List of Detroit Lions seasons
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit, Michigan. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the North Division of the National Football Conference (NFC).[2] The franchise was founded in Portsmouth, Ohio, as the Portsmouth Spartans and joined the NFL on July 12, 1930.[3] After being purchased by George A. Richards in 1934, the franchise was relocated to Detroit and renamed to the Detroit Lions in reference to the city's Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise, the Detroit Tigers.[4][5] The team plays its home games at Ford Field in Downtown Detroit.[6]
The Lions have won four NFL championships, all of which pre-date the existence of the Super Bowl. The Lions' four championships are tied for the tenth most total championships amongst all 32 NFL franchises;[7] the last of these was in 1957, which gives the club the second-longest NFL championship drought behind the Arizona Cardinals.[8] They are one of four current teams, and the only one in the NFC, to have never played in the Super Bowl.[9] Two of these teams, the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Houston Texans, are expansion teams in the AFC that began play in 1995 and 2002 respectively.[10] Additionally, the Lions have won only three post-season games since 1957.[11][12][13] The Lions lost an NFL-record nine consecutive playoff games from 1991 to 2023, for which they hold the NFL record for worst playoff winning percentage.[14][7]
As of the end of the 2023 regular season, the Lions have an all-time record of 591 wins, 707 losses, and 34 ties in the regular season, with an additional 9 wins and 14 losses in the playoffs. The team has had 39 winning seasons, 49 losing seasons, and 6 seasons with as many wins as losses.[15][3][4] The Lions were the first franchise to finish a full (non-strike shortened) regular season with no wins or ties, since the move to sixteen regular season games in 1978, going 0–16 during the 2008 NFL season.[16]