The Lions’ five listed starters on the offensive line are the same as last year, and the same as the year before: Left tackle Taylor Decker, left guard Jonah Jackson, center Frank Ragnow, right guard Halapoulivaati Vaitai and right tackle Penei Sewell. But unlike the last two years, the Lions are hoping those five linemen will actually play together this season.
In both 2021 and 2022, injuries to at least one and sometimes more than one of those five starters meant that they couldn’t play together. The Lions have actually never had a single snap with those five linemen all on the field, even though they’ve been together atop the Lions’ depth chart for three offseasons in a row.
Decker said it would be big for the Lions to get all five starters on the field together.
“Hope so. We didn’t have our projected starting offensive line for one game last year,” Decker said, via MLive.com. “We had some guys come in and play great and give us some really good games -- or even if they had to go in for a series or two. But as we know, that’s the nature of this -- seems like for two years we’ve been trying to get this projected offensive line on the field together, and I don’t know if it’s happened yet. I don’t think it has. Preseason maybe.”
The Lions narrowly missed the playoffs last year and are favorites to win the division this year. Continuity on the offensive line could be a key to winning the NFC North, for the first time ever.
