For the Lions' freight train of an offense, it starts up front. That won't change as long as Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes are in charge.
After winning 15 games and scoring the most points in the NFL, fueling the offensive line remains a priority in Detroit.
"That’s the engine for us," Holmes said last week. "I don’t care how good we ever get on the offensive line, that one right there is too important for not only our team, our quarterback, everything, it’s our identity, man. That alone, it’s always going to be at the forefront.”
Detroit's best unit had another banner season, anchored by All-Pro right tackle Penei Sewell and Pro Bowl center Frank Ragnow. It also grew a year older. Next season will mark year eight for Ragnow, year 10 for left tackle Taylor Decker and left guard Graham Glasgow, and year 14 for right guard Kevin Zeitler, a free agent to be. All of them battled injuries and missed time this season. (Sewell, on the other hand, hasn't missed a game in three years.)
When it comes to fortifying the group this offseason, Holmes said the Lions are focused on "the whole thing." Detroit has taken at least one offensive lineman in three of Holmes' first four drafts, and will likely make it four of five this spring. But a Day 1 starter won't be a necessity.
"It’s not a specific position. It’s not, ‘Oh, it has to be a future left tackle, or a starting guard, or someone to develop behind Frank. I think when you start going in those kind of specific avenues you can kind of ignore something else. I just think you have to keep the whole garden watered, at all points," said Holmes. "So, it’s going to be the whole unit."
The biggest unknown at the moment is Zeitler. He turns 35 this offseason, but hardly showed his age in his first year with the Lions. He was sturdy in pass protection and stout in the run game, helping Detroit rush for 4.7 yards per carry. He made the unit better. He could be a candidate to return on a similar deal to the one-year, $6 million contract he signed last offseason.
"I thought Zeitler did a good job this year," said Holmes. "It’s different when you're changing completely different schemes and early on, he kind of had to get used to how we were doing things. But once he adjusted to that, I thought he did a really good job. A player of that age, you just have to have conversations with him. We had conversations on exit day, we’ll continue to have dialogue and just kind of see where it goes.”
The welcome wrinkle here is that rookie guard Christian Mahogany played well in two spot starts on either side of the line in the final month of the season, the second of which came in the playoffs with Zeitler sidelined by a hamstring injury. If the Lions feel comfortable with Mahogany as a starter next season, they could let Zeitler walk and invest the cap savings in a different position group.
Mahogany, who also rose to the challenge in replacing Glasgow in Week 16 against the Bears, has a cap hit of about $1 million in 2025. He wasn't added to the Lions' active roster until late October after a long battle with mono kept him out of training camp, but stood out in practice more and more as the season went on and ultimately found himself on the field in the divisional round of the playoffs.
Holmes and Campbell were pleasantly surprised by Mahogany's acclimation after he got back on the field.
"When we returned him, me and Dan were kind of like, ‘He’s a rookie, he’s missed this much time.’ The medical staff and the trainers knew he was in good shape physically, but we were like, ‘If he can help, he can help, if he can’t ...' you know how we are with rookies," said Holmes. "And he jumped right in. You could see it noticeably in practice where it’s like, ‘OK, wow, we gotta get this guy active. Oh, wow.’
"He just has to continue improving, continue to work on his game. I know that he will do that, but I do think that he can make that jump."
Holmes was also pleased with the growth this season of rookie offensive tackle Giovanni Manu, who was always more of a project than Mahogany given his unconventional path to the NFL. After playing his college ball at the University of British Columbia, Manu arrived in Detroit and "he’s like, ‘Man, I’ve never had this kind of lingo that I had to remember and snap cadence and all that stuff," said Holmes. He had also never really seen NFL-caliber players.
"If you watched the film of Gio in OTAs and the film of Gio in practice (by the end of the season), I mean, it literally is night and day," said Holmes, crediting offensive line coaches Hank Fraley and Steve Oliver for continuing to work with him. "And a credit to him, because he was conscientious of making sure that he’s improved. So, excited about both of those guys’ futures, for sure.”
It also helps that the Lions were able to retain Fraley, promoting him to run-game coordinator to go with his offensive line duties. He's been a lynchpin of the unit's success over the last several years, as any one of his players will attest.
The engine room will have some new faces next season, but it should look mostly the same. That's a good thing for the Lions, whose identity depends on the big boys putting in work.