Vegas has set the 2024 Lions’ win total, and it’s exactly where it should be for an intriguing, season-long prop.
Last year, when the Detroit Lions were nearly every media head’s darling in the offseason, the team’s win total was set at 9.5 wins—the highest its been set in the franchise’s history according to records from Pro Football Reference—and the team responded by having arguably their most successful season in franchise history.
After securing the second 12-win season in franchise history—and more relevantly, cashing the over on their win total in 2023—the Lions are getting set with even higher expectations from oddsmakers for this upcoming season. DraftKings Sportsbook, the official sportsbook for SB Nation, has set the win total at 10.5 for the Lions ahead of the 2024 season—and the book is currently squeezing both sides of that total at -110 to keep itself balanced this early in the offseason.
Those are some lofty expectations for a franchise that has recorded just five seasons with 11 or more wins (1931, 1962, 1991, 2014, 2023) in their 95-year history, but this franchise has proven it’s heading in a direction that’s leaving its history in the past. Still, winning 11 games in the NFL is by no means an easy feat to pull off with just nine of 32 teams clearing that mark in 2023. Add in the fact that the NFC North figures to be even more competitive than it was a year ago and 11 wins feels like an even bigger challenge.
But this feels like where expectations should be for the Lions as they continue to realign people’s perception, and those words are chosen carefully because it applies to the sportsbooks, too. Of the other teams to take part in the conference championship games from the 2023 season, the Kansas City Chiefs, San Francisco 49ers, and Baltimore Ravens all find their win total currently set at 11.5, leaving the Lions as the lone team on the outside looking in at current NFL royalty.
So while 9.5 wins feels like the bar is being set too low, and 11.5 wins seems like it’s another season away for a team that’s still trying to edge their way into the upper echelon of the NFL, 10.5 wins feels like the right number for Dan Campbell’s fourth season in Detroit.
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