Detroit Lions 2025 schedule does have 1 hidden benefit

The Detroit Lions schedule of opponents looks difficult, but there is one benefit when it comes to their away games.

If you’ve taken a look at the Detroit Lions ’ 2025 opponents, you know that it’s not exactly an easy slate of games. Their away schedule, alone, features seven outdoor games and seven contests against teams who made the playoffs in 2024—Bears and Bengals being the only exceptions.

But, as revealed by Bill Speros, the Lions’ road schedule does have one sneaky benefit: Detroit won’t have to travel much at all. Per Speros’ calculations, Detroit will only have to travel a total of 11,411 miles for games this year, which is the fourth-lowest mark in the NFL this season:

Given that the Lions play the AFC North (Bengals, Ravens) and NFC East (Commanders, Eagles), it’s probably not all that surprising that a teams situated in the northeast of the country won’t have to travel much.

In fact, there is only one game all season they’ll have to play outside of the Eastern or Central time zones: a trip to Los Angeles to face off against the Rams.

Now, does distance traveled have any quantifiable impact on performance? Unsurprisingly, there have been studies on this exact topic, and one such study from 2016 concludes travel may have a small negative impact on NFL teams :

“Based on the analysis above, traveling longer distance seems to have a negative impact on team performance in the NFL, when looking at this question the model we created confirms a lot of our prior suspicions. Some west coast teams travel over twice as much as their east coast counterparts and therefore, are clearly at a disadvantage. Using this model our finding concluded that the odds of an away team winning decrease by 3.5% as the travel distance to another stadium increased by 1000km.”

So be thankful that the Lions will mostly be situated around the midwest this year, and don’t have to—for example—play two international games like the Minnesota Vikings will in 2025.