The Detroit Lions were nominees for three different awards at the 2025 NFL Honors, but none of the three nominees walked away Thursday night a winner.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t that big of a surprise that Aidan Hutchinson walked away empty-handed. He didn\u2019t have much of a shot for Defensive Player of the Year when Myles Garrett set the NFL sack record in a single season. Garrett was the unanimous choice for DPOY. Hutchinson had a closer shot at winning Comeback Player of the Year after posting 14.5 sacks the season after a gruesome leg injury. Unfortunately for Hutchinson, he finished second behind 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey. The veteran running back posted 2,126 scrimmage yards a year after an injury-filled 2024 season limited him to just four games played.<\/p>\n
But the biggest snub of the night came at the hands of Lions right tackle Penei Sewell. He was up for the very first Protector of the Year award, and despite being far-and-away the best offensive linemen by PFF measures, the award went to Chicago Bears guard Joe Thuney.<\/p>\n
Now, admittedly, it\u2019s impossibly hard to compare two players at two entirely different positions. Additionally, I don\u2019t want to take anything away from Thuney\u2014a three-time First Team All-Pro player and a four-time Super Bowl champion. However, this does feel like it\u2019s more of a legacy award for a player who has been playing at a very high level for a decade.<\/p>\n
Sewell, while maybe not his best year, was still absolutely dominant. He wa an absolute monster in the run game, and he only allowed two sacks and just 19 pressures all season, per PFF. Among offensive tackles who played at least 940 snaps, Sewell\u2019s 19 pressures allowed was tied for the fewest among 33 qualifying tackles. His 98.2 PFF pass blocking efficiency ranked second only to Denver\u2019s Garrett Bolles, who was also a finalist for the award.<\/p>\n
Unlike the other awards at the NFL Honors, Protector of the Year was decided by a panel of former offensive linemen. So, I suppose they\u2019re the experts\u2026.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a breakdown of the voting for each category the Lions were up for:<\/p>\n
Comeback Player of the Year: <\/p>\n
Defensive Player of the Year: <\/p>\n
Note: Protector of the Year does not have a vote breakdown, so we don\u2019t know where Sewell finished in voting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Detroit Lions were nominees for three different awards at the 2025 NFL Honors, but none of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732897,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[153,7,6,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-732896","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl","8":"tag-detroit-lions-news","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-nfl-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116022537582206620","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732896","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=732896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732896\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}