The Lions have a chance to solidify their offense even more by signing a player Dan Campbell seems to compliment a lot, Keenan Allen

Look, I know that Detroit Lions fans are going to be all about the defense this offseason, and Brad Holmes and company are likely to be very defense-heavy in their acquisitions as well. But that does not mean they aren't going to be on the lookout for receivers. 

Last summer the Lions had a real problem with receiver depth and they were desperate for someone to step up and take that WR3 role. Nobody ever did. They got lucky when they were able to claim Tim Patrick at cutdowns. It's really hard to see them going into another offseason with that problem. 

The Lions will likely draft a receiver at some point, but signing former Bears receiver Keenan Allen to be that WR3 is something that could help propel this defense from great to juggernaut status. 

The reason I zero in on Allen over some of the other free-agency receivers is that in the last four seasons, I just remember Campbell bringing up Allen, in particular, any time the Lions played the Bears or the Chargers in the last two seasons. 

It helps that Allen also seemed to just beat the hell out of the Lions' defense in those games too. In three games against Campbell's Lions, Allen put up a combined 25 catches for 389 yards and five touchdowns. That's three games. Don't be fooled by Allen's age, this cat can still play and he could find a solid role in Detroit. 

The other thing that stands out is positional versatility. The Lions absolutely love players that can do more than one thing. Allen can play both in the slot (342 snaps in 2024) and out wide (272 snaps in 2024) and he does both pretty well. He can also block fairly well too. 

The last thing is that the Lions really wanted someone who could bring what Josh Reynolds brought to them in 2023. The big thing was catching first downs and extending drives. Reynolds caught 40 passes in 2023 and 32 of them were for first downs. 

While Detroit did get that from Tim Patrick to an extent with 20 first downs on 33 catches, Allen could give the Lions a much closer production to what Reynolds did. Allen had 43 catches for first downs in 2024. That's out of the 70 total he had. 

So what's the cost of this move? Cap experts Joshua Queipo and Kyle DeDiminicantanio projected that Allen would get a two-year deal worth $24.5 million. That is very affordable for a guy that opens up the offense even more. It's a worthwhile move for the Lions to strengthen up that depth.