The Detroit Lions walked away from the 2025 season with a win, sending a message to the Chicago Bears that they\u2019ll be back in 2026.<\/p>\n
The win cost the Lions a few slots in draft position. Here\u2019s where things stand heading into \u201cSunday Night Football.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lions currently have the 17th overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, and they can\u2019t fall any further down than that, as the Vikings have the strength of schedule will finish harder than Detroit\u2019s.<\/p>\n
All that is left is Ravens vs. Steelers, but that game could jump the Lions\u2019 draft position up one spot. Here\u2019s how it works:<\/p>\n
Baltimore would win the AFC North and advance to the playoffs, where their draft order would be determined by where they finish in the playoffs. The Steelers would drop out of the playoffs and move to 9-8 on the year. So the bottom of the draft order would look like:<\/p>\n
16: Lions: 9-8 (.490)
17. Steelers: 9-8 (.509)
18. Vikings: 9-8 (.516)<\/p>\n
Note: The strength of schedule will change a little bit, but shouldn\u2019t affect order<\/p>\n
The Ravens would drop to 8-9 and miss the playoffs. Detroit wouldn\u2019t be able to jump them because they\u2019ll finish 8-9 to Detroit\u2019s 9-8, and the bottom of the draft order would look like this<\/p>\n
13. Falcons (owned by Rams): 8-9 (.495)
14. Ravens: 8-9 (.503
15. Buccaneers: 8-9 (.529)
16. Colts (owned by Jets): 8-9 (.538)
17. Lions: 9-8 (.490)
18. Vikings: 9-8 (.516)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Detroit Lions walked away from the 2025 season with a win, sending a message to the Chicago…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[448,153,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-654905","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-detroit-lions-draft","9":"tag-detroit-lions-news","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115840415556000337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}