It’s game week. No more Micah Parsons.
Okay, a little more Micah Parsons. Micah Parsons!
With that out of the way, let’s look at a little bit of what we have in store with the Detroit Lions, the Green Bay Packers’ opening opponent of the 2025 season. Whenever you’re gameplanning, you want to know an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses. Today, we’ll be focusing on those weaknesses for the Lions going into Week 1.
Our sister site covering the Lions, Pride of Detroit, named two positions as their most
likely Achilles heel: the interior offensive line and 4-3 defensive end.
“As for weaknesses, the most glaring one to me is along the offensive line. Obviously, there are questions as to how long it will take the starters to fully gel, and beyond that, Detroit has a lot of inexperience and struggles with their reserves.”
This offseason, center Frank Ragnow, who started 96 games over seven seasons for Detroit and earned four Pro Bowls doing it, retired from the sport. On top of that, guard Kevin Zeitler, who only played one year with the Lions but had 13 years of NFL experience, left in free agency to join the Tennessee Titans on a one-year, $9 million contract.
Without those two players, Detroit’s interior offensive line is made up of returning starter Graham Glasgow, who had a 57.9 grade in 2024 per Pro Football Focus, Christian Mahogany, who only ever played more than five snaps in a single game once as a sixth-round rookie last season, and Tate Ratledge, who is a rookie himself in 2025.
There’s no “easy” start in the NFL, but if you were drawing up what you’d hope to go against in the first full-time starts of defensive tackles Devonte Wyatt and Colby Wooden, this is what it would look like.
“EDGE depth has been the biggest talking point all season, and it certainly remains a relative concern. While most of those worries unfairly assume some sort of inevitable injury to Marcus Davenport, there are more legitimate concerns about who will even rotate in at the position on a weekly basis.”
At the moment, Lions fans are still wishcasting Za’Darius Smith to rejoin the team for the 2025 season. Aidan Hutchinson is coming off a fractured tibia and fibula that ended his 2024 campaign in Week 6 last year. Set to start opposite Hutchinson is Marcus Davenport, who has only been healthy for six games over the last two years combined and has only been able to suit up for more than 11 games once in the last five seasons. To say the least, health is a concern. Bonus: Davenport is the player who was taken when the New Orleans Saints traded two first-round picks for the Packers’ one in 2018. We basically got a free Jaire Alexander out of that deal.
Backing up Hutchinson and Davenport at the position are Al-Quadin Muhammad, who has been on five NFL teams going into his age-30 season, and Tyrus Wheat, who has recorded just a half-sack over 20 NFL games. Wheat was picked up off waivers via the Dallas Cowboys at the cutdown deadline.
The room is banged up. The depth is shallow.
Another position I want to highlight is receiver. Yes, All-Pro Amon-Ra St. Brown and former first-round pick Jameson Williams are to be respected. I get that. But in three-receiver sets, their new “starter” in the group following the trade of Tim Patrick — who himself was no world beater — is rookie Isaac TeSlaa. TeSlaa blew up the combine, but he was only ranked as the 168th overall prospect on the consensus draft board last spring.
The Lions made the bold move of trading three third-round picks to take the converted quarterback with the 70th overall pick of the 2025 draft. In his two years at Arkansas, TeSlaa mostly played the slot, a role that St. Brown will likely play in three-receiver sets against the Packers. TeSlaa’s best season with the Razorbacks came with a statline of 28 receptions for 545 yards and three touchdowns.
If Green Bay has the choice, they should make the rookie, who comes into the league with sub-par production, make them pay for aggression on defense instead of St. Brown or Williams.
