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Are the 49ers Still Better than the Lions?

It certainly is possible that the Lions will take a step backward this season, but on paper it seems like they improved dramatically this offseason.
Grant Cohn|
49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk catches the ball over Lions cornerback Kindle Vildor in the third
49ers wide receiver Brandon Aiyuk catches the ball over Lions cornerback Kindle Vildor in the third | Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK

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San Francisco 49ers

One of the most intriguing matchups on the 49ers' schedule next season is their Week 17 NFC Championship rematch against the Detroit Lions.

It will be a prime-time game at Levi's Stadium, just like the NFC Championship, which the 49ers won by just three points. And to win that game, the Lions had to drop a couple easy fourth-down catches and let a potential interception bounce off a facemask and into the outstretched hands of Brandon Aiyuk.

"The Lions will take a step backward this season, rather than using their crushing NFC Championship Game loss to the 49ers as a springboard for greater things to come," writes NBC Bay Area's Matt Maiocco, who picks the 49ers to win the rematch 31-21.

It certainly is possible that the Lions will take a step backward this season, but on paper it seems like they improved dramatically this offseason.

They lost starting guard Jonah Jackson, who signed with the Rams, but he didn't play against the 49ers in the NFC Championship -- he was injured. The rest of the Lions offense is intact.

On defense, the Lions added defensive end Marcus Davenport and defensive tackle D.J. Reader, who are solid players. But their biggest additions came in the secondary. Last year, their starting cornerbacks were Cam Sutton and Kindle Vildor, who weren't good. That's why the Lions couldn't stop the 49ers. Vildor in particular was the one who tried to catch an interception with his face and tipped it to Aiyuk for a 50-yard catch.

This offseason, the Lions traded for cornerback Carlton Davis, who's one of the highest-paid cornerbacks in the league. They also spent a first-round pick on Terrion Arnold, one of the highest-graded cornerbacks in the Draft. So their defense should be much better than last season. They should be able to play tight press-man coverage against the 49ers, which is what teams have to do to beat them.

Meanwhile, the biggest upgrade the 49ers made this offseason was replacing Chase Young with Leonard Floyd, who will be 32 in September.

On paper, the Lions look like the best team in the NFC right now. We'll see what these teams look like in Week 17.

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Grant Cohn
GRANT COHN

Grant Cohn has covered the San Francisco 49ers daily since 2011. He spent the first nine years of his career with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat where he wrote the Inside the 49ers blog and covered famous coaches and athletes such as Jim Harbaugh, Colin Kaepernick and Patrick Willis. In 2012, Inside the 49ers won Sports Blog of the Year from the Peninsula Press Club. In 2020, Cohn joined FanNation and began writing All49ers. In addition, he created a YouTube channel which has become the go-to place on YouTube to consume 49ers content. Cohn's channel typically generates roughly 3.5 million viewers per month, while the 49ers' official YouTube channel generates roughly 1.5 million viewers per month. Cohn live streams almost every day and posts videos hourly during the football season. Cohn is committed to asking the questions that 49ers fans want answered, and providing the most honest and interactive coverage in the country. His loyalty is to the reader and the viewer, not the team or any player or coach. Cohn is a new-age multimedia journalist with an old-school mentality, because his father is Lowell Cohn, the legendary sports columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1979 to 1993. The two have a live podcast every Tuesday. Grant Cohn grew up in Oakland and studied English Literature at UCLA from 2006 to 2010. He currently lives in Oakland with his wife.

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