The new-age Lions have built their brand on grit, toughness, and a warning that they’re coming with sharpened teeth for the joint that connects your upper and lower leg. But they’re still fundamentally a dome team. And their schedule, coupled with the Super Bowl location, gives the LIons a great set of circumstances to do what they nearly did last year.
Get to the Super Bowl and win it.
Fourteen of their first 15 games are played indoors. Yes, two of those venues have roofs that might be open, but it could be too hot in Arizona for Week 3 and too cold or wet in Indianapolis for Week 12. Still, 14 of 15 games mesh with Detroit’s dome-at-home vibe.
In Week 9, the Lions go to Green Bay. Other than that, it’s all indoors until three days before Christmas, in Chicago. The next week, they go to San Francisco.
While they’ll still be playing plenty of playoff teams from 2023 (Rams, Bucs, Cowboys, Texans, Packers twice, Bills), the table is set to fatten up their record not just to win the division but perhaps to force the road to the Super Bowl through Detroit.
And with the Super Bowl in the Superdome, the Lions could play all postseason games indoors, too.
That’s a huge potential benefit. Even with Jared Goff improving as a quarterback since he was hot-potato traded from the Rams after the 2020 season, getting him outside in the elements becomes a key to taking out the ankles of those who would bite your knees.
The Lions still have to earn it. But they’re good enough to do that. Their road schedule keeps them in situations where Goff won’t have to deal with much, if any, rain or wind or snow. It also allows them to forget about the disappointing way things ended last year (which prompted coach Dan Campbell to initially tell the team that might have been their only shot) and to think that for 2024 (and to borrow from the fourth option to the question posed at the outset of Slumdog Millionaire), it is written.
