Micah Parsons Among Three Reasons Why Packers Will Beat Lions

Every season-opening game is big. For the Green Bay Packers, their Week 1 showdown against the Detroit Lions on Sunday just seems bigger.

A series once owned by the Packers has now been dominated by the Lions, with six wins in the last seven matchups including three in a row at Lambeau Field.

Here’s why the Packers will get some revenge with a huge win over the two-time defending NFC North champions to start the season. (The doom-and-gloom version in this weekly combo of stories will be published on Saturday evening.)

1. Pass Protection vs. Aidan Hutchinson

The best player on the field on Sunday might be Lions defensive end Aidan Hutchinson. In less than five games last season, he had 7.5 sacks, which put him on a pace to blow the NFL single-season sacks record to smithereens.

Last season, 95 edge rushers played at least 180 pass-rushing snaps. Hutchinson was No. 1 by a huge margin in Pro Football Focus’ pass-rushing productivity, which measures sacks, hits and hurries per pass-rushing snap. While 95th in rushes, he was 34th with 45 pressures – just two less than Rashan Gary in 211 fewer pass-rushing snaps.

“He’s kind of in the same vein like with Micah (Parsons),” offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich said. “You’ve got to have a plan for him, wherever he’s at. He’s a really active player and he does a really good job of just playing hard to the whistle and getting after people with relentless effort. 

“That’s one thing that’s very impressive about his game, so you’ve got to make sure you have hats on him, you have eyes on him, you have guys accounting for him – multiple guys – so that you can minimize his effect on a game.”

Two things will help Green Bay minimize his impact. One is the matchup. In his three seasons, Hutchinson rushed from the defense’s left (meaning mostly against the offensive right tackle) 70.0 percent of the time in 2024, 78.0 percent of the time in 2023 and 62.3 percent of the time as a rookie in 2022. While he can and will move around the defense, the history shows he mostly will be going against Zach Tom, who is one of the best right tackles in the NFL.

“Obviously he’s a really good player,” Tom said. “He can change a game for them, so we have to know where he’s at at all times and just make plays when we can. Obviously, we’re going to have a plan for him, but it’s no different than any other week apart from the fact that he’s just a really good player.”

The other thing helping Green Bay is the rest of Detroit’s defensive line, which lacks a standout pass rusher opposite Hutchinson. The projected other end is Marcus Davenport. In seven seasons, he has only one year of more than six sacks (nine in 2021). He had just a half-sack in 15 games for the Saints in 2022, two sacks in four games for the Vikings in 2023 and a half-sack in two games for the Lions in 2024.

Defensive tackles D.J. Reader and Tyleik Williams will make life difficult for Josh Jacobs but Reader has only 12.5 sacks in nine seasons and Williams is a rookie who had 11.5 sacks in four seasons at Ohio State.

Hutchinson is a handful, to state the obvious. He’s one of the best in the business and is going to get his wins against Tom. But the lack of pass rush from the other positions should give Jordan Love the time to get comfortable and make some plays.

2. Power of Micah Parsons

The Packers mortgaged their future to acquire Micah Parsons. There’s no other way to look at it after they gave up two first-round picks and made Parsons the highest-paid non-quarterback in NFL history. Green Bay is going to face significant challenges to build for the next handful of years.

Who cares, though, if Parsons makes the kind of impact that Reggie White and Ted Hendricks made for Ron Wolf? The answer is nobody will care if Parsons delivers game-changing plays over the next five seasons, including one or two against Jared Goff and the Lions.