DETROIT — Humans are said to have inhabited this area for some 11,000 years, but it wasn’t until Sunday that one of them — from the tailgates of Eastern Market to the bars of Corktown — could stare into a new NFL season and utter the following words with a straight face and reasonable confidence.
Super Bowl.
The Detroit Lions have never been there, let alone won it. They are the only team that has been around for 58 years and never played there.
But more than that, never before had there been a legitimate belief that such a thing was even remotely reasonable. Before last January, the Lions had won only 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 a host of others moved into Ford Field here.
Detroit came away with two epic, euphoric home wins in the playoffs and then led by 17 points in the second half of the NFC championship game before falling to the San Francisco 49ers.
Last year, however, the team was shot out of a cannon, a work in progress, especially on defense. So general manager Brad Holmes filled in the holes and re-signed star players on both sides of the ball. Both coordinators decided to stay on head coach Dan Campbell’s staff. Young players matured.
The hype and anticipation grew so much that chants of “Jar-ed Goff” could even be heard at baseball games and wedding receptions.
And so, on this beautiful sunny September day, the NFL’s longest-suffering fans gathered to embrace what had long been a dangerous and ultimately destructive emotion for them, something generations of elders had warned their children about.
Heap.
Three hours later, after a stormy weather forecast, the hopeful train is still running at full speed.
The Lions defeated the Los Angeles Rams 26-20 in overtime, erasing a fourth-quarter deficit and again beating their former franchise quarterback, Matthew Stafford, whose season ended here in the playoffs last year.
It gave fans a glimpse into the most talented team they’ve ever had, but also a taste of what many expect: a season full of thrilling victories that will ultimately lead to a Lombardi Trophy; or at least something very close to it.
It’s a long road to the Super Bowl in New Orleans — games and injuries and luck and all that. It’s hard to make it to the big game unless you’re Patrick Mahomes. But for once, Detroit can see it, feel it and even hear it in the deafening screams of this stadium-turned-football-thunderdome.
When big plays needed to be made, Detroit made them. On offense. On defense. By this guy and that guy.
“We’re hard to break,” Campbell said. “We did what we had to do.”
The offense is better than ever, thanks in large part to third-year burner Jameson Williams, who has emerged as a reliable weapon: five receptions for 121 yards and a touchdown. He also rushed for 13 yards.
Yet it all still starts with the blunt force of the offensive line, including the decisive overtime drive that was won by running the ball on seven of eight plays, thanks in large part to Montgomery’s determination.
“Battering ram,” Goff called him.
But suddenly the defense is legitimate: three layers of meanness and violence and, in Campbell’s jargon, “perseverance.”
They knocked down, they picked off, and they sent waves of rushers at Stafford, whose brilliance could handle it that many other quarterbacks couldn’t. They stopped fourth-down attempts. They forced field goals. They drew penalties. They came off the field on a potentially decisive late fourth-quarter Rams possession. They made the Rams earn every inch of the field.
Nowhere was it more evident than with the defensive end combo of Hutchinson, the No. 2 pick in the 2022 draft, and Marcus Davenport, a 6-foot-3, 300-pound mountain they signed as a free agent. Both had a tendency to let one side of the Rams’ offensive line fall right into Stafford.
“Crush the can,” Campbell said. “Crush the can.”
This is a complete team, a clear contender, a squad that was put together to win and to win now.
“We have star players, we have baseball players,” Jameson Williams said.
Yet they also have attitude, like receiver St. Brown throwing determined blocks during the overtime drive despite having just three receptions in the game.
“Saint is a special, special specimen,” said Montgomery, who finished with 91 yards and the game-winning touchdown. “His mentality is so infectious.”
To say that the Lions’ play creates an extra connection with fans is an understatement. They win no matter what, but this is a city that has been economically decimated over the years, has been mocked and stereotyped, and often the Lions have only added to the embarrassment.
And so opening day dawned with not only construction cranes and new apartments throughout the city centre, but also a fresh sense of excitement about what was to come.
A city of underdogs embracing the very real power of finally knowing a favorite, of expecting success, of supporting a bully. Of feeling, finally, that it’s okay to dream.
It was the beginning of something potentially special, something potentially super.
