Can the Lions Keep Detroit’s Sports Renaissance Flourishing?
The city has already turned a lot of things around from just a few years ago.
A handful of years ago, I helped out on a FiveThirtyEight story by Andrew Mooney called “Detroit Is The Capital Of Bad Sports Right Now.” In it, Andrew laid out a method to rate each of America’s big-time professional sports cities, rescaling their teams’ winning percentages and looking at the average across the major pro leagues. And, unsurprisingly for that moment, Detroit showed up with three of the bottom 11 years in the sample (since 1997), including the fourth-worst in 2019 and the absolute worst year of any city in 2020.
But while few could have predicted it around the turn of the decade, Detroit’s fortunes were on the cusp of turning around — setting the stage for a sports renaissance that would bring hope back to the Motor City. It’s a revival the Lions will hope to build upon when they begin their playoff run against the Washington Commanders in the Divisional Round of the NFL playoffs on Saturday night.
Before that transformation began, however, Detroit’s teams had indeed hit rock bottom. The Red Wings, who once upon a time had made the playoffs in 25 straight seasons, had lost essentially anyone with a connection to that era1 and were embarking on one of the 30 worst seasons in NHL history by winning percentage and/or goals-per-game differential. After perennially contending in the East throughout the 2000s, the Pistons made the playoffs on just three occasions from 2009-2019, getting swept each time; they would follow the league’s fifth-worst record in 2020 by earning the No. 1 draft pick in 2021. Meanwhile, the Tigers broke up their Justin Verlander-era core in 2017 and had one of the worst teams in MLB history in 2019.
And none of them were even the most painful loser in the city — an honor which belonged to the forever-downtrodden Lions.
Detroit’s football club seemed cursed by the advent of the Super Bowl era; after winning three championships in six years during the 1950s, the Lions largely stopped being a force as soon as the NFL and AFL began staging their joint World Championship. And on the rare occasions when they seemingly had the potential to rise above — with stars such as Barry Sanders, Calvin Johnson, Matthew Stafford and Herman Moore — the franchise always found a way to squander its talent. By 2020, the Lions had broken out of the league’s weirdest purgatory to once again finish among the bottom of the league, firing coach Matt Patricia amidst a 5-11 season.
But if the Lions were the ultimate bellwether for Detroit’s earlier sports misery, it’s fitting that they have also led the city’s charge back to a sense of respectability.
Following a rough first season for coach Dan Campbell and QB Jared Goff in 2021, both came into their own in 2022 as Detroit finished above .500 for the first time in five years, turning around a 1-6 start with wins in eight of the team’s final 10 games to narrowly miss the playoffs. Shrugging off suggestions that they might be a buzzy flop candidate, Goff continued to play well in 2023, the Lions’ defense improved and Detroit recorded its first 12-win season since 19912 — then won a couple of playoff games and fell just short of a trip to the first Super Bowl in franchise history.
All of which set the stage for a dominant 2024 season — one which probably still isn’t getting enough respect in people’s minds, due to the proliferation of other great teams across the league this year. Detroit had by far the best end-of-regular-season Elo rating (1743) in franchise history, along with the league’s best SRS rating at +13.8, a mark that ranks 13th-highest in the NFL since 1970.
Along the way, Goff produced the best season of his career; RB Jahmyr Gibbs scored 20 total TDs and nearly accumulated 2,000 yards from scrimmage; RT Penei Sewell was a first-team All-Pro; coordinator Ben Johnson became a hot coaching commodity for leading the NFL’s No. 1 offense; and Aaron Glenn’s defensive unit wasn’t too shabby, either, rising to No. 7 in the league (only the second time the Lions finished Top 10 on D since 1983).
Obviously, a dream season like this for the Lions is going to headline any tale of Detroit sports resurgence. But concurrent progress has been made elsewhere as well. Led by ace Tarik Skubal, the Tigers staged an unlikely late-season surge to make the playoffs, then beat the mighty Astros in the first round before losing an entertaining back-and-forth Division Series to the Guardians. The Pistons are above .500, have 33 percent playoff odds, and rank exactly 15th on both offense and defense with Cade Cunningham and Malik Beasley playing well. And as much as the Wings’ slow build continues to frustrate fans — they will probably miss the playoffs for a ninth straight year — Yzerman has built a nice core of young talent, headlined by Lucas Raymond, Moritz Seider and Simon Edvinsson.
As a result of all this, the collective Detroit sports apparatus has leveled up significantly since we ran that story at FiveThirtyEight. The geometric mean of Elo ratings3 across the city’s Big Four pro teams has gone from 1378 four seasons ago4 to 1553 now — well above average, remarkably enough:
A lot of that is carried by the Lions, but the Tigers also finished 2024 above average and the Pistons and Red Wings are within striking distance of that level as well. Overall, it’s an incredible reversal in fortune for a city whose teams were uniformly in the dumpster not long ago.
Of course, Detroit’s hopes do rest heavily upon the fate of the Lions, starting on Saturday. They are, remarkably, Super Bowl favorites — and not by an inconsiderable margin, either, if you believe the numbers. At a moment of vastly improved vibes for Motown sports overall, how fitting would it be for the Lions to lead the revival with a breakthrough the city has been waiting 58 years for?
Filed under: NFL, Statgeekery, Miscellany
With the possible exception of general manager Steve Yzerman, who had captained Detroit’s glory days as a player.
Albeit in one more regular-season game.
Which I’m using to make sure the ratings from more deterministic sports (NBA, NFL) don’t overwhelm those of the more random ones (MLB, NHL).
Counting the most recent season of each league as “Year 0” for the purposes of the chart. So that would be 2024 for MLB, but 2024-25 in the NBA, etc.