Opinion | This Thanksgiving, I’m actually grateful to be a Detroit Lions fan
UPDATE (Nov. 28, 2024, 4:10 p.m. ET): On Thursday afternoon, the Detroit Lions beat the Chicago Bears 23-20.
Thursday is Thanksgiving Day, and a great American tradition will be served again — the Detroit Lions will be playing football. Every year, this gridiron contest has allowed Americans to come together and poke fun at one of the worst franchises in organized athletics … all the while spoiling many a Thanksgiving Day for Lions fans.
But not this year.
Win or lose on Thursday, we are living in the Lions Renaissance. It is the greatest moment ever to be a Lions fan — and we have earned it after decades of incompetence, futility, bad luck, and even worse football.
Win or lose, we are living in the Lions Renaissance.
Over the years, the Lions have found ways to lose games that other teams can only dream of — multiple Hail Marys, batted balls in the end zone, uncalled penalties, 10-second runoffs, dropped fourth-down passes, wide receivers penalized for failing to “finish the process” of a catch, and the ultimate in football futility, an 0-16 season.
Mention to a Lions fan the picked-up flag in the 2015 playoff game against the Dallas Cowboys, or Sterling Sharpe sprinting down the Pontiac Silverdome field without a Lions defender in sight in the 1995 playoffs, and you might see a grown adult enter a fetal state.
Say “1995 playoff game vs. 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 sailed wide right — the first of many bitter playoff losses over the next four decades.
But all that changed in January 2024. In an event that I would rank just slightly below my children being born, 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 not many Lions fans will complain. Last season was the best season in recent Lions history, and this year is shaping up to be even better.
By nearly 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 practically unstoppable, drawing comparisons to the historically great St. Louis Rams “Greatest Show on Turf” teams of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Our defense hasn’t allowed a touchdown in the last 10 quarters of play, 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 for the past several decades, what’s different about this season is an emotion that Lions fans have heard of but never experienced — confidence.
Back in the old days, there was a singular expression when things started to go wrong for Detroit — Same Old Lions (SOL). We always assumed something would go wrong, and it almost always did.
Not anymore.
Same Old Lions. We always assumed something would go wrong, and it almost always did.
Indeed, the moment everything changed for me as a Lions fan came in week 6, as we faced off on the road against the undefeated Minnesota Vikings. Late in the fourth quarter, sure-handed running back David Montgomery fumbled the ball; a Vikings defender picked it up and rumbled into the end zone to give Minnesota the lead.
In the old days, this was the ultimate Same Old Lions moment — one that in the past would have sent Lions fans into crushing despair. But not in 2024.
Sure enough, our quarterback Jared Goff, whose name now rings out across the nation in sports arenas, stadiums and even airplanes as a pro-Lions chant, led us down the field with precision passing — and our kicker Jake Bates sent the game-winning field goal through the uprights for the win.
Never. In. Doubt.
Was I worried three weeks later when we trailed the Houston Texans 23-7 at halftime, arguably playing our worst game of the year?
Please. Take that SOL talk and stick it in the time capsule. I knew the Lions would come back — and of course, they did, with Bates the hero again.
For the first time as a Lions fan, I knew what it is like to cheer for a good football team. Optimism — a feeling that Lions fans had read about in books and heard whispered by fans of other teams not named the Browns, Vikings or Jets — became the watchword of Lions Nation.
Last year, at the outset of the 2023 season, I wrote a piece declaring I was “hopeful” the Lions “could” finally win a playoff game. Am I so bold as to predict a Super Bowl victory to top off this magical season? Since I know, as every sports fan does, that jinxes 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 at the New Orleans Superdome for the Super Bowl, cheering on my favorite team — and filled with … what is that word again … oh yeah, “optimism,” that my long tortured history as a Lions fan will finally come to an end.
