'Twice as hard': Lions' Dan Campbell weighs in on next season

After the Lions' magical season and playoff run had ended, Detroit head coach Dan Campbell made a brutally honest assessment of his team's future.

After falling one game short of a Super Bowl berth following a gut-wrenching 34-31 loss to the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game, Campbell acknowledged the Lions may never come as close to the penultimate game again.

"I told those guys, 'This may have been our only shot,'" Campbell said in a postgame news conference Sunday. "Do I think that? No. Do I believe that? No. However, I know how hard it is to get here. I’m well aware. And it’s gonna be twice as hard to get back to this point next year than it was this year. That’s the reality. And if we don’t have the same hunger and the same work — which is a whole ‘nother thing once we get to the offseason — then we got no shot of getting back here."

Campbell's message to his players exposes the cold, hard truth of the NFL: No matter how good your team was last season, it means nothing when the standings reset the following season. 

The Lions — once seen as the lovable underdogs who changed the tides of a historically downtrodden franchise — enter next season with a massive target on their backs. 

Detroit solidified itself as a top-tier unit in the NFL, thanks to a 12-5 record and franchise-record 14 wins this season — including victories over the Rams and Buccaneers in the wild-card and divisional rounds.

Now that the Lions have proven themselves in the regular season and postseason, opponents will no longer underestimate their capabilities as they might have this year.

"I don’t care how much better we get or what we add or what we draft. It’s irrelevant. It’s gonna be tough," Campbell added. "Everybody in our division’s gonna be loaded back up. And, you know, you’re not hiding from anybody anymore. Everybody’s gonna want a piece of you."

Detroit's 2024 schedule won't be favorable.

The Lions will play eight games against opponents that made the postseason this season, including the Rams, Buccaneers, Bills, 49ers, Texans, Cowboys and Packers (twice). Tampa Bay, Buffalo and Dallas finished atop their respective divisions, meaning the Lions will face three first-place teams.

The NFC North, meanwhile, appears primed to take a massive leap next season after finishing this season tied for the second-highest win percentage (.515). 

Packers quarterback Jordan Love has emerged as one of the premier quarterbacks in the NFL, leading Green Bay to a postseason berth and an upset win over the Cowboys in the wild-card round. The Bears also find themselves in a perfect position to land their own star QB with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. Chicago will have its choice of North Carolina's Drake Maye, USC's Caleb Williams and LSU's Jayden Daniels — the consensus top QBs entering the draft.

While Detroit's opponents will likely improve, the Lions may slightly regress next season.

Campbell's team had the second-most fourth-down conversions this season (21), converting on an impressive 52.5% of its attempts. While this aggressive style of coaching backfired in the NFC Championship Game, it was also the reason the Lions got so far. However, it's unlikely Detroit will have as much good fortune in 2024. 

It's safe to say the Lions face an uphill battle next season.