Jordan Love and the Green Bay Packers will be dealing with a rebuilt Detroit Lions secondary in 2023.
Dan Campbell’s Lions aren’t messing around in free agency. On Sunday, they made their biggest splash to date by inking safety Chauncey Gardner-Johnson to a one-year deal, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
In his lone season with the Philadelphia Eagles, Gardner-Johnson had a career year, tying the NFL lead with six interceptions. Detroit hopes he will bring the same type of playmaking to a secondary that struggled mightily last season.
In 2022, the Lions’ pass defense allowed an average of 245.8 passing yards per game (third-most in NFL) and 26 passing touchdowns (tied-eighth).
Perhaps Gardner-Johnson can help get the secondary back on track when he joins a group of safeties that includes Tracy Walker and Kerby Joseph. Walker is recovering from a torn Achilles, while Joseph showed a ton of promise as a rookie after logging four interceptions.
Over the past five days, Detroit has made a concerted effort to address its issues in the secondary. Prior to signing Gardner Johnson, they brought in corners Cameron Sutton and Emmanuel Moseley.
Sutton spent his first six seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers, where he started 31 games over the last two years, totaling five interceptions and 21 pass defenses. Meanwhile, Moseley may have been on his way to a breakout season with the San Francisco 49ers in 2022 before suffering a season-ending ACL injury.
Clearly, the Lions aren’t fine with having a mediocre secondary. They have now added three new starters and could use a pair of first-round picks on a defense that largely prevented them from reaching their full potential last season.
Detroit narrowly missed out on the playoffs despite having its first winning season since 2017. After a 1-6 start, the Lions ended up with a 9-8 record. Their strong finish was jump-started by a Week 6 win over the Packers in which the defense picked off Aaron Rodgers three times.
The Lions eventually completed the regular season sweep over Green Bay in Week 18 with the postseason on the line. In what will now be known as Rodgers’ final pass as a Packer, he threw a back-breaking interception during the fourth quarter to Joseph on a pivotal third down. Detroit managed to keep the Packers’ offense off the field for the rest of the game by killing the final 3:27 left on the clock.
For whatever reason, Detroit’s secondary got the best of Rodgers last season, even though they were not very good against most of their other opponents. Really it was just Joseph who gave Rodgers fits, picking him off three times in two games.
Rodgers will be thankful not to see Joseph twice next season when he is traded to the New York Jets. However, that leaves Jordan Love to deal with the Lions’ reloaded secondary.
