How the 2024 Detroit Lions compare to the NFL's highest-scoring offense

In the spring of his first season as offensive coordinator with the Denver Broncos, Adam Gase knew he had something special on his hands.

Peyton Manning was in his second year as the Broncos’ quarterback after a Hall of Fame-worthy run with the Indianapolis Colts, Denver had burgeoning Pro Bowl talent at the skill positions, and everything Gase had established in the offseason appeared to be working.

Young, confident and perhaps a little too brash, Gase told his offensive staff he had three goals for the 2013 season: break the NFL scoring record, break Manning’s passing touchdown record and win the Super Bowl.

The Broncos opened the season against the NFL champion Baltimore Ravens on “Thursday Night Football,” and when Manning finished the night with seven touchdown passes, breaking the NFL single-game record, Gase’s touchdowns looked tangible enough to touch.

The Broncos scored 49 points in their first game and followed that up with games of 41, 37, 52 and 51 points. By the time they had their bye in Week 9, the Broncos were averaging 42.9 points per game and their quest for history was on.

Gase, the man behind the most prolific offense in NFL history, sees many similarities between the offense that set the NFL on fire 11 years ago and the offense that set the NFL on fire 11 years ago. Detroit Lions For now, we destroy the opponents.

“When I was averaging in the mid-40s, everyone was saying, ‘Let’s (expletive) go for it,’” Gase told the Free Press on Monday. “Our philosophy was: Let’s put too much fear in the other team, the other quarterback will put pressure and that’s why our yards will be shorter. And I felt like every play we played, our defense was going to go for it, they were going to go for it because, man, we had good runners and then you know, the other team was throwing picks or throwing the ball and then we’d have shorter fields and we’d put it right into the end zone and we’d really do it. (thus) we would make the game inaccessible.

“But we stayed with it. We kept playing.”

The Lions, meanwhile, lead the NFL in scoring at 33.6 points per game, a better field goal scoring average than the Baltimore Ravens (30.4 points per game) and the most since the Kansas City Chiefs’ 35.3 average in 2018. the best mark received by the team.

lions beat the Jacksonville Jaguars52-6, Sunday’s most impressive offensive showing in the franchise’s history. They set team records for margin of victory (46 points), total yards (645) and first downs (38), and following the game, head coach Dan Campbell and quarterback Jared Goff said they believed they had the potential to fall by: One of the best offenses in NFL history.

“We definitely have that talent,” Goff said. “We have to do it for another game, I don’t know how many games (seven) are left in this regular season anymore. Yes, we still have work to do, but we definitely have the talent.”

“I think that’s something we talked about in the offseason about history and how great we can be. We know the group we have, we know what our talents are, and today was a good example of that.”

The Lions have a long road ahead of them to reach Denver’s level of offensive dominance. The Broncos scored 606 points over a 16-game schedule in 2013 and averaged 37.9 points per game. The Lions have hit 571 points this year and will need to average 38.7 points the rest of the season – also their average through six games. He has now totaled 606 points – a game-high since the bye – and has topped Denver’s season scoring average with 44.3 points over the last seven games.

But Gase has watched the Lions and the offense of former assistant Ben Johnson, who worked on Gase’s staff with the Miami Dolphins from 2016-18, enough to be thoroughly impressed with their work.

“It’s like everyone embraces their role when it’s their turn to step up, they do it,” Gase said. “If you’ve been in that profession, it’s fun to watch because you can see that these guys are doing it right. The players and coaches are doing a great job. Dan did a great job; hey, he got them to understand what he wants and they do it.

From a personnel standpoint, this year’s Lions are built differently than the 2013 Broncos.

Denver built its offense around its first-ballot Hall of Fame quarterback; He surrounded Manning with two 1,200-yard receivers in Demaryius Thomas and Eric Decker and a tight end in Julius Thomas, who went to the Pro Bowl, but they struggled with injuries on the offensive line and relied on Knowshon Moreno in the running game.

Lions, Goff, Amon-Ra St. Brown has a high-powered passing game featuring Jameson Williams and junior tight end Sam LaPorta, but also has two complementary rushers in David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs, who are each on pace for 1,000 yards. and one of the NFL’s best offensive lines.

Perhaps the point where the two teams are most similar is their mentality and how that mentality is created.

After losing their first playoff game to the Ravens in 2012 during Manning’s first season in Denver, the Broncos used every opportunity they had to pick up points in 2013. They scored more points in the fourth quarter of their games that year (183). It did so in other quarters as well, despite an average margin of victory of 12.9 points.

Lions from now on took a 17-point lead in the first half The team, which won against the San Francisco 49ers in last year’s NFC championship game, led the NFL in margin of victory (15.9) this year and had to answer questions about running up the scoring.

The reality, Gase said, is, “The year before affects the next year a little bit, ‘Okay, where did we fall short?’ And the Lions treat every possession like it’s a scoreless draw, “which they should.”

Gase said, “Why, when you have so many players, would you slit someone’s throat and watch them bleed to death instead of killing someone with a paper cut?” he said. “This probably isn’t the best way to put it publicly, but every play you call your guys have a chance to get better. I know people worry about injuries, but this is football.”

Football also says that just because a team scores goals at will for most of the season doesn’t mean they will eventually do so.

The 2013 Broncos still rank as the highest-scoring offense in NFL history, with Manning throwing a record 55 touchdown passes, but later that year they lost the lowest-scoring game of the regular season to the San Diego Chargers, where the Chargers lost 27-20. He dominated time of possession and controlled the football. And in a game Gase still eats, Denver lost 43-8 to the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl seven weeks later.

This loss prevented Gase and the offense from achieving their third goal, winning a ring, and it serves as a lesson for the Lions today.

“I think we’ve got a good shot,” Montgomery said Sunday when asked how the Lions stack up against some of the other best offenses in NFL history, adding: “It doesn’t matter if we don’t win the Super Bowl.”

Dave Birkett will be signing copies of his new book, “Detroit Lions: An Illustrated Timeline” at the Troy Sports Card Show at the Balkan American Community Center on Nov. 30 from noon to 2 p.m.

Order your copy here.

Contact him at: [email protected]. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram: @davebirkett.

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