ESPN: Lions just 5 players shy of Super Bowl

Five players. Five missing pieces to the puzzle.

Just to put a number to it, that's all that kept the Detroit Lions from maybe going to Super Bowl XLIX, according to a Pro Football Focus study at espn.com.

The Lions were sixth in the ranking of the 28 NFL teams that aren't the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, behind the Dallas Cowboys -- who really don't need anybody, the study said -- the Baltimore Ravens, Denver Broncos, Green Bay Packers and Philadelphia Eagles, who each need two more good/elite players.

The PFF people studied the 28 teams that made the conference championship games in 2007-13 and found that an average of 40% if their rosters were made up of "good/elite" players. Then they broke up the current also-rans' rosters (minimum 250 snaps) into elite, good, average and bad categories.

And the Lions had just eight good/elite players, five fewer than needed, according to the study.

That included just four in the elite category, which is above the NFL average of two. Calvin Johnson, DeAndre Levy, Glover Quin and Ndamukong Suh (for now) are considered elite.

Four more are considered good: Ziggy Ansah, James Ihedigbo, Rashean Mathis and Darius Slay.

Three are considered bad: Brandon Pettigrew, Dominic Raiola and Jeremy Ross.

That leaves the vast majority — 21, which is exactly the league average — designated as average.

Notice that outside of Johnson, just about all of the Lions' highly touted offense is in the average category, including Pro Bowl offensive MVP Matthew Stafford, (the underrated) Golden Tate, Reggie Bush, Eric Ebron and every offensive linemen outside of Raiola.

As a sidebar, ESPN.com's Matt Williamson's also ranked the teams' upcoming young talent 25 or younger, and the Lions only came in 20th here, with Ansah, Ebron, Slay, Theo Riddick and Larry Warford. Others of note, Williamson said, are Bill Bentley, Kyle Van Noy, Joseph Fauria, Tahir Whitehead and LaAdrian Waddle.

Contact Steve Schrader: sschrader@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @schradz.