Check out your 2024 movers on defense and special teams in the Detroit Lions year-end stock report.
With the Detroit Lions’ 2024 season over, it’s time to look back on your biggest movers from this year. Let’s dive in:
Stock up: Levi Onwuzurike
Stats: 28 tackles, 1.5 sacks, 1 force fumble
It’s hard to oversell just how much of a win this season was for Levi Onwuzurike. Without context, he had a season hampered by a handful of injuries and with inconsistent, but promising, production. With context though, this has to have been the best case scenario for his 2024 season.
Onwuzurike spent essentially his entire career until 2024 trying to get past a back injury via surgery, rehab, and more. It wasn’t clear whether he would ever play football again, let alone be anything more than a shell of himself. With time, we saw him grow into that and so much more. If he can build on what was functionally a rookie season, the game should continue to slow down from him and I’d expect more growth into 2025, so long as he can remain healthy.
Stock up: Carlton Davis III
Stats: 56 tackles, 2 int, 11 passes defended, 1 forced fumble, 2 fumble recoveries
The Lions traded for Davis in the offseason in what may be the closest thing Brad Holmes has ever done to reaching for a need. The Lions had a bare cupboard, with the memory of getting burned by the 49ers in the NFC Championship game fresh in their minds.
The Lions went out and got Davis, whom the Tampa Bay Buccaneers didn’t see a future with, and took a one-season flyer on him. Now, it’s looking like he should be a Lion for much longer. He excelled in Aaron Glenn’s scheme, and was essentially on an island against opposing WR1s all season. His impact wasn’t truly felt until the Lions lost him to a broken jaw to end the season, at which point it was painfully clear that re-signing him has to be a priority for the Lions. This match was a clear win both for Davis and for the Lions.
Stock down: Brodric Martin, DT
Stats: 1 tackle
The Brodric Martin experiment is two years in and has almost nothing to show for it. That’s not metaphorical, either—Martin has played in five games total and accounted for 4 tackles including just two games and one tackle in 2024.
The Lions drafted him knowing Martin was raw; they placed a bet on his upside. With that, though, is the expectation that he’ll make progress. We didn’t see much of that in his limited action. Martin missed the first several months of the season with a knee injury, but when he did see the field, it wasn’t pretty. Martin was often pushed several yards downfield on inside runs, including near the goal line. That’s a borderline impressive feat for a man of his size to let that happen.
The results just aren’t there yet. Dealing with an injury for the majority of 2024 didn’t help his case. Nonetheless, he’ll need to make a large step in the right direction entering 2025 or it may be time to reevaluate this experiment.
Stock up: Trevor Nowaske, LB
Stats: 23 tackles, 2 sacks, 1 int, 1 pass defense
Nowaske couldn’t stick to the Lions’ roster as a rookie in 2023, and he failed to make the Cardinals’ roster in 2024. But when Derrick Barnes suffered a season-ending injury, Nowaske was the choice to replace Barnes at the SAM linebacker position. Expectations could only be so high; how well could a guy who couldn’t stick to the roster fill in?
Apparently, really well. Nowaske excelled in the SAM role, having several games with the kind of stat line you wouldn’t expect out of someone signed off the street. Across his tenure for the season, he has cemented himself as a value-add to this defense and solid contributor on special teams. The linebacker room remains crowded, but Nowaske should be firmly in the roster bubble when training camp starts in 2025.
Stock down: Jalen Reeves-Maybin, LB
Stats: 14 tackles, 1 forced fumble
Speaking of linebackers, this was the opposite of Nowaske’s underdog story. After a strong 2023 season where Reeves-Maybin played a complementary role on defense and earned Pro Bowl honors, he struggled to sustain the level of play in 2024.
That worsened when Alex Anzalone suffered a broken arm and missed extended time down the stretch of the season. Reeves-Maybin was, at one point, LB1 on the defense, and he and everyone alongside him were getting hammered by opposing offenses. It didn’t matter if it was run defense, pass defense, or anything in between, nothing was working.
Reeves-Maybin still has a role on this defense, but the Lions tested the limits of his responsibilities for the linebacking unit and got a clear answer. With a healthy squad heading into 2025, Reeves-Maybin shouldn’t be in such a position again anytime soon.
Stock down: Marcus Davenport, EDGE
Stats: 0.5 sacks, 2 tackles
Davenport was signed with one very clear job: to provide pass rush help opposite of Aidan Hutchinson. The Lions have struggled to find a consistent answer to that, and they hoped that Davenport could be that answer. Unfortunately, Davenport couldn’t stay on the field. He suffered an elbow injury in September that shut him down for the rest of the season.
He was only under contract for a year, so his tenure as a Lion may be complete. The Lions could always look back to him for pass rush support again, but for now, he hasn’t given them much reason to do so.
Bates had a storybook path to Detroit, and the fun didn’t stop there. Although Bates loved flirting with the uprights, he was reliable in high-pressure situations for the Lions from the get go. He finished the season 26-of-29 on field goals, and didn’t miss his first one until Thanksgiving.
Jack Fox, P: After spending 2023 as a middle-of-the-pack punter, Fox returned to elite status in 2024, earning First-Team All-Pro honors along the way.
Kerby Joseph, S: Kerby thrived in his role as a ball hawk despite turnover at the positions around him. He was snubbed from Pro Bowl honors despite leading the league with nine interceptions, but first-team All-Pro honors make up for that.
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