{"id":851890,"date":"2026-04-03T20:22:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T20:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/851890\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T20:22:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T20:22:29","slug":"dan-campbell-just-dropped-an-under-appreciated-reason-for-lions-offensive-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/851890\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Campbell just dropped an under-appreciated reason for Lions&#8217; offensive woes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"inline-text-0\" class=\"mt-[18px] md:mt-0 mb-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5l\">The Detroit Lions&#8217; offense in 2025 was a shell of its past self. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-1\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5o\">While they were still posting pretty solid scoring games until later in the year, the Lions were nowhere near as efficient as they should&#8217;ve been. That killed their momentum and ability to remain in the postseason race, while injuries made sure they were kept grounded. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-2\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5r\">A few major injuries up front, like those suffered by Christian Mahogany and Taylor Decker throughout the season, were majorly impactful on the Lions&#8217; run-game. But, two other injuries really sank the ship, but weren&#8217;t blamed as much for the Lions&#8217; flatness on offense as their offensive line was: <a href=\"https:\/\/sidelionreport.com\/nfl-writer-s-mock-trade-would-have-francis-mauigoa-landing-right-in-the-lions-lap-01kn2der5j1d\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sam LaPorta&#8217;s<\/a> back injury, and Brock Wright&#8217;s subsequent neck injury. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-3\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5u\">Head coach Dan Campbell <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/nfl\/lions\/onsi\/news\/detroit-lions-have-one-free-agent-land-si-top-50-rankings\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">emphasized<\/a> those two injuries when speaking about what went wrong with the teams&#8217; offense last year, telling reporters at this week&#8217;s owner&#8217;s meeting that those two players being absent through a wrench into a lot of what Detroit likes to do schematically: <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-4\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5x\">&#8220;Look, there\u2019s multiple reasons. It falls on my shoulders, some of it was the offensive line, some of it was losing Sam LaPorta and Brock Wright. That had\u00a0a significant blow too, now. All of those things. That\u2019s why we go through the cut-ups. You check yourself, but also, from a personnel standpoint, where can we get a little bit better and help our guys.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Campbell mentions LaPorta, Wright injuries as big boons for Lions offense in 2025<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-6\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"63\">Obviously, availability is going to be any contending teams&#8217; strength. It&#8217;s always a game of attrition once you&#8217;re getting down the stretch of the season, and we saw that up close and personal with this year&#8217;s Super Bowl matchup. While the Seattle Seahawks&#8217; offensive line was fairly healthy, it was obvious that New England Patriots rookie tackle Will Campbell was playing through injury. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-7\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"66\">As a result, the Seahawks&#8217; pocket remained relatively clean, while Drake Maye struggled to find any rhythm. That made, and broke, the game, depending on your allegiances. <\/p>\n<p>READ MORE: <a href=\"https:\/\/sidelionreport.com\/3-lions-prospects-are-within-reach-in-daniel-jeremiah-s-big-board-update-01kn4xf9fp61\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">3 Lions prospects are within reach in Daniel Jeremiah&#8217;s big board update<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-9\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6c\">As for LaPorta and Wright specifically, it was pretty clear that Jared Goff was sorely missing another option on offense outside of Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jameson Williams. While Kalif Raymond picked up some of that slack down the stretch, that&#8217;s just no match for having both a solid blocker in addition to a reliable pass-catcher. That&#8217;s what LaPorta is to this team. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-10\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6f\">Without him on the field, it&#8217;s tough to maintain the same level of pass protection and run blocking Detroit needs to remain a juggernaut offensively. Of course, some of that falls on the line for being inconsistent all year, but LaPorta&#8217;s absence meant a lot more was also falling on the shoulders of the Lions&#8217; running back room to do the dirty work. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-11\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6i\">That&#8217;s a big ask, especially for a smaller back like Jahmyr Gibbs. The impact of these two tight ends can&#8217;t go understated, and Campbell is completely on the money to identify their injuries as huge factors that contributed to the Lions&#8217; &#8220;demise&#8221; in 2025. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-12\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6l\">New offensive coordinator Drew Petzing, who loves to <a href=\"https:\/\/sidelionreport.com\/drew-petzing-hire-could-make-a-new-free-agent-an-obvious-target-for-lions-01kh4c4rwgj6\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">utilize talented tight ends<\/a> in the passing game, will probably make it a point to not allow LaPorta&#8217;s impact to go unnoticed in 2026. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Detroit Lions&#8217; offense in 2025 was a shell of its past self. While they were still posting&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2071],"tags":[146,113,2506,7,147,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-851890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-lions","8":"tag-detroit","9":"tag-detroit-lions","10":"tag-detroitlions","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-lions","13":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116342642610898552","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851890","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=851890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}