The Detroit Lions are heading into the 2023 season with a lot of hype after climbing out of a 1-6 hole to finish 9-8 in the 2022 season, and they will be tested early when they face Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. Lions cornerback Jerry Jacobs said Dan Campbell wants his team to come out and make a statement in week 1 against the Chiefs.

“It's time to show what Detroit is made of,” Jerry Jacobs said on NFL Rewind, according to Bobby Kownack of NFL.com. “When we knew we were playing them in the season opener, Dan Campbell came in and said, ‘They want us to lose, so what are we going to do?' … We almost went to the playoffs and they just won the Super Bowl, so they're trying to see if we're really like that. We're ready, I know we're ready. Every time I hear we're playing the season opener against the Super Bowl team, we're ready to go out there and play ball and shock the world.”

The Lions will go into that opening game as significant underdogs, just as pretty much every visiting team playing the defending Super Bowl champion does.

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The Lions were in a similar spot in the last regular season game of 2022. They played the Green Bay Packers with a chance to play spoiler and eliminate them from the playoffs. The Lions were eliminated earlier in the day when the Seattle Seahawks defeated the Los Angeles Rams. The Lions succeeded in spoiling the Packers' playoff chances by winning the game.

It will be a similar spot for the Lions in week 1 against Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.