Detroit Lions

Spread Option — 11-on-11. The QB is a runner.
Team fit 81.5 B+ · Read the full guide →

3-4 Base — Two-gap front, hybrid edges.
Team fit 90.7 A

This is an offensive team — the firepower is the identity, the defense just has to be adequate. The face of it is Jahmyr Gibbs (HB, 97).

Reality check: the game gives Detroit a top-ten defense. Reality, for six weeks, was a track meet — 27.5 points allowed a game — until Brian Branch returned in Week 7, picked off Jordan Love, and Detroit held Green Bay to 17. The offense (30.7 a game) still drags them to 4-2.

Jahmyr Gibbs (HB, 97) is the headliner. 98 speed — the fastest kind of fast — pursuit angles just melt; 96 juke — makes the first man miss in a phone booth; 96 carrying — the ball simply does not come out. Game-planning against this team starts with him and works backward.

Jared Goff (88) at quarterback is a strength in his own right — the ball gets where the play says it should. Amon-Ra St. Brown (95) would headline most offenses himself — having two of them is how this unit breaks coverage math. The line has a star of its own: Penei Sewell (LT, 98), the kind of blocker whole run concepts get built behind.

Aidan Hutchinson (LE, 94) sets the terms. 96 finesse moves — wins with bend and hands — the finesse half of a rush; 91 power moves — wins with power — the long arm and the bull rush, your tackle going backward. He is the problem the other sideline has to solve first. The fine print on that number: he snapped his tibia and fibula in October 2024 — and answered with 14.5 sacks in his first season back.

And he has company at the top: Brian Branch (91) also rates 90+, giving this roster 2 defenders at that level. Fine print — Brian Branch: he tore his Achilles last December, opened this season on the PUP list, and returned in Week 7 against Green Bay — intercepting Jordan Love in his first game back. Kerby Joseph: a degenerative knee shut him down for the final 11 games of 2025, and he opened 2026 on the PUP list as well — Dan Campbell said in October he expects Joseph to play this season, with no timetable given.

Jake Bates (76) kicks — 97 leg, 86 accuracy. Jack Fox (79) punts — 95 leg, 82 accuracy. Top return man is Jameson Williams (82 return).

Offense: Isiah Pacheco (HB, 75 OVR) — a 93 speed buried at 75 overall. Speed is the one trait that plays at any overall — it travels to any package, any formation, any Sunday.

Defense: Christian Izien (SS, 74 OVR). Read the ratings page twice: the overall says 74, the speed says 92. Overall is about the whole job; that speed is about one job, and he can already do that one as well as most starters.