Back on September 5, I took a swipe at my hometown NFL team, the Detroit Lions.
To be fair, the Lions are easy prey. Well, maybe not the feline variety but certainly the football team.
It was a pithy blog post about how I’m sort of forced to be a Lions’ fan based upon my geographical location and the heartache through the years has certainly left plenty of scars. It was written as the HBO series, Hard Knocks, was finishing up its run profiling Coach Dan Campbell‘s squad during the preseason, but before the Laydowns (as I sometimes refer to them) got off to a horrendously awful 1-6 start.
That piece I wrote in early September seemed almost prescient a scant six weeks later.
But then something happened. Following a Halloween Weekend near-miss in Miami, the Lions won three straight, nearly upset the Buffalo Bills on Thanksgiving Day, and then won three more before an unfortunate hiccup in Carolina.
That the Detroit Lions are playing the final 2022 NFL regular-season game – repeat, the last game of all NFL teams save their opponent, Green Bay – is nothing short of miraculous.
Campbell and General Manager Brad Holmes seem to have built something that might have legs here. No one-offs, no smoke and mirrors, and while, ultimately, the game Sunday night meant nothing for the Lions it was important to play a meaningful game in early January as part of the maturation process for this team. Add to it the fact the team ran through the tape even after realizing they were eliminated from the post-season and … whoa … these just might not be the Same Old Lions.
With that, this is my mea culpa to the Detroit Lions. And, dare I say it, I’m looking a little bit forward to the 2023 season.