Outside of the overall health of the team, I am curious what people here think about this. Are there certain players that you think will need to have specific stats? What players or positions need to have a bigger impact than years past? Stuff like that.
After thinking about this for a bit, I believe there are a couple things to happen:
Hutch being in the DPOY conversation at the end of the year and getting close to the new sack record set by Miles Garrett. Hopefully this would also mean that we have a top 5 pass rush unit in the league, which is also super important to being in contention for a Super Bowl. I think this needs to happen because the less time our secondary has to cover up receivers, the better. That’s obvious for every team, but with Joseph and Branch coming off their injuries and our CB room (which I feel like has somewhat of a performance ceiling based off of production so far, but lmk if you disagree with this) I think a top 5 pass rushing would be huge in helping the team win a Super Bowl.
Sam LaPorta needs to be as impactful, if not more, as he was in his rookie year. Obviously he needs to stay healthy this season, but I believe his impact goes beyond that. LaPorta is a guy that can add a lot of versatility to this offense and make us more difficult to match up against. If he has another big impact season it will help ARSB, Jamo, and Jaymyr pop off even more. These three guys also need to stay healthy in order for this to make any sense though. For example, if ARSB is out for the season, but LaPorta is doing great then this moot point.
(And probably most obvious) The O-line needs to get back to imposing their will and dominating other teams D-lines. We need to be able to let Jahmyr loose and make a clean pocket for Goff. Simple as that. I have confidence in this, especially after the draft, but I think we all understand the importance of this.
These are my thoughts about it (and I know that some of those feel pretty obvious), but I’m curious what other lions fans think!