The

Detroit Lions The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. The team plays their home game ...

are a professional

American football American football, referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada and also known as gridiron football, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular American football field, field with goalposts at e ...

team based in

Detroit Detroit ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Michigan, most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from Windsor, Ontario. It had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 United State ...

, Michigan. The Lions compete in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...

(NFL) as a member of the

National Football Conference The National Football Conference (NFC) is a conference of the National Football League (NFL), the highest level of professional American football in the United States. The NFC and its counterpart, the American Football Conference (AFC), each h ...

(NFC)

North Division Northern Division or North Division can refer to: Sports * Northern Division (Rugby Union) Leagues of England * Queensland Rugby League Northern Division * Southern League Northern Division of the Southern Football League in England * FA Women's ...

. The franchise was founded in

Portsmouth, Ohio Portsmouth is a city in Scioto County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Located in southern Ohio south of Chillicothe, Ohio, Chillicothe, it lies on the north bank of the Ohio River, across from Kentucky and just east of the mouth of th ...

, as the

Portsmouth Spartans The Portsmouth Spartans were a professional American football team that played in Portsmouth, Ohio, from their founding in 1928 to their relocation to Detroit in 1934. Originally drawing players from defunct independent professional and semi-prof ...

and joined the NFL on July 12, 1930. After being purchased by George A. Richards in 1934, the franchise was

relocated Relocated may refer to: * ''Relocated'' (album), 2006 album by Camouflage *'' Red vs. Blue: Relocated'', 2009 television miniseries *"The Relocated", Inuit of the High Arctic relocation The High Arctic relocation took place during the Cold War ...

to Detroit and renamed to the Detroit Lions in reference to the city's

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...

(MLB) franchise, the

Detroit Tigers The Detroit Tigers are an American professional baseball team based in Detroit. The Tigers compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League Central, Central Division. One of the AL's eight chart ...

. The team plays its home games at

Ford Field Ford Field is a domed American football stadium located in Downtown Detroit. It primarily serves as the home of the Detroit Lions of the National Football League (NFL), the Michigan Panthers of the United Football League (UFL), the Mid-Americ ...

Downtown Detroit Downtown Detroit is the central business district and a Neighborhoods in Detroit, residential area of the city of Detroit, Michigan, United States. Locally, "downtown" tends to refer to the 1.4 square mile region bordered by M-10 (Michigan high ...

. The Lions have won four

NFL championships Throughout its history, the National Football league (NFL) and other rival American football leagues have used several different formats to determine their league champions, including a period of inter-league matchups to determine a true national ...

, all of which pre-date the existence of the

Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual History of the NFL championship, league championship game of the National Football League (NFL) of the United States. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966 NFL season, 1966 (with the excep ...

. The Lions' four championships are tied for the tenth most total championships amongst all 32 NFL franchises; the last of these was in 1957, which gives the club the second-longest NFL championship drought behind the

Arizona Cardinals The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American football team based in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The Cardinals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC West, West division. The ...

. They are one of four current teams, and the only one in the NFC, to have never played in the Super Bowl. Two of these teams, the

Jacksonville Jaguars The Jacksonville Jaguars are a professional American football team based in Jacksonville, Florida. The Jaguars compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC South, South division. The team ...

and the

Houston Texans The Houston Texans are a professional American football team based in Houston. The Texans compete in the National Football League as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) AFC South, South division. The team plays its home games at N ...

, are expansion teams in the AFC that began play in 1995 and 2002 respectively. Additionally, the Lions have won only three post-season games since 1957. The Lions also lost an NFL-record nine consecutive playoff games from 1991 to 2023. As of the end of the 2024 regular season, the Lions have an all-time record of 606 wins, 709 losses, and 34 ties in the regular season, with an additional 9 wins and 14 losses in the playoffs. The team has had 40 winning seasons, 49 losing seasons, and 6 seasons with as many wins as losses. The Lions were the first franchise to finish a full (non-strike shortened) regular season with no wins or ties, since the move to sixteen regular season games in 1978, going 0–16 during the

2008 NFL season The 2008 NFL season was the 89th regular season of the National Football League (NFL), themed with the slogan "Believe in Now." Super Bowl XLIII, the league's championship game, was at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, on February 1, ...

Seasons

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:List of Detroit Lions seasons

seasons A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's axial tilt, tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperat ...

Seasons A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's axial tilt, tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperat ...

Seasons

See also

Notes

References