Michael Rothstein, ESPN Staff Writer 9y

How close are the Detroit Lions to the Super Bowl?

The Detroit Lions have never been to a Super Bowl. In the Super Bowl era, the team has won just one playoff game.

As part of a giant project that dropped over the weekend, the folks over at Pro Football Focus looked at every player who played 250 or more snaps this season and decided how many above average players each team in the NFL is from the Super Bowl.

PFF deemed the Lions five above average players away from the Super Bowl this season -- and with 22 free agents, that number could shift significantly in a couple of months. PFF broke down every player into either elite (the Lions had four), good (the Lions had four), average (the Lions had 21) or bad (the Lions had three).

The elite players were Calvin Johnson, Glover Quin, DeAndre Levy and Ndamukong Suh, who is the team’s highest profile offseason priority. The good players were Ezekiel Ansah, Darius Slay, Rashean Mathis, and James Iheidgbo.

As I explained in my analysis, there were areas I agreed with PFF and disagreed. The most notable disagreement I had was about Golden Tate, who should have been in the good category this season.

One last note: If you’re trying to use this for a future projection, don’t. Detroit’s massive number of free agents make this more of a snapshot of the Lions now rather than where they will be in two months. Two of the elite/good players are free agents -- Suh and Mathis -- and linebacker Stephen Tulloch was not in consideration because he was on injured reserve most of the season.

I was asked on Twitter where the possibility of the five players the Lions need would have been, and I cited tight end, wide receiver, and on the offensive line. I would also say linebacker, but Tulloch would have filled that void and shifted Tahir Whitehead to the strongside instead of the Ashlee Palmer/Kyle Van Noy combination.

There is a lot of good data in the project, so I suggest thumbing through a lot of the teams and, if you feel so inclined, let’s chat about the ratings and where you might agree or disagree in the comments below. It gives an idea of how, for the time being, various teams in the NFL have been built.

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