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Speaker 4: Hey, everyone. Jeff Risen here with your daily DLP. We are coming at you late on a Thursday evening. Held off on the daily a little bit today because it's schedule release day. We now know when and where the lions are playing each of their 17 regular season games in the twenty twenty six NFL season that got released this evening. Had you a quick radio hit. By the way, shout out to Ryan Walsh, from the West Side of the state here. He does a fantastic job. We had a fantastic conversation, on Jethro Radio tonight. Seek that one out. It was a lot of fun. If you like talking more about the the strategy behind the picks for the lions in the draft, It's a good show. Check that one out. But, let's get into what's going on with the schedule. I will pull it up here. This is straight from the Detroit lions. This is right from from them. Opening up week one at home. 1PM game against the New Orleans Saints. We knew a little while ago, we talked about this earlier this week, that, week two would open the new Buffalo Bills Stadium on Thursday night, the first Thursday night game of the year. I will just use the spoiler alert. In my eyes, this is the least likely win on the entire schedule. We get that one out of the way, but, also, like, it's not necessarily a bad time to play Buffalo, with a new coach, a lot of moving pieces on their defense. They added CJ Carter Johnson to their secondary, which good luck. It could work. Could blow up spectacularly. Who knows? Back home for the jets, then you have a two game road trip against the Panthers and the Cardinals. The Panthers game is a prime time game. Sunday night, I believe it is. Then there's the sick week six buy. And already there's a lot of consternation about having to buy that early. And my reaction to it is I'll I'll I'll I'll hold on to that. We'll we'll just go through the the whole schedule here, because I got I got a few takes that we'll that we'll get through. Well, let's let's go through the schedule here. Week seven home against the packers kicking off the NFC North slate. Next week, the Vikings visit. Let's go. Then he got at Miami playing New England in Munich in a Sunday morning game in week 10, and then back home, no buy before playing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in week 11. That's at home. By the way, that game against New England is technically a lions home game. Although, with the way that the international thing is set up, pretty much every team that's gonna have that when you play 17 games, one team's gonna have nine. This year is the NFC teams. They're gonna be international games, folks. Like, there's no going back from that. That genie's out of the bottle. You can complain about it all you want. The the the NFL, that's where their growth is. That's where their their emerging markets are. They're not gonna get rid of that. If anything, you're gonna lean more heavily into it, and you will be playing more on the road overseas. With the lions not getting a buy after that is an interesting wrinkle. We'll go back to that one as well. Thanksgiving, the bears. That's gonna be fun. Follow that up with the Falcons, after the mini buy from playing on Thursday. At tennis I'm sorry. That's at Atlanta, home for Tennessee, and then the final four games, at Minnesota, home for the Giants, and then at Chicago and at Green Bay in the final two weeks. Yeah. I got some takes. Sure you do too. I published them earlier, at the Detroit Lions podcast. I still do written content there. You can check it out there. If you don't wanna watch this, listen to whatever, if you wanna read it while you're on the can, you know, whatever, on the train, I I would encourage that. But, we'll go over these quickly. I'll pull them up here, so I can read them. Biggest takeaways for me, they get five home games in six weeks starting with the buy, counting that New England game as a home game even though it's in Munich. I wonder, by the way, we do have a couple of German natives in our DLP podcast Slack channel, and they have said that while, you know, they expect Amman Raus Saint Brown to get a lot of reception as a German. He is half German. His mom is German. He speaks German. He's very popular there. No doubt about that. And I do think that that will sway a lot of people. I think you'll see a lot of number 14 jerseys out there. But we've been informed by people who live in Germany that the patriots are still a big deal there from the Tom Brady, Bill Belichick era. Even though that era is long gone now, that that you you'll see a lot of a lot of Patriots representation there too. I wonder how virulent that will be, how fervent they will be. But,

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Speaker 4: Let let's make that a home game. And if you can get over there to go, by all means, do it. It it's gonna be a fantastic trip. I, unfortunately, cannot do it. I am going on two other international trips with my family, for sports purposes in the next couple of years. It's just not in the budget, but, it's gonna gonna be a fun one. But those games, the only road game between week the week six buy and then Thanksgiving is a trip to Miami. And I'm looking at the schedule, and I'm looking at the teams. The Miami Dolphins might be the worst team on the schedule this year. Now I thought they were gonna be terrible last year. It took a little bit of time before the bottom really fell out on them. I don't expect them to be a power. I think the New York Jets can wind up having a better season than them depending on quarterback play for both teams. We'll see. We'll see what happens with it. But, I I really like that mid midseason stretch with all the home games. You can build a lot of momentum coming out of your buy and get ready for that, what looks to be unsavory final three, four games, being on the road, in the division. Now it's not the not just the lions who have that backloaded tough schedule. I'd I'd bring up the Chicago bears in their final four games. The bears finish at Buffalo on a Saturday. They then play on Christmas Day at home, Christmas is on a Friday this year, against Green Bay. They then host Detroit, and then they go to Minnesota. There's a very realistic world where they lose three out of four of those games, if not all four. Those are that's difficult. I I tend to think that they're gonna be better than Minnesota, but who knows where teams will be in early January. You know? God only knows what the lines are gonna look like. Hopefully, they're healthier and look more like the lines of beginning of the year, because of injuries. We haven't seen that in the last couple seasons. That would be be a nice change. As for the early buy, see a lot of grumbling about that. I don't necessarily hate it, and I'll tell you why. Because with this team with new with with a new offensive coordinator coming in from the outside and with a second year defensive coordinator who needs to have a better second season, and I don't think got a lot of help from the guys around him as a rookie coordinator. I like the idea of getting a little bit of an early pause where they can self scout, take some time off, assess what's working and what isn't working before the season unravels if things aren't working. They can tweak there, and they get an opportunity to do that just before a pretty favorable slate of games on Green Bay. Certainly not gonna be easy. New England, not gonna be easy. Tampa Bay. By the way, the Buccaneers in that week are also coming off of an international they have an international game. They are coming off of a buy when they visit Detroit after Detroit does not get a buy coming home from Germany. That is a little bit of something like that. Tampa's a Tampa's gonna be an interesting team to forecast this year because they've quietly had some changes, and I I can see them being very good. I can also see them struggling some. It's a fair cop out for a lot of teams can get, but them especially. If they're not healthy, their depth is we'll see. But I I don't necessarily mind the week six, but I would prefer it to be seven or eight just to to space out the time from there because that that makes it a real grind. Now the lions, to their credit, and this this is not just the Dan Campbell regime, but I do think going back in the Jim Schwartz did this. I actually think that, you know, even going back further than that, Wayne Fontes, they learned how to maximize the post Thanksgiving rest time and buy. And I know it comes off of a short week before it, but no team does that better than the lions except maybe the cowboys, but the cowboys play that game at night or late game. They're late afternoon game on on Thanksgiving.

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Speaker 4: I think they'll be okay there. Bears are not an easy opponent for that game. It's gonna be a fun one, though. I'm a play at the seed right now. Get my guy Brian Burkhizer, mister Scatterbrain, halftime entertainment. The guy freaking bleeds Detroit Sports. He is a massive Lions fan. He's appeared on this show, friend of the show, friend of mine personally. Hi, Brian. Glad you're enjoying being a father. We need to get you on the show again sometime soon to, talk music and lions football. Back to the schedule. Atlanta after that, who knows what they're gonna look like? They are a mystery team. They're one of those teams that you're gonna see everybody, all the pundits, probably myself included, pick them to be, like, eight and nine or nine and eight. And that's sort of like the default 30% chance of rain. Like, you can't say that it's not gonna rain, but it might not. Like, we don't really know though just because the atmosphere is like atmospheric instability, crosswinds, you know, 500 millibar charts all out of whack. Like, there's a lot of weird things that go on that that could make it happen. I think that's gonna be the the default setting for just about everybody in the Atlanta Falcons this year. It will be that way for the Buccaneers as well. So that's a tough one. I do like starting with New Orleans. New Orleans is not a bad football team, but I do think that the way the lions play schematically matches up fairly well with what New Orleans figures to try to do. And it's at home. I do like opening at home. I think that that kicks things off nicely. We're gonna get into the wins and losses predictions on that. That that'll be Friday or Saturday's show. You you play the schedule game. Everybody does it. I will too. I'm not above that. I kinda enjoy going through and spontaneously thinking about what it happens. I will tell you right now that if I I don't see myself winding up below twelve on the wind jet wind column but we'll see. We'll we'll go through that. That'll be fun. I'll try to do that live, actually, if if Chris can do a show or if Greg can can hop in. I think that would be fun. We'll see. Stay tuned. That's why you like and subscribe so you know when we're doing these sorts of things. When I come at you in an exotic time tonight, that's when it goes. Other couple things that I that I picked up in looking at it, there are a couple of trap games. The jets in week three, Aaron Glenn coming to Detroit, sandwiched between you're getting a little bit of an extra rest after the Thursday night game at Buffalo, and then you're going back out on the road to Carolina. And I know that people look down. Guys, that's a playoff team. That's not a bad football team at all. They have young talent, and I I do think they're well coached. Can't overlook them. I know the lions won't. The worry is is that you're getting a jets team that still on paper doesn't look strike. I would expect the lions to open as barring catastrophic injuries to key players before then. They're gonna be favored by probably a touchdown, if not more. And I I tend to think and and this was reflected in the lions schedule release. No frills, no nonsense, back to business, nose to the grindstone. I don't think the Lions are gonna overlook that. I don't think they're gonna play with their food there. But in theory, that is a trap game. And the other trap game, you maybe consider Tennessee that way. I I don't just because I I don't think Minnesota is gonna be that good. And I think by that point in the season, we might be talking about Minnesota not being good at all. They could certainly surprise me and shut me up, and I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't be shocked by that either. But I think that's a five or a six win team. I think Tennessee might be that too. So I don't think necessarily that they're gonna overlook that one. But the one that that does concern me a little bit is that trip to Miami just before going to Germany. You're coming off of two division home games where you're gonna be fired up. You have a pretty good idea of where you stand within the NFC North at that point. You know you got the trip to Germany. The players are already excited. I can tell you that firsthand. I know the media is excited. I know I know the fans are excited. The Dolphins, we talked about them earlier. They don't look like a very good football team. They look like an eminently beatable football team. And you're getting them at a time of the year where Miami might not be stiflingly hot. Like, it it's still gonna be warm down there. It's actually towards the tail end of hurricane season. Probably won't get anything there. I think I think that's you get more up up the up the coast from them, but you can't rule that out. But I do worry about that one. And, again, I I think that the way that the lions with their back to business motif and their, you know, refocused energy on on devoting themselves to being tough and hard nosed and focused, I don't think it's gonna happen, but you you gotta at least bring the the the potential up for it to happen. The other one I have, the most likely win, wrote this at at Detroit Lions' podcast earlier today. The most likely loss, I have Buffalo in week two. Sorry. They're not gonna go unbeaten, guys. Facts of life. I would like them to, though. That that would be that would be awesome. That'd be fun. Most likely win. I lean towards the jets, but that week eight game gets the Minnesota Vikings in Detroit. I think that is a tone setting game, and I know the lions lost to Max freaking Brosmer last year. I think this is a payback game for the Lions defense, specifically, presuming that the entire secondary isn't out, presuming that Hutch and Aleem and Derrick Moore are still there. You know, our linebacking corps is still intact. I think Minnesota got worse this off season, not better. They are one of two or three teams in the league that definitively got worse in the 2025, 2026 off season. I think the Lions got better, and I think they're gonna show it there. And I do think that that's gonna be a game. And other than, again, that that anomaly game, Jared Goff has eaten Brian Flores alive because he won't stop blitzing. And Jared Goff's very good against the blitz with this upgraded offensive line, at least on paper, upgraded significantly. Yeah. I like that a lot. Blitz all you want, baby. Leave your quarters on an island against Amon Ra and Jaimo and Isaac Dislaw. Sam Laporta should be more than full speed by then. Your linebackers can cover, but they can't cover and blitz at the same time. I like that matchup a lot. Yeah. Here's where you guys are at on the schedule. Not necessarily picking wins and losses, but just your general overall thoughts about it. Do you like the massive home scene in the middle of the season? Do you hate the early buy? Your thoughts on finishing at Chicago and at Green Bay when I do see a world where the winner of all that triumvirate of games there, wins the division and the other two teams are playing in the wild card and perhaps playing against the division winner in the wild card. Very critical games down the stretch. I wonder how you feel about it. Let me know. Put it in the put it in the comments. If you go to Facebook on, Jeff Risen, Lions NFL, you'll find this video there. You'll find my writings there. You can leave comments on there as well. I do try to check that as much as I can, and, that's it. I'll let you guys get at this. Enjoy the schedule. I'm I'm I'm I'll be straight. I'm fixing to watch some of these other schedule release videos because the lines this year was very matter of fact, not entertaining by design. I'm looking forward to get some entertainment. We'll see what the Colts do, the Chargers. Texans are always pretty good about it. Have some fun ones out there. Enjoy it. Let's go lions. Jeff Risen signing out. Be good doing another, everybody.