By Aleks Jankovic
Year after year, Detroit shows promising potential to rewrite their failure-ridden history, and every year they fail to capitalize off of this potential, leaving myself and many other fans of the franchise distraught and ashamed.
As of the time of writing this article, the Detroit Lions are leading the league in both offense and passing touchdowns. Their newly acquired quarterback, Jared Goff, is showing major potential in being able to lead an offense to score and reading the defense. Their games so far are always high scoring for the Lions, and they have finally found a way to be labeled as a promising franchise. However, the Detroit Lions will always find a way to squander any semblance or illusion of success that they may acquire. Detroit is dead last in defense across the league, and they have given up more points than any team in the league thus far. The Lions being #32 in defense should come as no surprise to many, since they have consistently ranked among the lowest tier for defense in past years. However, for a franchise to lead the league in offense and start their season with a 1-3 record is truly astonishing.
To add to this, every game that they have lost in the season so far were very winnable games. The three final scores for the losing games were by a deficit of either three or four points. If they decided to build around their defense more, these games could have been won quite easily. The only Super Bowl contending team the Lions have played so far are the Eagles, and that game was three points away from being won. It is a shame that such a high scoring offense is continuously wasted on horrible defense that is legitimately costing them games. With even the slightest improvement on the defensive end, Detroit can win a majority of these games.
Who knows? With an improved defense and a consistent use of their newfound offensive skills, the Lions could be a 4-0 team. Sadly, we will never find out, because the Detroit Lions will always find some way to disappoint not only the state of Michigan, but the NFL fanbase as a whole. Almost every fan of every team is rooting for Detroit to succeed this year, and they will fail the same way they do every year.