The Detroit Lions are entering the 2024 season with some of their highest expectations ever. Detroit came one half of football away from heading to their first Super Bowl in 2023. Now the Lions have a reworked secondary and are ready to make another deep playoff push. However, head coach Dan Campbell does not want his team preoccupied with thoughts of the Super Bowl in September.
When asked if Campbell wants the Lions to be thinking about winning the Super Bowl in 2024, Campbell gave a blunt answer.
“No, well it's funny because I just told the team ‘let's not talk about it anymore',” Campbell said in a press conference on Monday.
He smiled and laughed about his answer before elaborating on his point.
“Well, no, and it's just this — of course we do, who doesn't? But we're to the point now where that doesn't matter anymore,” Campbell continued. “Like what does that do? It does nothing.”
Campbell went on to lay out the steps the Lions need to take if they want to make a serious run at the Super Bowl in 2024.
“Now it's about the steps to get to there. The steps are [winning your division] because you get a home playoff game. Then once you get a home game it's about seeding. You win these head-to-heads and all of a sudden you're three seed, or you're the two seed, maybe you're the one seed. So we've got to win the division man. It starts with this first game.”
That first game will be a playoff rematch against the Los Angeles Rams in Ford Field on Sunday Night Football.
ESPN simulation of 2024 NFL season has Lions beating the Chiefs in the Super Bowl
Dan Campbell may not want the team thinking about the Super Bowl just yet. However, Lions fans and NFL media are not slowing down with the Super Bowl talk.
ESPN's Seth Walder released an article on Monday that simulates the 2024 NFL season using ESPN's Football Power Index. Walder ran 20,000 simulations of the 2024 season, but hand picked one example for this article.
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The simulation that Walder chose was very kind to the Detroit Lions.
In this simulation, Walder has the Lions finishing the regular season with a 13-4 record. That is good enough to win the NFC North and secure the #1 seed in the NFC, which would be huge for Detroit. The Lions then use that home field advantage to notch decisive victories against the Bears in the divisional round and the 49ers in the NFC Championship game.
The Lions make their first Super Bowl appearance in franchise history. Unfortunately, they have to face the Kansas City Chiefs who are dead set on completing a historic threepeat.
The simulation paints a dramatic picture where the Lions trail 28-14 in the middle of the fourth quarter. Detroit then goes on to score 15 unanswered points, thanks to a gutsy two-point conversion call by Dan Campbell, and getting a late defensive stop to win the game.
Lions fans would certainly be thrilled with this outcome in real life.
