Getty Matthew Stafford looks on from the bench in 2017.
The Detroit Lions have had an offseason full of predictions of misery for their 2020 season, but it’s likely they haven’t seen one quite as bad as they saw emerge from a national analyst.
Recently, Adam Rank of NFL.com revealed his season prediction for the Lions. Naturally, it made a lot of waves on the internet considering the record he pegs the team with. Rank has the Lions going 3-13 this coming season. Within the prediction, the Lions win the first game of the season, rip off an 8 game losing streak, win a pair of games around Thanksgiving and then lose out to finish the year.
Here’s a visual of the prediction.
As a whole, this scenario doesn’t make a lot of sense unless the Lions have another run of bad luck with injury, but that doesn’t seem likely. In 2019, the Lions finished with a similar record, but it was only after losing Matthew Stafford for an extended period of time that the bottom truly fell out.
One silver lining for the Lions in this scenario? They would almost likely have yet another high draft pick, which would again allow fans to cling to offseason hope. They would also be likely to make massive offseason changes, something the fans would demand after such a year.
Lions Projected for More Tough Finishes in 2020
Ever since Detroit’s schedule was released, folks have been trying to figure out how many games the team might win this season on the field. So far, the results of that experiment might not be that exciting for fans. Recently, Evan Silva listed all of the teams in order of their win totals courtesy of Draft Kings.
The Lions? They were stuck at 6.5 wins, good for 25th place in the entire NFL. The team was tied with the likes of the Raiders, Jets and Dolphins, only slightly behind the Falcons and Cardinals (7.0) and only just ahead of the Giants (6.0).
NFL Teams listed in order of @DKSportsbook 2020 Win Totals:
Most don’t think the Lions are going to have a great season on the field, and this number puts that into context and perspective. Still, there’s more than a chance for them to blow this total out of the water if they are able to catch fire and surge.
For right now, though, things don’t look too great for the team according to these totals. The Lions still lag behind for next season according to most.
Lions Projected For Woeful 2020 Season
Many others aren’t especially high on the Lions having a great year whatsoever. One such person is Gary Davenport of Bleacher Report. Recently, Davenport predicted records for every team in the league by division, and when it came to the NFC North, he saw the Lions occupying a familiar spot.
Last place.
Davenport had Detroit with a 5-11 record, which would be an improvement on 2019’s finish, but only a modest one, and likely not the type of strides the team needs to make in order to satisfy ownership ahead of a critical season on the field.
Davenport wrote:
“The Detroit Lions have made the playoffs only three times since the turn of the century. They haven’t won a playoff game since 1991 and haven’t won 10 games in a season since going 11-5 in 2014.
The Lions aren’t winning 10 games in 2020, either—or making the playoffs.
Fresh off a 3-12-1 mess of a 2019 season, the Lions are tied for the league’s fifth-hardest schedule this year. Beyond four games against in-division playoff teams in Minnesota and Green Bay, the Lions face three more teams that made the postseason in 2019—the Houston Texans and New Orleans Saints at home and the Tennessee Titans on the road.
The Lions may be marginally better in 2020, but they aren’t going to be especially good.”
Obviously, this type of season would be bad news for the Lions, but it’s par for the course of what many expect coming into this season on the field.
Safe to say 6.5 wins would be that same type of nightmare season for the team, but not as big a nightmare as 3-13 would be.
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