ESPN analyst points to obvious area of correction for the Lions in 2025

The Detroit Lions made franchise history with a 15-2 record last season. They had the No. 1 scoring offense in the league, but they also had a top-10 scoring defense despite being incredibly thinned by injuries on that side of the ball.

The work former defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn did with his unit last season was phenomenal in the face of all the injuries.. Things came to a head on that front in an early-December Thursday night game against the Green Bay Packers, as Justin Rogers of Detroit Football Network broke down afterward.

"In all, defenders not on the Week 1 roster combined to play 233 snaps or 42.3% of the team’s total workload on the evening. More than a quarter of the snaps went to players who weren’t in the building at the start of October, and 12.5% to guys who were somewhere other than Detroit the previous week."

Eventually, of course, the litany of injuries became too much for the Lions' defense to overcome and a Divisional Round playoff loss to the Washington Commanders ended their season earlier than expected.

Analyst points to obvious area of correction for the Lions in 2025

ESPN's Bill Barnwell has taken a look at each NFC team, with a superlative for each prefixed by "most likely" in a high school yearbook-style light.

Barnwell's superlative for the Lions was presumably very easy to land on.

"Most likely to be healthier on defense"

"Twenty-six different Detroit players lined up for at least 100 defensive snaps last season. Since 2007, just two teams have fielded more players for at least 100 defensive snaps while posting a winning record: the 2023 Steelers and the 2022 edition of these same Lions, who each ran out 27 players during their successful campaigns."

The Lions' defense fell of a cliff during the games linebacker Alex Anzalone missed late in the regular season last year, but overall they were pretty good in spite of all the injuries. In terms of improvement this year sheerly based on better health, Barnwell noted the Lions were eight in EPA per play last year and they "don't have a lot of space to improve." History also says any improvement may not be dramatic.

READ MORE: It took one clip of Aidan Hutchinson at OTAs to get Lions fans' hearts pumping

"Does that portend improvement for the Lions in 2025? Maybe, but not quite as much as you would expect. Looking at the 27 other teams with winning records that used at least 24 defensive players for 100 snaps since 2007, their EPA per play rank improved by an average of 2.4 spots. There were teams that made massive improvements as they got healthier, such as the 2023-24 Eagles, but there were also defenses that declined, such as the 2010-11 Buccaneers, who fell from 19th to 32nd in EPA per play."

The Lions' defense cannot be more injury-riddled than it was last year. So a natural correction is coming on that front this year, and even if it doesn't show in some metrics, some notable improvement will also be virtually automatic.

More Lions news and analysis