2025 Draft Guide: Detroit Lions

Coaching History: Last Three Years

Head Coach: Dan Campbell (DET ’22-24)
Offensive Coordinator: Johnny Morton (DEN ’23-24, DET ’22)
2024 Record: 15-2

Team Summary

The Lions embody the personality of their head coach, Dan Campbell. They are a tough, hard-working group focused on winning in the trenches to open up opportunities for their playmakers. Their offense has thrived under offensive coordinator, Ben Johnson, who unfortunately moved onto a head coaching opportunity with the Chicago Bears.

The Lions, as most teams, favor “11” personnel, but have a much closer split with “12” personnel to aid the running game. They run a zone scheme using a “Thunder and Lightning” pairing of David Montgomery between the tackles and Jahmyr Gibbs in space. The focus on the running game has led to an extremely efficient passing attack. Over the past two years they have finished 2nd in passing yards despite being only 16th and 9th in attempts. We can expect the efficiency to take a step back without Ben Johnson, but the skill players remain mostly unchanged.

2024 Ranks (2023 Rank)

• Points: 1st (5th)
• Yards: 2nd (3rd)
• Passing Attempts: 16th (9th)
• Passing Yards: 2nd (2nd)
• Passing TDs: 4th (4th)
• Rushing Attempts: 3rd (7th)
• Rushing Yards: 6th (5th)
• Rushing TDs: 2nd (1st)

2024 Positional Market Share

The season totals show an opportunity advantage for Jahmyr Gibbs, but David Montgomery missed the final three games of the season. In the 14 games they played together, there was a near 50/50-split between the two. Normally, a split backfield would be a problem for RBs, but the Lions concentrate such a large portion of their carries between those two, that both finished as solid fantasy assets: Gibbs as RB1 and Montgomery as RB18.

Amon-Ra St. Brown is the clear target leader for the Lions. He runs more intermediate, high-percentage routes to help keep the chains moving, while Jameson Williams is used for the explosive shot plays down the field, which is why his target percentage seems relatively low for a WR2. The 3rd and 4th pass catchers are then Sam LaPorta – the star TE who can earn chunk gains down the seam and Jahmyr Gibbs who, while an RB by position, has the skills to play WR if needed.

Depth Chart:

• QB: Jared Goff, Hendon Hooker
• RB: Jahmyr Gibbs, David Montgomery, Craig Reynolds
• WR: Amon-Ra St. Brown (Z/Slot), Jameson Williams (X), Tim Patrick, Khalif Raymond
• TE: Sam LaPorta, Brock Wright

Player Breakdowns

Goff should be a polarizing player this year. Each of the last 3 years has ended in a QB10 or better performance. Is that because Goff is good? Is it because he’s surrounded by great talent? Is it because of Ben Johnson? We’re going to find out. There are enough changes to this Lions team, that I don’t think it is wise to expect another top offensive performance, and that is going to suppress Goff’s output. Treat him as a mid-range QB2.

Gibbs is a special talent. The slippery and elusive RB not only is effective on the ground, but he has legitimate pass catching ability as well. After an overall RB1 season, the fantasy community is rightly high on Gibbs, but targeting him at ADP would be a mistake. Unless you believe that Dan Campbell is going to significantly alter his philosophy of splitting carries between the RBs, Gibbs did receive 250 carries and had 52 receptions to boot. However that included 3 weeks of bell-cow usage to end the season with Montgomery hurt. If that drops to 220 carries with 50 receptions – we’re still looking at a no-brainer RB1, but you can’t expect another 20 TD year. Gibbs is worth a 1st round pick, but he should not be in the same conversation as Bijan Robinson or Christian McCaffrey for 2025.

Outside of 2024, when Montgomery had a career high 247 carries, he has always finished between RB17 and RB24. I think we have a pretty good guess about how to value him again this year. He should probably be drafted a bit ahead of RB21, where he currently goes, because he has contingent upside in the event of a Jahmyr Gibbs injury. He’s not the most exciting player, but he’s dependable.

ARSB is used as a chess piece for the lions. They’ll line him up both inside and outside looking to get mismatches to maximize his abilities. He does his work mostly in the intermediate range (8.2 aDOT), which lends himself more to Jared Goff’s short-range accuracy. However, what he lacks for in target depth, he makes up for in quantity, being the clear top options in the passing game. In terms of the top tiers of WRs, ARSB is one of the safest due to his role creating a comfortable WR1 floor, with upside when the offense gets rolling.

Jameson Williams is a speedster who has been improving each year in the league. The drumbeat for an official breakout seems to be building through training camp, as coaches are praising his improve route running. Boasting elite speed, and having other weapons to take attention away, if Williams truly is turning into an above average route runner and can vary his route tree more than just the deep targets that we have seen him get, he could be in for a monster breakout year.

LaPorta broke rookie TE records his first year in the league. So naturally, folks were disappointed with his TE8 PPR finish. The true value probably lies somewhere in between his first two years. He is not an elite athlete (well, at least for an NFL player), but he is very, very good. He’ll be somewhere between second and fourth on his teams for targets. This caps his ceiling, but he will safely put up TE1 numbers, and we’ve seen the upside already when things break his way. Once the top TE targets are off the board, I don’t think there is a safer pick, even if he isn’t projected to score as well as some of the other players in his range.

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