Detroit Pistons crowd gives Lions coach Dan Campbell standing ovation
The crowd at Little Caesars Arena went nuts seeing Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell on the jumbotron on Sunday, April 27, 2025 at Game 4 of the Detroit Pistons vs. New York Knicks game.
- Over the past decade, the Lions ranked 26th in prime-time appearances, averaging under three games per year.
- The team’s improved record correlates with increased prime-time scheduling.
- And Dan Campbell doesn’t hurt either.
The Detroit Lions may now be a big-time NFL team, but are they prime-time?
We will know the Lions’ full schedule on May 14, when the NFL reveals the regular-season schedules for all 32 teams. And if the last two seasons are any measure, the Lions may get a handful of those games scheduled for prime-time.
That’s a relatively new phenomenon for these Lions. Even though the last two seasons have seen the Lions playing in a lot of prime-time games, over the last 10 seasons, the Lions have been a part of 25 prime-time NFL broadcasts, averaging under three a year. That’s not a lot compared to the rest of the league.
Those 25 broadcasts put the Lions at 26th among all NFL teams over the past decade, ahead of the Houston Texans (24), Tennessee Titans (24), Atlanta Falcons (23), Cleveland Browns (21), Carolina Panthers (18) and Jacksonville Jaguars (12).
What do all of those teams have in common? One thing could be population size.
Of those seven teams, three are in the bottom-10 of NFL franchises when measuring the population of their metro areas: Tennessee, Cleveland and Jacksonville. But Detroit’s metro size (around 4.3 million people according to the latest U.S. census) puts it in the top-half of NFL teams, so that can’t quite explain Detroit’s inclusion on this list.
To poke an even bigger hole in that argument, the team with the most prime-time games over the past 10 years (Green Bay with 55) also has by far the smallest metro area among NFL teams. What else could it be?
Another thing these teams could have in common is their age.
The Texans, Panthers and Jaguars are all expansion teams that are less than 30 years old. The Browns technically fall into this category, too, but we know some Cleveland fans would make a stink about this fact. Meanwhile, the Titans franchise has been around for a while as the former Houston Oilers, but they’re basically treated like an expansion franchise in their most recent Nashville home.
But the Lions, one of the oldest teams in the NFL, don’t fit into this category, either. What else is there?
Perhaps each teams’ record over the last decade can explain the lack of their prime-time appearances. Let’s look at where they fall:
- Lions: 78-84-2
- Titans: 78-86
- Falcons: 76-88
- Texans: 74-87-1
- Panthers: 68-96
- Browns: 57-107
- Jaguars: 55-109
That’s not a stellar record for the Lions, but it’s certainly better than some of the other teams on this list. Considering the Lions have cleared the Browns by more than 20 wins over the last decade, it’s weird that they’ve only played in four more prime-time games than Cleveland has in the same time frame.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story.
As the Lions have turned around their franchise, they have also increased their prime-time visibility over the past couple of seasons, with five prime-time games in 2023 and another six in 2024 (with their Week 18 game vs. Minnesota getting flexed into prime-time as well). That’s double their average over the past decade.
If the Lions had been given five prime-time games every year over the last decade, they would have jumped up from 26th to third on the list, right behind Green Bay and the Dallas Cowboys. They would have had more prime-time games than the Kansas City Chiefs (49) and the New England Patriots (43), the two most decorated franchises of the 21st century.
So whether it was because of population, franchise age or record, the Lions status as a prime-time staple has shifted dramatically over the past couple of seasons.
Between Dan Campbell, Aidan Hutchinson, Amon-Ra St. Brown and other big personalities, it’s no surprise that the Lions have become such a popular team.
And if the Lions getting picked for the annual Hall of Fame preseason game is any indications, prime-time games aren’t slowing down anytime soon.
You can reach Christian at [email protected].
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