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Aidan Hutchinson Has Real Shot to Return for Super Bowl If Lions Make It

This is massive motivation for Detroit.

Josh Wilson

Hutchinson's regular season is over, but the playoffs are a possibility
Hutchinson's regular season is over, but the playoffs are a possibility / Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images
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Against the Dallas Cowboys, Detroit Lions star pass rusher Aidan Hutchinson suffered a terrible leg injury that was determined to be a fractured tibia. The Lions did not give a timeline for his return in their initial release, but the assumption has been that Hutchinson would miss the rest of the season. A huge blow for a team with Super Bowl aspirations.

Look no further than how emotional his head coach got talking about the injury to get a sense of how important he is to the team.

They may have some extra incentive to push hard for a Super Bowl now, though... NFL Network's Ian Rapoport reports that there is a chance that Hutchinson can return in time for the Super Bowl, should the Lions make it that far.

"There actually is a real chance Aidan Hutchinson returns this season provided the Lions make the Super Bowl," Rapoport said on The Insiders. "There is no ligament damage in his injury, no nerve damage."

The recovery timeline is four to six months. He would need to recover closer to the lower estimation in order to be ready for the big game on Feb. 9.

Rapoport also indicated that, as luck would have it, this was the best possible place for such a terrible injury to occur because he was transported to the Baylor Medical Center where Dr. Alan Jones, one of the most esteemed physicians for this sort of injury, operated on him.

While a lot needs to go right for Hutchinson to suit up for the Lions again this year, it would be a massive addition to get him back for the title game.

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Josh Wilson
JOSH WILSON

Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.

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