Thoughts from a Detroit Lions Fan

I usually post theological thoughts, and in a way, I guess there’s a theology in what I’m about to write. That’s not the purpose, though, because this is personal.

You see, I am a Detroit Lions fan. A diehard fan. As a Detroit Lions fan, when you truly are a fan, you die hard every single year. I’ve personally been dying hard since I was around 14 years old, when the Detroit Lions drafted a running back from Oklahoma State named Barry Sanders, and the Lions finally became relevant. Prior to my 14th year, I was only peripherally aware of football. Baseball was my first love, and the Detroit Tigers had captured my heart at nine years old, when they won the World Series. There were no NFL fans in my house, so I discovered the Lions on my own. I learned everything I could by reading the newspapers (this was well before the internet, kiddies), and my fandom was very solitary, which shaped the kind of fan I am today.

My fandom was solidified during my college years, when I was living in a dorm in Wisconsin, an hour North of Chicago and surrounded by Bears and Packers fans, with an odd assortment of Vikings fans thrown in. I was the only Lions fan I was aware of, and I quickly became sick and tired of everyone around me rooting for our division opponents, so I became more outgoing in my fandom. Years later, after I became a husband and then a father, my son Daniel became my Lions buddy. It was the only time in my life that my fandom was other than solitary. When he died suddenly at six years old, I had the Lions logo and his name tattooed on my right arm, and I will always share my fandom with him in my heart. That, in a very brief nutshell, is what my Detroit Lions fandom means to me.

But it hasn’t been easy. When Barry Sanders retired right before the start of training camp in 1999, he broke my heart, along with the hearts of Lions fans everywhere, and it was a hard time to be a Lions fan. Things only got worse from there, as the team was barely relevant for the next twenty years, aside from the times they were in the news for ignominious reasons, including the Matt Millen era, during which the then General Manager of the team failed, it seemed, to do anything right.

By far the darkest period, though, was during the Matt Patricia era. Things started out promising, with the reported rocket scientist and genius coming into town from the world class New England Patriots organization to finally turn things around for this moribund franchise. Things did turn around, it’s just that they were spinning in circles in the wrong direction after painting themselves into the corner of a filthy supply closet. Patricia single-handedly stripped away all vestiges of personality, fun, entertainment, and eventually talent, until what was left was a black hole of ugly, soulless, utter blackness from which even the most loyal Detroit Lions fans had difficulty seeing any light at the end of the tunnel that wasn’t a freight train loaded with hot, flaming garbage. If you think I’m overstating, just do a quick internet search for “Matt Patricia Detroit Lions” and you’ll see that I’m probably understating, if anything. You rarely see actually NFL players celebrating the firing of a coach, but I’ve never even heard of players who don’t play for the team speaking out to applaud a firing, at least not until Patricia was finally let go. It was crazy.

See, as a Detroit Lions fan, you have to understand our history. The Detroit Lions first joined the NFL in 1930 as the Portsmouth (OH) Spartans. They moved to Detroit in 1934, changed their name to the Detroit Lions, and promptly won the NFL championship the next season. Hard to believe they haven’t always been known as losers, right? They even won three more championships in the 1950’s! But since then, this franchise has had moments on the cusp of being great, being promising, and being an enigma. Mostly though, they’ve spent their time hanging out between mediocre and abysmal. The Lions were the first team to go completely winless over a sixteen game season. A few years later, the Cleveland Browns matched that 0-16 record, so we couldn’t even hold onto the distinction of being the best at being the worst.

We’ve had some very good players, multiple hall of famers, and a whole lot of replacement level players. We even had two of the absolute all-time greats, in Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson. This franchise is even responsible for a couple of terms being added to the football lexicon: a player who has been lionized is someone who comes to Detroit with loads of potential or even true top-level talent, only to have their spirit broken by a culture of losing and the toll it takes on people who play a game for a living. SOL, short for Same Old Lions, became the catch-all for any time the team was on the cusp of winning, only to trip over their feet before they could get over the hump. Settling for field goals instead of touchdowns (sooooo often), letting go of a player who went on to be great somewhere else (Quandre Diggs, Darius Slay, Ndamukong Suh, to name a few), or boneheaded coaching decisions (way too many to list here), for just a few examples.

And of course, there is the relationship this franchise has had with officiating. Bad calls, no calls, and inexcusable calls, some of which were so egregious they prompted NFL rule changes (but only after they happened to the Lions, of course)! Every team’s fanbase complains about officials, but the Lions have indisputably been at the heart of far more than their fair share of controversial calls over the years, something even the national media has noticed – not just our fanbase.

In my lifetime, the Detroit Lions have been a punchline far more often than they’ve been just another football team. From the aforementioned SOL to the baffling choice to use their first pick to draft the same position (Wide Receiver) four out of five years from 2003-2007, to being the only team in NFL history to draft a Tight End (a notoriously slow position to develop from) in the first round three times, to being just one of four NFL teams to never even have been to a Super Bowl. Oh, and two of those four have been in existence less than 30 years. So yeah, a history of mediocrity. A whole lot of Lions fans have claimed over the last few decades that they’ve “let go” or “given up” on their fandom, but oddly, they feel the need to keep calling into Detroit sports talk radio to tell everyone that. This sad and perpetually frustrating team is awfully hard to quit…

But last night, on January 14th, 2024, the Detroit Lions won their first playoff game since 1992. This happened while hosting their first home playoff game in their current stadium Ford Field, which opened in 2002 (their last home playoff game period was 1994). That was made possible by winning their NFC North division for the first time ever (their last division title came in the now defunct NFC Central, back in 1993). They did it by beating the Los Angeles Rams, who were quarterbacked by the best QB in Lions franchise history, Matthew Stafford, who asked to be traded away from the Lions in 2021. He was traded to the Rams in exchange for draft picks, which were used to build the current team, and the Rams QB, who was no longer “good enough” for a franchise that desperately wanted to win a Super Bowl. That Rams QB? Jared Goff, just the guy who quarterbacked the Lions to that same victory last night over his former team and the guy he was traded for, now firmly entrenched as “our” quarterback, and more than “good enough” for Detroit.

If you watched the speech in that video, that’s our head coach. Dan Campbell. Man Campbell. The Goofy Meathead. The Kneecap Biter. MCDC, or Motor City Dan Campbell (warning: language). Here’s a guy that played for the Detroit Lions – during the 0-16 year – and wanted to come back! I can’t say enough about this guy, or about our General Manager, Brad Holmes. These two came in together and have built a team that isn’t just “promising” or “a piece away” or a “one year wonder.” They’ve built a young, hungry, gritty team that’s fun to watch, dangerous to play against, and here to stay. And Detroit fans of all walks of life and of any sport will love you forever if you work hard and stay humble. These guys epitomize Detroit, and they have already earned their spots in our hearts forever.

Last night. Last night erased the history of “loser” status Lions fans have been carrying around with them throughout their fandom. It changed things from “same old Lions” to “brand new Lions.” Or maybe just… the Detroit Lions. That’s what last night means to me. No more “haven’t done X since Y.” Now it’s just football. Entertainment. The way sports fandom should be. Fans only talk about ridiculous things like curses to explain to themselves why they can’t just enjoy a team that wins some, loses some, but always has a chance to be enjoyable. Red Sox fans, Cubs fans, Blues fans – they all got to experience winning, and now they can’t blame the losing on curses anymore. When they’re bad, they’re just bad, they’re no longer punchlines.

That’s all Detroit Lions fans want. To see our team do something great in a fantasy world where rich people playing a boys game can capture your heart and entertain you in a way that not much else can. We know it’s not life and death. We know that our favorite players will never fully understand what it’s like to be in our place, just like we’ll never fully understand what it’s like to be in theirs. But during the games, we can pretend we’re all on the same page, pretend like our cheering and booing and wearing our lucky socks or sitting in our lucky spot on the couch actually makes a difference on the field, like we’re actually playing a part in doing something that will lift this city up together.

If you don’t get sports, then you don’t get it, and that’s fine. But if you get it, you get it.

And last night, the Detroit Lions and their fans got it. Together. I wish my son had been here with me last night. But I know that, in spite of my solitary fandom, I was nowhere near alone in my joy. Go Lions. One Pride.