Why Levi Onwuzurike's season-ending injury doesn't mean it's over for him and the Lions
It's the worst news the Detroit Lions could have received at the start of training camp. Losing Levi Onwuzurike for the year before he even played down of football in 2025 is a hard loss. If you've gotten onto social media since the news and saw the way a good deal of Lions fans feel […]
It's the worst news the Detroit Lions could have received at the start of training camp. Losing Levi Onwuzurike for the year before he even played down of football in 2025 is a hard loss.
If you've gotten onto social media since the news and saw the way a good deal of Lions fans feel about the injury, the expectation is that this is it for the Lions and Onwuzurike.
You could totally understand why, right? Since the Lions took Onwuzurike in the second round of the 2021 NFL Draft, he's dealt with some injuries. This will be the second full season that he has missed in that time. A normal team would cut its losses and move on. The Lions aren't a normal team, though.
The Lions have demonstrated on multiple occasions that they won't part with a player just because of injury. A good example of this is Emmanuel Moseley. The Lions signed him to be one of their starting cornerbacks in 2023. He was coming off a torn ACL in 2022.
When he finally played for the Lions in Week 5 of the 2023 season, he played two snaps and tore his other ACL. The Lions still signed him for another season after that year. Ultimately, it didn't work out, but they still saw it as a good idea to take the chance.
Marcus Davenport is another good example. Like Moseley, when he's healthy, he's a pretty good player. The problem is that he struggles to stay healthy. He played two and a half games for the Lions in 2024, and they still chose to bring him back.
Onwuzurike has actually been here and he's put forth successful and good seasons. The Lions breaking up with him after this just doesn't seem like a reality after they were willing to bring back players who had barely played for them.
Much like those players and even like Onwuzurike this very year, the Lions don't need to break the bank on bringing him back. It can be a short-term one-year type deal in which he can either prove he's healthy or prove he's not. From there, they could go yearly with deals and not lock themselves down for a long-term thing.
If you're expecting this to be the end for the two parties, it might be wise to wait this one out first.
Did the Lions know about Levi Onwuzurike’s ACL injury before they signed him?
The Detroit Lions had some very bad news on Sunday when head coach Dan Campbell told the media that defensive lineman Levi Onwuzurike was out for the season with an ACL injury. Anytime an injury like this happens, it's easy to have a rush of things come back into your head. Like last year, when […]
