Detroit Lions have clear path to securing homefield advantage throughout NFC playoffs

Taylor Decker has seen enough football to know records don’t matter much in mid-October.

“If we end the season with five wins then nobody gives a (expletive) about the first six games,” Decker told the Free Press on Sunday.

The Lions (5-1) are tied for the best record in the NFL six weeks into the season. They’ve won four straight games, all by double digits, sit comfortably atop the NFC North with one of the league’s easiest remaining schedules, and have a legitimate chance to be the No. 1 seed and get homefield advantage throughout the NFC playoffs.

It’s premature for the Lions to start planning for the postseason, of course, but not for us to start talking about it. And coming off Sunday’s road win against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, it’s time to acknowledge the Lions have a legitimate claim as the best team in football.

The San Francisco 49ers are still the Vegas favorites to win the Super Bowl, but the Lions have a better resume than the league’s four other 5-1 teams — the 49ers, Philadelphia Eagles, Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins — a third of the way through this 18-week regular season.

The Lions are undefeated on the road. They’re the only one of those teams with a win over another member of the league’s Fab 5 (Lions beat the Chiefs in Week 1). And they have proven they can win games in a variety of ways.

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The Lions will enter next week’s showdown against the Baltimore Ravens — their last game against a team that currently has a winning record until Week 17 — with the league’s fourth-highest scoring offense and ninth-best scoring defense. They rank top 10 in rushing yards, passing yards and rushing yards against.

“I think kind of the mark of a legitimate team is competing week in and week out, and that doesn’t mean we’re going to win every single game, but as long as we compete for wins, then when you get games like this one, this was a big game,” Decker said “This is a very good team, we’re coming in on the road, they flexed the game (time) for us. You got to be able to win those games if you want to be a good team, if you want to be able to compete leading into later in the year, even the postseason. It’s just, you have to show up for those ones.

“So it’s been a great start for us, it’s put us in a good position leading into these next couple games and the bye week and hopefully we just keep it rolling.”

Decker was a part of the last Lions team to win four straight games, in 2016 when the Lions won five in a row in November and December, and were in control of the division until Matthew Stafford suffered a finger injury late in the year.

The Lions lost their final three games that season, including an NFC North title game at Ford Field against Green Bay, and limped into the playoffs. They were steamrolled by the Seattle Seahawks, 26-6, in a wild-card game.

Injuries are the league’s greatest equalizer, and the one thing that could derail the Lions this winter.

David Montgomery will miss time with the rib injury he suffered Sunday, and the Lions already have lost several starters: Montgomery (to a thigh bruise), Decker, Brian Branch, Jonah Jackson, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Kerby Joseph and C.J. Gardner-Johnson have missed a combined 13 games this season.

Gardner-Johnson could miss the rest of the year, though the Lions are holding out hope for a late-season return, and that list doesn’t include role players or potential starters who’ve missed time this season like Jahmyr Gibbs, Emmanuel Moseley, James Houston and Halapoulivaati Vaitai. Moseley and Houston could be out for the season.

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The Lions have done a commendable job navigating injuries so far, and coach Dan Campbell and his staff deserve credit for having their team ready to play every single game, a rarity in the NFL even for good teams.

The 49ers looked like a juggernaut before scuffling through Sunday’s loss to a Cleveland Browns team starting a backup quarterback. The Eagles broke character in their loss Sunday to the New York Jets, throwing the ball 45 times at the expense of the league’s second-best rushing attack despite leading most of the game. Even the Dolphins, who own the league’s most explosive offense, got stomped in their lone loss by a good Buffalo Bills team.

I don’t know if the Lions can beat the 49ers on a neutral field. I suspect the Chiefs, with Travis Kelce and Chris Jones healthy, will be the team no one wants to play come January because of all-world quarterback Patrick Mahomes. And as good as the Lions' defense has been, I don’t think their secondary matches up particularly well with the Dolphins’ track team.

But I do know Jared Goff is playing as well as any quarterback in the NFL right now, the Lions have a rabid fan base that can turn any stadium into a homefield advantage and there’s nothing this team can’t do — or thinks it can’t do, at least — on either side of the ball.

“We’ve played well for six weeks and I think it’s hard to play well all year, but that’s our goal,” Goff said. “At some point we’re going to hit some sort of adversity and have to fight through that. Right now, we’re playing well. That’s four in a row for us and it’s a pretty good feeling. Yeah, it certainly is. And we know who we are. I’ve said it a million times, we feel like we can go beat anyone right now, and yeah, we feel pretty good.”

The Lions can beat anyone, and soon enough, Campbell’s biggest challenge may be convincing his players they can lose to anyone, too.

Looking at the remaining schedules, there’s no reason the Lions shouldn’t at least be the two seed in the NFC. The NFC South will be lucky to have a team win more than nine games. The Eagles have a treacherous upcoming stretch where they play the Dolphins, Chiefs, Bills, 49ers and Dallas Cowboys (twice) before Christmas. And the Cowboys (3-2), the second-best team in the NFC East, play a similar slate: Dolphins, Bills, Lions and Eagles twice, after their Monday night game against the Los Angeles Chargers to close out Week 6.

The 49ers, the presumptive NFC West champs, have a more manageable final 11 games with tilts against AFC playoff contenders in the Ravens, Jacksonville Jaguars and Cincinnati Bengals, plus that December trip to Philadelphia, the hardest games left on their schedule. (Philadelphia and San Francisco both face a .540 combined winning percentage from their remaining opponents. The Lions' is .387, second easiest in the NFL.)

The Lions won't go undefeated from here on out. Baltimore will be a stern test Sunday. And like Decker, Campbell knows better than to start scoreboard watching after a 5-1 start.

But the Lions are a good football team and could conceivably host the NFC championship game Jan. 28 at Ford Field, with a trip to their first Super Bowl on the line.

“Listen, I’m happy we’re winning and I love where we’re at right now and the other (stuff) will happen when it happens,” Campbell said. “Right now it’s about trying to find a way to finish first in this division and right now we’re in a pretty good spot. We’ve got a lot of football left but I’m proud of our guys.”

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him @davebirkett.

Next up: Ravens

Matchup: Lions (5-1) at Baltimore (4-2).

Kickoff: 1 p.m. Sunday; M&T Bank Stadium, Baltimore.

TV/radio: Fox; WXYT-FM (97.1).

Line: Ravens by 3.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions path to securing homefield advantage throughout playoffs