Dan Campbell: Lions had a “bizarre, weird year” due to defensive injuries

The Lions’ defense has endured an incredible number of injuries during the 2024 season, including in Saturday’s loss to the Commanders, and head coach Dan Campbell isn’t sure they could have done anything about it.

Campbell said the Lions feel like they have good defensive depth and good practice methods, yet more and more players on their defense have gone down week by week, with starters often injured only to have their backups injured as well.

“Looking back, looking at this after what just happened, it’s like, Man, can we have enough defensive depth? Is that possible? Because we were loaded. You don’t think about losing one or two in each group. But you only have 53 seats,” he said. “This is one of those bizarre, freakish years. We did the same thing a year ago and were pretty healthy, and then this year was one of those years. But Brad and I are going to be looking at that over the next two weeks, we’re going to really dig deep into our roster: where do we think we can do better? Because, at the end of the day, that’s what we want to do. We want to bring more competition.”

For most of the 2024 season, the Lions were the favorites to win the Super Bowl, but as injuries took their toll on their defense, the team began to falter, and in a playoff loss, their defense couldn’t get a stop after the Lions’ offense turned the ball over multiple times. Next year, the Lions hope to have better luck with their defense healthy — and an offense that plays better in the biggest games of the season.