positive or negative?
That still is to be determined. After all, no one has seen this version of the offense go up against outside competition. Sewell, Goff and the core skill players – Gibbs, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams and Sam LaPorta – were kept on the sideline for all three exhibition games.
“We didn’t play in the preseason. Had no joint practices,” St. Brown said. “Just went up against the defense every single day.”
All the while, coach Dan Campbell and his staff emphasized to the players the importance of correctly carrying out each assignment with no deviation from one rep to the next.
“If you go back and look at the issues that we had last year, it was directly connected to discipline one way or the other,” associate head coach Scottie Montgomery said. “Maybe the depth wasn’t right. Maybe our alignment wasn’t right. Maybe the depth of the quarterback pocket wasn’t right. Maybe we weren’t on the same page in communication. Right now, that page that we’re on, everybody is on that page. And that’s what gives you the thought process of consistency. Now, making plays is making plays. But consistency is what coaches really live in because we know what a guy is going to do every single play. We know that we have the opportunity to make the play. ... We know our guys are going to be where they’re supposed to be, doing what they’re supposed to be doing.”
A favorable outcome is then achieved. For evidence, harken back to the final day of training camp, when Goff led a 14-play, 99-yard scoring drive that served as evidence of crisp, reliable execution over an extended period.
“The next step is now is to actually do it in the game,” Sewell told the Free Press. “It’s the only one way to find out about the consistency, whether it’s changed or not.”
Until Sunday, Sewell and his teammates will be left hanging in suspense, wondering whether their offense will function like a smooth, steady and productive operation right out of the gates.
“There’s a lot of unknown,” St. Brown said.
But the star receiver is hopeful the results will be better than they were last year.
Goff is, too.
“We’re excited,” he said.
Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him @RainerSabin on X.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Why Detroit Lions offense has air of mystery heading into opener
