DETROIT — They say humans have roamed this land for some 11,000 years, but it wasn’t until Sunday that any of them — from the tailgates of Eastern Market to the bars of Corktown — could look out at a new NFL season and utter, with a straight face and reasonable confidence, the following words.
Super Bowl.
The Detroit Lions, famously, have never participated in it, let alone won it. They are the only team that has existed for 58 years that has never played in it.
But more than that, there has never before been a legitimate belief that anything like this was even reasonable. Before last January, the Lions had won just one playoff game of any kind during the Super Bowl era. That was in 1991.
Last winter, Aidan Hutchinson, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Penei Sewell, Sam LaPorta, David Montgomery, Jared Goff, Frank Ragnow and many others had moved here to Ford Field.
Detroit posted two epic, euphoric home playoff wins and then led by 17 points in the second half of the NFC Championship game before falling to the San Francisco 49ers.
Last year’s team was a development project, though, especially on defense. So general manager Brad Holmes filled the holes and re-signed star players on both sides of the ball. Both coordinators decided to stay with head coach Dan Campbell’s team. The young players matured.
The excitement and anticipation grew to such a point that chants of “Jar-ed Goff” were likely to be heard at baseball games and wedding receptions alike.
And so the NFL’s most long-suffering fans gathered on this glorious, sunny September day to embrace what was long a dangerous and eventually damning emotion for them, something generations of elders warned their children against.
Hope.
More than three hours of storm have passed and the train of hope continues at full speed.
The Lions beat the Los Angeles Rams 26-20 in overtime, erasing a fourth-quarter deficit to once again beat their former franchise quarterback, Matthew Stafford, whose season ended here in the playoffs last year.
It gave fans a look at the deepest, most talented team they’ve ever had in memory, but also a taste of what many hope will be a season of thrilling wins that will eventually lead to a Lombardi Trophy — or at least, again, something very close.
The Super Bowl in New Orleans is a long way off — games, injuries, luck and all that. It’s hard to get to the big game, unless you’re Patrick Mahomes. But for once, Detroit can see it, feel it, even hear it in the deafening cheers in this stadium turned football thunderdome.
When big plays needed to be made, Detroit made them. On offense, on defense, for this guy and that guy.
“It’s tough to beat us,” Campbell said. “We did what we had to do.”
The offense is better than ever, thanks in large part to third-year player Jameson Williams, who has become what appears to be a reliable weapon: five receptions for 121 yards and a touchdown. He also ran for 13 yards.
But it all starts with the blunt force of the offensive line, including the game-winning drive in overtime accomplished by running the ball on seven of eight plays, largely thanks to Montgomery’s determination.
“Battering ram,” Goff called him.
But the defense suddenly becomes legitimate: three layers of evil and violence and, in Campbell’s jargon, “courage.”
They sacked, intercepted and sent waves of runners toward Stafford, whose brilliance could handle him but many other quarterbacks won’t. They stopped fourth-down attempts. They forced field goals. They committed penalties. They walked off the field on a Rams possession that could have clinched the game late in the fourth quarter. They made the Rams earn every blade of grass on the field.
Nowhere was that more apparent than in the defensive end combination of Hutchinson, the second pick in the 2022 draft, and Marcus Davenport, a 6-foot-6, 285-pound mountain signed as a free agent. Each tended to bend one side of the Rams’ offensive line toward Stafford.
“Crush the can,” Campbell said. “Crush the can.”
This is a team in its entirety, an obvious contender, a squad built to win and win now.
“We have star players, we have ballplayers,” Jameson Williams said.
But they also have attitude, like receiver St. Brown throwing down determined blocks in the overtime series despite playing in a game in which he had just three receptions.
“Saint is a very, very special guy,” said Montgomery, who finished with 91 yards and the game-winning touchdown. “His mentality is very contagious.”
To say the way the Lions play offers an extra connection with fans is an understatement. They will win however they can, but this is a city that has been battered economically over the years, that has been the subject of ridicule and stereotypes, and that has often seen the Lions only bring more shame.
And so opening day arrived, not only with construction cranes and new condos all over downtown, but also with a renewed excitement about what might come.
A city of underdogs who embrace the considerable power of finally knowing who the favorite is, or of hoping for success by rooting for a bully. Of feeling, at last, that it’s okay to dream.
It was the beginning of something potentially special, something potentially great.
