It’s been a lot of fun being optimistic about the Detroit Lions in the last few years. This team has drafted well, they’ve signed well , coached well and they’ve played well. We’re a long way away from the Matt Patricia days.
At this point, the Lions are expected to be one of the few teams that has the best shot to win the Super Bowl in 2024, but there is a potentially troubling weakness. If you’ve been following us here at A to Z Detroit, then you know we’ve brought this weakness up a lot. We’re talking about receivers.
The Lions are set with their top guy in Amon-Ra St. Brown, but things take quite a dip into question land after that. We don’t know what Jameson Williams is yet. We think he can be good, but he has not actually shown us that yet. The Lions needed to grab an extra receiver even before Josh Reynolds left, but they didn’t and now he’s gone.
The next guy up is Donovan Peoples-Jones. We’ve seen him have a good season, but that was in 2022 and the rest of his seasons have been pretty bad. The hope now is that he can at least make up for the Josh Reynolds loss. Then there’s Kalif Raymond, who is more of a specialist and the unknown Antoine Green. I say unknown because we haven’t seen him play a regular season game yet.
We haven’t been the only ones bringing this up. ESPN said it was the Lions biggest weakness, The Athletic said it was their biggest concern about this team. Now Pro Football Focus is joining the party and they’re speculating that if anything could keep the Lions out of the playoffs, it would be this. Here’s what they had to say:
“Wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown and tight end Sam LaPorta are the Lions’ top two pass-catchers, and both players ranked inside the top seven at their positions in yards per route run last season.
The team did lose Josh Reynolds in free agency, though, and he accounted for 75 targets a year ago. Jameson Williams will be counted on to fulfill the potential that enticed the Lions to draft him with the 12th overall pick back in 2022, but his 18.4% drop rate in the NFL so far is a concern.”
It doesn’t have to be this way. Lions GM Brad Holmes did say that he was confident in the group he had on a 97.1 The Ticket interview after the draft, but he also said that the Lions may add another receiver this summer ahead of, or during training camp.
At the end of the day, this offense can, and should be, very good in 2024. But there is a potential disaster waiting there if Williams doesn’t show up like he’s expected to or Peoples-Jones struggles.