The Lions have lost some physicality at cornerback, how that affects their secondary in 2025

The Detroit Lions had one of the best secondaries in the league in 2024. They allowed the second-fewest passing touchdowns in the league. It seemed they had really fixed what their big problem was in 2023. 

In the offseason, the Lions lost Carlton Davis to the Patriots in free agency and then turned around and signed an upgrade in D.J. Reed. The Lions also lost Kindle Vildor to the Bucs and signed Rock Ya-Sin. 

Those two losses might seem like they're not a big deal, but what both players took with them was physicality.

Pro Football Focus's John Kosko helped the site add a new metric to coverage last season, and that metric was designed to help find the most physical coverage defenders in the league. The metric is based on the number of times a corner makes contact with the receiver he's covering during the route. The idea is that the physicality during the route could help get the receivers off their route. 

The Lions had two guys on Kosko's top 10 list. It was both Vildor and Davis. Vildor made contact on a league-leading 50.5% of his coverage snaps. It wound up not being such a good thing for him. He was called for multiple penalties, and that hurt his coverage grade at the end of the day. 

Davis was sixth with 42.3% of his snaps getting physical. His physicality actually helped him a lot. When making contact with receivers, he allowed just one touchdown and a 40.6% completion rate in the last three years combined.

Kosko helped us figure out what the rates were for the Lions' current corners, and they're a lot lower. 

Amik Robertson leads the way at 38.5. Terrion Arnold comes in at 34.8%, which was a bit surprising considering the early issue with him was that he was being too handsy. This is probably a good sign that he fixed that issue as time went on. 

The lowest one is D.J. Reed at 29.9%. Another somewhat surprising one since he had nine penalties called on him in 2024. 

So, how does this affect the Lions game? You'd hope it would be in a positive way with fewer penalties. Something the Lions' secondary got into trouble with last year.

If the Lions can move away from that physicality and focus more on sticking with their man instead of relying on bumping them off their routes too much, that would be ideal.