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 an excellent American custom will probably be served once more — the Detroit Lions will be playing football. Yearly, this gridiron contest has allowed People to return collectively and poke enjoyable at one of many worst franchises in organized athletics … all of the whereas spoiling many a Thanksgiving Day for Lions fans.
However not this yr.
Win or lose on Thursday, we live within the Lions Renaissance. It’s the best second ever to be a Lions fan — and we now have earned it after many years of incompetence, futility, unhealthy luck, and even worse soccer.
Win or lose, we live within the Lions Renaissance.
Over time, the Lions have discovered methods to lose video games that different groups can solely dream of — a number of Hail Marys, batted balls in the long run zone, uncalled penalties, 10-second runoffs, dropped fourth-down passes, huge receivers penalized for failing to “end the method” of a catch, and the final word in soccer futility, an 0-16 season.
Point out to a Lions fan the picked-up flag within the 2015 playoff sport in opposition to the Dallas Cowboys, or Sterling Sharpe sprinting down the Pontiac Silverdome discipline with no Lions defender in sight within the 1995 playoffs, and also you may see a grown grownup enter a fetal state.
Say “1995 playoff sport vs. the Philadelphia Eagles” in a Detroit bar and let the drowning of sorrows start.
A few of us are even sufficiently old to recollect the 1983 playoff sport in opposition to the San Francisco 49ers, when Eddie Murray’s game-winning kick sailed huge proper — the primary of many bitter playoff losses over the following 4 many years.
However all that modified in January 2024. In an occasion that I’d rank simply barely under my youngsters being born, the Lions received their first playoff sport in 32 years … after which per week later, we received once more. Positive, we misplaced the NFC Championship sport after blowing a 17-point halftime lead, however not many Lions followers will complain. Final season was one of the best season in current Lions historical past, and this yr is shaping as much as be even higher.
By almost each metric, the Lions are one of the best staff in soccer. They’re tied with the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs for one of the best document. Their offense is virtually unstoppable, drawing comparisons to the traditionally nice St. Louis Rams “Best Present on Turf” groups of the late Nineties and early 2000s. Our protection hasn’t allowed a landing within the final 10 quarters of play, and, for the primary time, Las Vegas has Detroit as the favourite to win the Tremendous Bowl.
However for these of us who’ve lived and died with this franchise for the previous a number of many years, what’s totally different about this season is an emotion that Lions followers have heard of however by no means skilled — confidence.
Again within the outdated days, there was a singular expression when issues began to go improper for Detroit — Identical Previous Lions (SOL). We at all times assumed one thing would go improper, and it virtually at all times did.
Not anymore.
Identical Previous Lions. We at all times assumed one thing would go improper, and it virtually at all times did.
Certainly, the second every little thing modified for me as a Lions fan got here in week 6, as we confronted off on the street in opposition to the undefeated Minnesota Vikings. Late within the fourth quarter, sure-handed working again David Montgomery fumbled the ball; a Vikings defender picked it up and rumbled into the top zone to offer Minnesota the lead.
Within the outdated days, this was the final word Identical Previous Lions second — one that previously would have despatched Lions followers into crushing despair. However not in 2024.
Positive sufficient, our quarterback Jared Goff, whose identify now rings out throughout the nation in sports activities arenas, stadiums and even airplanes as a pro-Lions chant, led us down the sector with precision passing — and our kicker Jake Bates despatched the game-winning discipline purpose by the uprights for the win.
By no means. In. Doubt.
Was I anxious three weeks later once we trailed the Houston Texans 23-7 at halftime, arguably enjoying our worst sport of the yr?
Please. Take that SOL discuss and stick it within the time capsule. I knew the Lions would come again — and naturally, they did, with Bates the hero once more.
For the primary time as a Lions fan, I knew what it’s wish to cheer for soccer staff. Optimism — a sense that Lions followers had examine in books and heard whispered by followers of different groups not named the Browns, Vikings or Jets — grew to become the watchword of Lions Nation.
Final yr, on the outset of the 2023 season, I wrote a bit declaring I used to be “hopeful” the Lions “might” lastly win a playoff sport. Am I so daring as to foretell a Tremendous Bowl victory to prime off this magical season? Since I do know, as each sports activities fan does, that jinxes solely apply to sporting occasions, I’m not keen to take that threat.
However let’s simply say that come February, I anticipate to be sitting within the stands on the New Orleans Superdome for the Tremendous Bowl, cheering on my favourite staff — and stuffed with … what’s that phrase once more … oh yeah, “optimism,” that my lengthy tortured historical past as a Lions fan will lastly come to an finish.
Michael A. Cohen is a columnist for MSNBC and a senior fellow and co-director of the Afghanistan Assumptions Challenge on the Middle for Strategic Research on the Fletcher Faculty, Tufts College. He writes the political e-newsletter Truth and Consequences. He has been a columnist at The Boston Globe, The Guardian and International Coverage, and he’s the creator of three books, the most recent being “Clear and Current Security: The World Has By no means Been Higher and Why That Issues to People.”
