Starting the 2024 season with a record of 9-1 and winning in dominating fashion has left many pundits in awe of the Detroit Lions offense.
While Ben Johnson's unit has been praised by fans and many analysts, First Things First co-host Chris Broussard had a different opinion regarding the Lions' offense being considered in the conversation as being the best ever in the history of the NFL.
“That’s utterly ridiculous. And I mean that," Broussard said. "I don’t mean it’s a little bit of an overstatement, it’s utterly ridiculous.”
Broussard went on to indicate that the 2024 Lions do not have "all-time greats" on their current roster while displaying a graphic of the highest-scoring offenses in the Super Bowl era.
“You look at the top 5 on the left side, everyone of them — Broncos, Peyton Manning, Patriots, Tom Brady. Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes, Packers, Aaron Rodgers," Broussard explained. "The other teams, you get a little lesser quality quarterbacks. But still, you need all-time greats at certain positions to be one of the all-time great offenses. And all 10 of them scored more than the Lions are now.”
Not sure why First Things First hates Detroit Lions
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Nick Wright, who recently called Jared Goff just a "civilian" quarterback, indicated top all-time offenses feature several first-ballot Hall of Fame talent.
“Every single one of those teams had a first-ballot, no doubt Hall of Fame skill position guy or quarterback except for the ’83 Washington team, which had one of the greatest offensive lines in the history of the league," Wright said. "You have Julio Jones, Randy Moss on a few of those, so you have all of that.”
Interestingly, Broussard does not currently believe the Lions feature future Hall of Famers, despite several of the current skill players being under the age of 25.
“As good as the Lions’ running backs and receivers are, none of them are guaranteed to be Hall of Famers," Broussard added. "You might even be surprised if any of them even make the Hall of Fame. They’re good, and maybe they’ll have great careers, but no.”
The Lions have been thriving offensively, scoring 52 points in each of their last two home games, along with notching impressive road wins against Houston and Green Bay. After some sputtering to open the year, including a loss to Tampa Bay in Week 2, the offense has found its stride and are decimating weaker defenses.
"I think certainly the passing game usually takes the longest to gel from the start of the season until this point, and I think you see a lot of trust between Jared (Goff) and his pass-catchers, and that’s just – you’ve got six weeks, call it, in training camp, four-to-six weeks to get that down, and now we’ve gotten another eight-to-10 to add onto it, and so he’s got a lot of confidence in where those guys are going to be," Johnson said. "There are routes that we haven’t necessarily practiced in a couple of weeks that we feel good dusting off just because we have a lot of time on task. So, I think it’s the trust, the timing, the anticipation that Jared has with his pass-catchers."
