There are a ton of reasons the 2025 Detroit Lions season will go down as a huge disappointment. We’ve already talked about the offensive regression, the defense took a major step back, too, and, yes, injuries
to critical players didn’t help, either.
But one dataset suggests there was another factor working against the Lions this year: just plain, bad luck.
Tom Bliss, a football operations data scientist for the NFL, put together a collection of four different “luck” stats as they pertain to win probability. These statistics basically represent moments in the game in which each team has little control. Here are the four different categories:
- Dropped interceptions: Interceptable passes thrown by the team that were dropped by the opponent
- Dropped passes: Catchable passes by the opponent that were dropped by opponent’s receivers
- Field goals and extra points: Missed/made kicks by the opponents
- Fumble recoveries: Win probability added/lost by the recovery of fumbles from both the team and their opponents
You can argue how much of these involve luck vs. skill, but for the most part, it’s easy to see how most of these metrics are out of the control of each team. The NFL has more on their “luck” methodology for each statistic here, if you’re interested.
It turns out the Lions had negative luck—lost win probability—in all four categories for the 2025 season. They were most victimized by their bad fumble recovery luck, posting a -52.8% win probability in that category for the entire season, third-worst in the NFL. Collectively, the Lions encountered 24 fumbles (both fumbles forced and fumbles by the offense) in 2025. They recovered just nine. It was particularly bad on offense, where they fumbled 11 times and recovered only three.
Put together all four stats, and the Lions had the third-worst luck in the NFL in 2025, only ahead of the 8-8 Colts and 3-13 Jets. Check it out:
(click through to see the entire chart)
Obviously, the Lions’ problems in 2025 ran far deeper than just bad luck, but it does show that just about everything that could go wrong this season did go wrong.
