UPDATE (November 28, 2024, 4:10 p.m. ET): On Thursday afternoon, the Detroit Lions defeated the Chicago Bears 23-20.
Thursday is Thanksgivingg Dayand a great American tradition will be served again: the Detroit Lions wiII will be pleaseYesing soccer. Every year, this gridiron competition has allowed Americans to come together and make fun of one of the worst franchises in organized athletics… while ruining many a Thanksgiving. for Lions fans.
But not this year.
Win or lose on Thursday, we are experiencing the Lions Renaissance. It’s the greatest time ever to be a Lions fan – and we’ve earned it after decades of incompetence, futility, bad luck and even worse football.
Over the years, the Lions have found ways to lose games that other teams can only dream of: multiple Hail Marys, balls hit in the end zone, uncalled penalties, 10-second playoffs, passes dropped on fourth down, wide receivers penalized for failing. to “complete the process” of a catch, and the pinnacle of football futility, an 0-16 season.
Mention to a Lions fan the flag picked up in the 2015 playoff game against the Dallas Cowboys, or Sterling Sharpe sprinting onto the field at the Pontiac Silverdome with no Lions defender in sight during the 1995 playoffs, and you might see a adult adult enter into a fetus. State.
Say “1995 playoff game against the Philadelphia Eagles” in a Detroit bar and let the drowning of sorrows begin.
Some of us are even old enough to remember the 1983 playoff game against the San Francisco 49ers, when Eddie Murray’s game-winning kick fumbled to the right – the first of many bitter playoff defeats playoffs over the next four decades.
But everything changed in January 2024. In an event that I would rank just slightly below my children at birth, the Lions won their first playoff game in 32 years…and then a week later we won again. Sure, we lost the NFC championship game after blowing a 17-point halftime lead, but few Lions fans will complain about that. Last season was the best in recent Lions history, and this year is shaping up to be even better.
By almost every metric, the Lions are the best team in football. They are tied with the Kansas City Chiefs for the best record. Their offense is virtually unstoppable, drawing comparisons to the historically great St. Louis Rams “Greatest Show on Turf” teams of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Our defense has not allowed a touchdown during the Final 10 quarters and, for the first time, Las Vegas has Detroit as the favorite to win the Super Bowl.
But for those of us who have lived and died with this franchise over the past several decades, what’s different about this season is an emotion Lions fans have heard about but never felt: confidence.
There used to be a singular expression when things started to go wrong for Detroit: the Same Old Lions (SOL). We always thought something was wrong, and it almost always is.
No more.
Indeed, the moment where everything changed for me as a Lions fan came in Week 6, as we faced the undefeated Minnesota Vikings on the road. Late in the fourth quarter, running back David Montgomery fumbled the ball; a Vikings defender scooped it up and roared into the end zone to give Minnesota the lead.
Once upon a time, it was the Same Old Lions’ ultimate moment – a moment which, in the past, would have plunged Lions fans into crushing despair. But not in 2024.
Indeed, our quarterback Jared Goff, whose name now resonates across the country in sports arenas, stadiums and even planes ” as a pro-Lions chant, drove us down the field with pinpoint passes – and our kicker Jake Bates sent the game-winning field goal through the uprights for the victory.
Never. In. Doubt.
Was I worried three weeks later when we were down 23-7 at halftime against the Houston Texans, playing arguably our worst game of the year?
Please. Take that SOL speech and stick it in the time capsule. I knew the Lions would come back – and sure enough, they did, with Bates the hero again.
For the first time as a Lions fan, I knew what it was like to cheer for a good football team. Optimism — a sentiment Lions fans had read about in books and heard whispered by fans of other teams other than the Browns, Vikings or Jets — became the watchword of Lions Nation.
Last year, at the start of the 2023 season, I wrote an article stating that I was “hopeful” that the Lions “might” finally win a playoff game. Am I bold enough to predict a Super Bowl victory to cap off this magical season? Since I know, like any sports fan, that curses only apply to sporting events, I’m not willing to take that risk.
But let’s just say that come February, I expect to be sitting in the stands of the New Orleans Superdome for the Super Bowl, cheering on my favorite team – and filled with… what’s that word again… oh yeah, “optimism”, that my long tortured story as a Lions fan will finally end.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
