The Lions have collapsed from 15-2 in 2024 to 8-8 in 2025. They have one game left. It’s technically meaningless. Quarterback Jared Goff still sees relevance in the Week 18 game at Chicago.
“It’s about respect,” Goff said Wednesday. “Not only respect for yourself, within your own team but respect around the league. We want to go out there and put something good on tape that can gain a little respect back from probably some of the loss of respect we earned this year.”
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Whether the operative words is respect or something else, the Lions aren’t the team they were a year ago. They have one last chance to leave an impression on the league before inevitable offseason changes will come.
The first step presumably will be to fix the offense. And that may entail replacing offensive coordinator John Morton, who lost playcalling duties in Week 10, when coach Dan Campbell took over.
Campbell surely would admit that the current offensive approach isn’t sustainable. Campbell needs to run the team, not the offense. And, in hindsight, it was far easier for Campbell to do only that.
Win or lose, Campbell has decisions to make. And the Lions have work to do to get back to where they were in 2024, 2023, and the second half of 2022.
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For Goff, there are no decisions to be made in the short term. The goal is to play, and to play to win.
“It’s what I’m paid to do,” Goff said. “I’m the quarterback of this team. I’m paid to play on Sundays and do my job and do it to the best of my abilities. It doesn’t matter what our record is or what the situation may be. That’s my job.”
The job on the last Sunday of the season is to potentially keep the Bears from securing the No. 2 seed in the NFC, and to help the Lions finish on the right side of .500 for the fourth straight season. That’s something they haven’t done since 1951 through 1954.
