The Lions have fallen quickly in 2025, with quadruple the losses they had in 2024. But as the Lions try to finish the season after going 15-2 with a 9-8 record (and not 8-9), first-year defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard said he doesn’t think it’ll be a heavy lift to get back to where they recently were.
“I understand where we’re at with eight losses and out of playoff contention,” Sheppard said Thursday, via Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. “But I’m not going to sit up here and say there needs to be a drastic change and this didn’t work, that didn’t work. There were weeks we played at a high level with the exact same system and there was weeks that we didn’t. And after this game, we’ll go back and look at that in totality and find out the real whys behind that.”
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Whatever they find, Sheppard believes it won’t require a major overhaul.
“I don’t see drastic change,” Sheppard said. “What I see and what I’ve learned in my first year on the job of calling defenses is something that me and [head coach] Dan [Campbell] talk about every day. You start off the year . . . I wanted to have top defense in this category, top this, top that, top that. And you get caught in these statistical things that means nothing if you’re not winning football games.
“This league is about adaptability and you can have a system all you want, but it’s whatever dictates that week is necessary to win the football game.”
They didn’t win nearly enough. And the defensive performance reflects it.
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As noted by Birkett, the Lions are tied for 22nd in points allowed per game, with 24.8. They’re 18th in total defense and 20th in takeaways. In 2024, the Lions finished in the top 10 in scoring, rushing defense, and takeaways.
The biggest takeaway for the Lions in 2025 is that they weren’t good enough. They have the talent, on both sides of the ball. But it didn’t show up often enough. Win or lose on Sunday at the Bears, the Lions have work to do — drastic or otherwise — to get back to where they were a year ago.
