The wounds were still too fresh to touch.
A day after their stunning playoff loss to the Washington Commanders, the Detroit Lions gathered at their Allen Park practice facility Sunday for exit physicals and one final team meeting.
Players hauled clear plastic bags with personal items out of the locker room and collected autographs from teammates, the final acts of a 2024 season that came to an abrupt and premature end.
One day, the Lions were the No. 1 seed in the NFC, the favorite to represent the conference in the Super Bowl. The next, their season was over, undone by turnovers and injuries and Jayden Daniels’ legs.
INJURY UPDATE: Lions DT Alim McNeill: ACL surgery went well, unsure on recovery timeline
“People are asking me today, when am I going home and stuff like that,” Lions center Frank Ragnow said. “I wasn't planning on it. I wasn't planning on any of this. And that's the frustrating part is, it's just like that we're packing up and it's over and it's something that you got to process.”
For most NFL teams, the season comes to a slow, rolling halt. With the playoffs out of reach, they put their pride on the line late in the year and make travel plans abroad.
The Lions have been there — too often, in fact. But this year was supposed to be different.
They won a franchise-record 15 games in the regular season and had homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. They had the highest-scoring offense in the NFL, an opportunistic defense and were coming off a first-round playoff bye.
In their practice facility last week, a reminder of their season-long goal was scribbled in blue on the rolling dry-erase board in the locker room, the same as it had been since spring: Feb. 9, 2025, the date of this year’s Super Bowl.
On Sunday, that message was gone, replace by instructions for what to pack and what to leave ahead of the team’s planned locker room renovation next month.
RAINER SABIN: Dan Campbell's Super Bowl warning a year ago has never seemed more prescient
“I wasn’t really planning on going home anytime soon,” Lions cornerback Khalil Dorsey said. “It’s kind of just — it doesn’t feel real kind of thing.”
Dorsey is one of nearly a dozen key defensive players who ended the season on injured reserve. He broke the tibia and fibula in his right leg in a December loss to the Buffalo Bills and only recently got off crutches.
Defensive end Aidan Hutchinson, out since October with a broken tibia and fibula in his left leg, declined an interview request as he grabbed a bag from his locker and headed out the door.
Defensive tackle Alim McNeill, still on crutches after he tore his ACL in the Bills game last month, stopped to talk to reporters in the middle of the locker room.
“It’s tough,” McNeill said. “Definitely tough and not what anybody expected this year. We put in a lot of work to do what we wanted, cause we had goals set out for this year and things took a different turn and we’re kind of here now. It happens, but it’s definitely tough, kind of hard to swallow. Nobody knows what to think about it really. But, yeah, it’s definitely tough.”
Along with McNeill and Hutchinson, the Lions lost starting cornerback Carlton Davis III (broken jaw), linebacker Derrick Barnes (torn MCL and PCL) and defensive end Marcus Davenport to season-ending injuries. Backups Dorsey, linebacker Malcolm Rodriguez and defensive linemen Kyle Peko, Mekhi Wingo and John Cominsky finished the year on IR, too. After the Lions allowed 45 points and forced one lone punt in their playoff loss to the Commanders, it was impossible to not think what could have been.
Had the Lions stayed even relatively health on the defensive side of the ball this year, they may have had enough to beat the Commanders and take another step toward achieving their goal of bringing a Super Bowl championship to Detroit.
“I would 100% say that, but that’s not what happened,” McNeill said. “The reality of it is we lost and you can’t make any excuses for it, no matter who’s out here. We can sit here and we can do that all day long but that’s not what happened so I can’t even live with that myself. But I feel like next year, coming back next year, guys coming back, we’ll do what we need to do.”
That’s all the Lions have now: Next year.
McNeill and his cohorts on IR will spend the next few months rehabbing in hopes of not missing any time in 2025. Some players will get better, some may get worse, and the locker room — and coaching staff — is headed for inevitable change.
FULL SPEED AHEAD: Detroit Lions' loss to Commanders expected to 'dramatically' ramp up NFL coaching cycle
Coordinators Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn are up for head coaching jobs with the Las Vegas Raiders, Chicago Bears, Jacksonville Jaguars, New Orleans Saints and New York Jets, and Davis, Davenport, defensive lineman Levi Onwuzurike, offensive lineman Kevin Zeitler and defensive back Ifeatu Melifonwu are among the key free agents.
Ragnow said head coach Dan Campbell’s good-bye message to players Sunday was to not forget the hurt they felt Saturday watching the Commanders celebrate their playoff win, and listening to the cheers that come from the visiting locker room.
Davenport said general manager Brad Holmes also talked about “sometimes the only thing you can do is move forward.”
“I think it starts now,” Ragnow said. “And just try to channel it and use it, whether it's anger, sadness, whatever it is, try to use that as motivation into the offseason.”
Dave Birkett will sign copies of his new book, "Detroit Lions: An Illustrated Timeline," at 6:30 p.m. Monday at DC Sports in Sterling Heights.
