You thought the injury bug was bad for the 2024 Detroit Lions? Well, according to the metric “Adjusted Games Lost,” the 2025 Detroit Lions actually had it worse.
Adjusted Games Lost, or AGL, not only tracks the amount of games lost due to injuries, but puts certain weight on starters over reserves and also takes into account players who are not at 100%. The full definition of AGL is below:
Adjusted games lost doesn’t just add up total injuries. It accounts for both absent players and those playing
at less than 100%, and it specifically measures injuries to expected starters and important situational players rather than little-used backups. As such, AGL estimates the impact of injuries on teams and provides a comparable total that often succinctly explains why teams improved or declined from one year to the next.
In 2024, the Lions ranked 25th in AGL, meaning injuries had the eighth-highest impact of any team in NFL. As you may remember, the Lions were particularly devastated on defense, ranking 32nd… dead last.
This past season was actually much worse. Overall, they ranked 31st in AGL, only ahead of the Arizona Cardinals. And for the second year in a row, they had the most-injured defense in football. But it was actually even more injured in 2025, with the AGL jumping from 86.5 to 92.7.
While that may seem off, just think about all of the significant injuries on defense. Levi Onwuzurike, Josh Paschal, and Ennis Rakestraw missed the entire season. Kerby Joseph missed 11 games. Marcus Davenport and Terrion Arnold missed nine. Alim McNeill missed seven. D.J. Reed missed six, and Brian Branch missed five. That’s nine players, six of whom were clear-cut starters, missing over a month of football. On offense, they lost Christian Mahogany (6 games), Sam LaPorta (8 games), Brock Wright (9 games), and dealt with an injured Taylor Decker all season.
In the linked article below, Aaron Schatz named the 12 most-injured defenses of the past 25 years, and both the 2024 and 2025 Lions defense made the list. Last year’s Lions defense is the second-most injured NFL defense since 2001, trailing only the 2021 Jets.
Schatz pointed out something remarkable about both of the Lions’ historically injured defenses of the past two seasons: of the 12-most injured defenses since 2001, both Lions teams are the only to have finished the season with a winning record—going 15-2 in 2024 and 9-8 last year.
