ALLEN PARK, Mich. — It’s always a tight squeeze, trying to whittle down eight months of work — and 90-plus NFL hopefuls — into one 53-man roster to start the regular season.

For the Detroit Lions, this year’s attempt came with a new pressure point, too: Trying to overhaul a group that had fallen well short of expectations a year ago, while reinforcing a core identity at the same time.

Brad Holmes, the Lions’ general manager, called last season’s 9-8 finish and playoff miss a “disappointment” and a “failure.” He promised a “long, hard look” at what went wrong and the steps they’d take to fix it. Head coach Dan Campbell, meanwhile, vowed a "no-nonsense" approach to "get back to the basics of football.”

And now that it’s time to show their work, with the regular-season opener against New Orleans looming just 10 days from now, there’s a few boxes the Lions are convinced they’ve checked.

They got younger on the offensive line by making a couple of major investments in free-agent center Cade Mays — sidelined until October by a broken hand — and right tackle Blake Miller, a first-round pick. They added depth at linebacker, some injury insurance at safety and signed two more core pieces (Jahmyr Gibbs and Jack Campbell) to lucrative contract extensions this summer. Dan Campbell and the coaching staff also ratcheted up the competition across the board with a back-to-basics approach to the offseason program and training camp.

But beyond all that, there was another thirst that needed to be quenched.

“We wanted to add more juice,” Holmes said.

The early returns certainly suggest they’ve done that. So does the roster composition after Sunday’s cutdown and the moves that followed, leaving the Lions with 11 defensive linemen on the 53-man list, plus four more on the practice squad.

“There's a lot of promise in that defensive line that we have,” Campbell said. “And there's a lot of guys.”

More than 20% of the roster, in fact. And as Holmes addressed the media Wednesday for the first time since the draft, you could tell he also believes there’s strength in those numbers. Because when he was done bristling at the suggestion the Lions didn’t do enough at the cornerback position this spring — and that Terrion Arnold’s arrest on felony charges somehow caught the team off-guard — he was happy to tout the work they’d done in the trenches.

“Look, regardless of what our situation was going to be in the secondary, we wanted to add more juice and more ability to get after the quarterback this past cycle,” Holmes said.

It wasn’t that they didn’t have any before. The Lions actually finished with 49 sacks in 2025, fourth-most in the league. They ranked seventh in pressure rate as well, despite a blitz percentage that ranked 20th in the NFL. But they also were 30th in time to pressure, per NextGenStats, and it was obvious that outside of Aidan Hutchinson there wasn’t much for opposing offenses to fear when it came to collapsing the pocket.

On the opposite edge, the pass-rush duties largely fell to Al-Quadin Muhammad, who started most of the season after veteran Marcus Davenport went down with another injury. Muhammad finished with 11 sacks, making the Lions one of just three teams with two players recording double-digit sack totals. (Houston and New Orleans were the others.) But the run defense suffered with him on the field, particularly in the second half of the season.

And it was clear at the start of free agency that finding a better solution was a priority. They signed veteran DJ Wonnum, who spent the past two years in Carolina. They traded up in the second round to draft Michigan’s Derrick Moore, the first time since 2022 they used a Day 1 or 2 pick on an edge rusher. Then Holmes went ahead and added two more disruptive defensive lineman on Day 3 of this year’s draft: Skyler Gill-Howard and Tyre West.

Gill-Howard, one of the surprising stars of camp and the preseason, made the 53-man roster over the weekend, while West stuck around on the practice squad. Gill-Howard, a sixth-round pick, figures to have a gameday role as an interior rusher on passing downs.

“With Gill-Howard, that was one of the first things that you see when you watch his tape,” Holmes said. “But because of his innate violence that he's wired with, he's actually been a little bit better in the run game than probably what we even anticipated.”

What they’re expecting, though, is a defensive front that boasts more versatility and relies on a heavier rotation, albeit with some lighter personnel. Wonnum and Tyler Lacy, who fills more of a big-end role, will start opposite Hutchinson, but even the Lions’ All-Pro sack leader will see his snap counts reduced from his usual red-lining numbers this fall. Moore flashed his pass-rush potential in limited preseason opportunities, while Ahmed Hassanein and his nonstop motor earned a roster spot as another big end.

Inside, it’ll be Alim McNeill, who has been a monster in camp now that he’s fully recovered from a late-2024 ACL tear, and Tyleik Williams, who shed weight and seems poised for a Year 2 jump. But Levi Onwuzurike also is back after missing last season with an ACL injury, joined by Gill-Howard and Mekhi Wingo.

“I feel really good with where our D-line is at right now,” Campbell said last week. “It’s a versatile group. There’s depth in there, there’s pieces. You can ask them to do different jobs.”

And based on what we’ve seen this past month, they will be asked to play a different way. More movement, more stunts, more bodies. And, ideally, more juice.

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