The Fog
The Detroit Lions' season is over. Now we attempt to pick up the pieces
I wrote back in October, when the Detroit Lions were 5-1, about what the burgeoning Lions hype was all about. I was trying to explain why boatloads of Lions fans were spending thousands of dollars to fly around the country and invade opposing stadiums during the middle of the season. Why the hype this time felt different. In a bit from that piece that almost feels prescient now, I wrote the following:
The most amazing part of the ineptitude of the past 65 years of the Detroit Lions is not that they haven’t won a Super Bowl, or that they have a lot of losing seasons, it’s that “one playoff win in 65 years” thing. It’s the fact that you can be a person getting ready to retire who has never once seen this team have a season where they were very close to making the Super Bowl (or made the Super Bowl).
And then I continued later on to say:
Even the Chicago/St. Louis/Arizona Cardinals franchise, which has had loads of misery, made a Super Bowl and was one or two plays from winning it. The Lions have never had a team like that, not once in 65 years. We just want a team that can make us believe the Lions could play for a Super Bowl, whether or not they do. A team with a good coach, a good GM, a sustainable vision for the future and quality player development. That can get into the playoffs as more than a 9-7 sacrificial lamb to an actually good team. A winning season that produces a playoff victory and then goes out and does it again the next year to convince us it’s not a fluke. A team that makes the letters “S. O. L.” fade into the distance
All Lions fans ever wanted was a contender. That’s most of what our fiery, intense hatred for the Green Bay Packers is about, jealousy and resentment that those Cheeseheads have gotten to cheer for a contender nearly every season for three decades. We wanted to be like the Packers, have success like the Packers. When you’ve never cheered for a consistently good football team, the idea of cheering for one sounds like sunshine and rainbows. The reality is not as pretty.
Ever since the Detroit Tigers entered their present moribund state, all I’ve wanted in baseball is to see them be good again, to play meaningful baseball again. I remember the greatness of Miggy, JV, Prince, Scherzer, and all the other heroes, the fun summer nights, the rush of clinching a division or winning a playoff series. It’s all romantic in your head because you like to forget the other half of the bargain. Winning meaningful baseball feels impossibly good. Losing meaningful baseball is often just as devastating. It hurt then and if/when the Tigers are good again, we will be running the risk of another Big Papi Grand Slam happening. We’ll also be running the risk of the team winning another AL pennant. That’s the bargain.
It’s the same thing in football, or any other sport. We are jealous of the Green Bay Packers, yet despite the two Super Bowl rings, it often hasn’t been an easy life for Packer fans either. Since Green Bay’s last trip to the Super Bowl, now well over a decade ago, they’ve suffered countless devastating playoff defeats, including as recently as last week. In our heads we, as Lions fans, wanted to get the same experience as Packers fans because the “perennial playoff team and two-time Super Bowl champion” thing sounds great. We just like to ignore the “17 of the last 18 times the Packers have made the playoffs they haven’t won the Super Bowl, including some brutal endings” because that part, well, sucks.
January 2024 was when Detroit Lions fans got an authentic sampling of what it’s like for your favorite team to be the average NFL contender. We got the high highs, winning the division, hosting playoff games, winning two of them, feeling like all the chips are falling your way, getting oh so close to the Super Bowl and then… the low low of blowing a game in heartbreaking fashion. Having the rug pulled out from you, the Jenga tower collapse all at once, a few flukey, improbable plays that all go against you and turn a 17 point lead into a tied game in the blink of an eye.
We got a dose of the bliss that Cincinnati fans felt for part of their run a few years ago and also a dose of the anguish Buffalo fans felt that very same year when they thought they had slayed the Patrick Mahomes dragon, only to see it unravel in 13 seconds. Playoff football can make lifetimes and ruin seasons. For Lions fans this year, it somehow did both. We got a season I will never want to forget with an ending I will never want to remember. And so it goes.
The worst part of it all is it happened for largely no reason. Maybe you can argue that the Lions, being a young team with a roster mostly comprised of players in their first playoffs, found themselves in a moment that was too big for them against a team of more seasoned veterans, a franchise playing in its fourth NFC Championship Game in five seasons. I think there may be a bit of truth to it, that the Lions were not as well equipped to handle the shifting momentum. But the total mountain of it all, the bizarre, individual mistakes? More than anything, just rotten luck.
As my boss, Brian Cook, wrote about Michigan Football losing to Ohio State back in 2016, the reason that the reliable Josh Reynolds dropped two balls he normally always catches, or the reason that Jahmyr Gibbs lost only his second fumble the entire season in a huge moment, is none. No damn reason at all. Sports involve tremendous amounts of skill and talent that determine most of the games we watch, but the margins, the oh so fine margins, are a lot of luck and randomness.
In hockey, the puck takes strange bounces off the boards that change the entire courses of games. In football, a player can be a reliable receiver, make a number of high leverage catches, and then once or twice just miss one. A momentary lapse in concentration, something off about the ball’s spin, just small, sudden things can shift it all. Reynolds made several huge catches against the Rams and Bucs. Why did he catch those and not the two we needed against the Niners? No reason. We’ll never know because there is no answer. He couldn’t tell you himself, even if he will almost certainly spend the rest of his life wishing he knew why.
The Lions lost in part because their weaknesses got exploited. Their two outside corners, giant weaknesses down the stretch, were exploited in the second half, including for one of the worst blooper reel to highlight reel plays this side of Patrik Stefan. Their defense as a whole, one of the worst to ever appear on the precipice of a Super Bowl in a statistical sense, got lit up in the second half by the NFL’s most efficient offense. Their failure to roster a real NFL kicker they could trust, a multi-year problem, forced them to go on a fourth down where they may have been better off kicking a makeable 45 yard field goal.
But they also lost because of bad luck and randomness. Even with the defense getting crushed in the second half, if Reynolds makes that first catch, the Lions are probably in the Super Bowl. Or hell, maybe the second one. Or if Gibbs doesn’t put the ball on the ground at his own 25 yard line. And they all happened for no particular reason, completely uncharacteristic, random plays that cost the Lions the game. Those were not diagnosed weaknesses that popped up. Nor were they shows of skill by San Francisco to force the mistakes. They were just bad fucking luck.
Almost everything I said in my October piece, quoted at the top of this one, did come true. The Lions finally had a season where they came close to a Super Bowl. They seem to have a good coach and a good GM with a vision for the future. They got into the playoffs as more than a 9-7 sacrificial lamb to an actually good team. They won the division and won a playoff game. And then won another one. But the “almost” refers to that last line, the “a team that makes the letters “S. O. L.” fade into the distance”. That part is much harder.
There are two completely opposite answers on whether what we witnessed on Sunday was Same Old Lions or not. On one hand, it was as Same Old Lions as ever, finding a way to blow a game and break our hearts again. On the other hand, the Same Old Lions do not ever play in NFC Championship Games to begin with. They bumble their way to 7-9, get screwed by the refs once or twice in there, and then draft another wide receiver in the first round who busts instantly and a cornerback who runs slower than Peyton Manning in the second round.
I know both versions and the duality of it. I expected the collapse to come (and tweeted about it at halftime) because I know the Detroit Lions too well, and also I spent most of this year wondering if I recognized these Detroit Lions at all because they were winning big games and turning away the SOL demons at every turn. They couldn’t outrun the final one. Maybe it wasn’t their time yet.
Maybe they’re just like all the other football teams. Plenty of non-Lions football teams blow playoff games too. Just ask the Atlanta Falcons, or the Buffalo Bills, or the Green Bay Packers in the 2014-15 NFC Championship Game, or the KC Chiefs in the 2013-14 Wild Card Game, or the Minnesota Vikings in the 1998-99 NFC Championship Game. For most of my life I got to sit on the couch and think “thank god I didn’t have a stake in that one, couldn’t imagine how I’d feel if the Lions were on the wrong end”. Now, to some degree, I do.
I don’t think these are the Same Old Lions, but I don’t think they’re freed from having that noose hover above them. They had a quintessential Same Old Lions game in the least Same Old Lions of destinations. It’s a murky, foggy picture with genuine reasons for hope and despair and no obvious path for what comes next. It’s a young roster with a lot of players who should be good for awhile and it’s set up well for the future with the full chest of draft picks at their disposal to improve the roster. It’s also no guarantee that you’ll ever be in a better situation to make the Super Bowl than they were Sunday because there’s infinite uncertainty in a league where debilitating injuries are common and the salary cap is always crunching. Every Lions fan processed Sunday night and this dilemma differently. How you got to eventually swallow it is your call.
[Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group]
The thing that surprised me the most about the aftermath of the Lions’ loss to San Francisco was that even though we all processed it differently, we all somehow came to the same conclusion. I scanned the various corners of the internet, from twitter to Reddit’s Lions subreddit to Pride of Detroit’s comments to even the most reactionary places like Facebook comment sections, in addition to texts and conversations with friends and family, and yet everyone had the same overarching takeaway: “wow, that hurt a lot but the season was a ton of fun and I’m glad we got to experience it”. Almost everyone I saw reactions from expressed optimism for next season too.
I was really worried that the cruel fashion that that game unfolded in was going to cause a portion of the fanbase to throw the baby out with the bathwater, condemning the best season in modern franchise history because they had a terrible final 30 minutes. But no one, not even the usual huffing-and-puffing mouthbreathers on Facebook, were talking that way. Lions fans have been through many of the worst times a football fan could know. I think we were just glad that we got hefty shots of pure happiness before the other shoe dropped this time.
Maybe that makes us the perfect fanbase to have to endure this, the only group of NFL fans with standards so low that being gut-punched is fine as long as we get a slice of cake beforehand. I think most national NFL fans probably figured that this would hurt Lions fans more than any other fanbase it could happen to given the franchise’s pathetic history and lack of success. But these moments hurt more if you expect victories, if you spent all offseason believing your team was going to make the Super Bowl, just to see it happening in action and then get it ripped away. For us Lions fans, the vast majority never spent a day in our lives until one week ago seriously thinking we actually had a viable chance to make the Super Bowl.
As time ticked away on Sunday and reality set in, the people I felt most sad for were the older generations. My dad, my uncle, the 89-year-old longtime season ticket holder that got featured on the two NBC broadcasts, the people who had wasted so many years attending this team’s games despite losing season after losing season, failed draft pick after failed draft pick. I wanted the Lions to finish off San Francisco so badly for those people, to see it finally happen after six decades. That feeling of seeing it not happen when we were so close hurts and is going to hurt for a long time. It’ll hurt for as long as it takes for the Lions to make the Super Bowl. Maybe one more year, maybe for eternity.
But I’m also glad we got to see what we did before that. If I had the chance to do the 2023 season all over again, I would. Not even a question. So much of it felt magical, the opening night win in KC, the takeover of Lambeau and Tampa, the heart-stopping win over the Chargers, the comeback over the Bears, the win on Christmas Eve to clinch the division and of course the two playoff wins. It was a great ride, even if we got a reminder that not all great tales have storybook endings.
I’m glad we got to expel some of the most embarrassing infographics out there, ending two of the sport’s most ignominious droughts. I’m glad we can now go into an offseason as a legitimate contender with serious goals, with a front office we can believe won’t mess it all up. I’m glad that even with how the end went, the team did give SF a hell of a fight, rather than getting blown out like the 91-92 team did. I’d rather be frustrated with how close we came rather than contemplate how far away we are from winning anything big.
Most of all I’m glad to see how many fans got involved in showing their Lions pride. It’s almost cliche in modern times to bemoan how divided society can be, especially since sometimes there are legitimate reasons for those divisions. But we also ought to have unifiers too. The Detroit Lions were this state’s one great unifier in 2023-24, linking people from all walks of life behind this football team, even people who detest each other’s collegiate allegiances. MSU and UM fans were united on this one and that sense of community was fun to have.
It was awesome to see so many people show up to watch the away game at Ford Field, even if they were sent home sad. The JA-RED GOFF! chants, the GM plant giving workers the night off to watch the game, the non-sports fans tuning in because it seemed like this game mattered, all that was damn cool. I’m happy to see pictures of young children in Lions gear, as someone who grew up in the Millen era when kids in these parts grew up Patriots fans because Tom Brady was a cool Michigan Man and the Lions were embarrassing to admit you liked. I’m glad that the next generation gets a better team than I grew up with.
I hope all the fans who fell in love with the team this season stay in love next season. I hope Ford Field remains a raucous, intimidating environment for opponents. I hope the fans don’t take it out negatively on the players, whose tweets about the loss broke your heart just a little bit. They gave it their all and delivered a season beyond even our unusually high preseason expectations. We, who waited three decades for a year like this, can only be thankful. I can’t wait for them to put on the pads again next fall.
[AP Photo/David Dermer]
The Takes - Modified
I’m not doing takes about this game because I have no plans to ever re-watch the tape of it. At least not any time soon. But I wanted to instead revisit my 10 Questions/10 Answers from the start of the season to wrap it all up and set the stage for the offseason. It probably won’t be until sometime around the NFL Draft that I write about the team again. For each question I will be re-stating what it was, giving a short summary of what I said (paraphrased), and then a new answer in retrospect.
1.) How confident should we be in the re-modeled secondary?
Answer then: Decently confident it should be improved, but not confident that it will be good.
Answer now: Turns out, not at all! In fairness, the secondary only ended up being partially remodeled, because of the major offseason additions, half ended up being nonfactors. Emmanuel Moseley, whose health a lot depended on, never played a meaningful snap after tearing his other ACL. CJ Gardner-Johnson missed nearly the entire regular season and never really found his groove in the playoffs. That left Brian Branch, who was a legit stud, and Cameron Sutton, who had a strong first half and a disastrous second half, to represent the “remodeled” aspect. The rest were familiar names.
There were some bright spots and the Lions can leave the season feeling very good about having some building blocks like Brian Branch and Ifeatu Melifonwu, who came on exceptionally well late in the year. Those two are good pieces and I still believe in Kerby Joseph, who had a disappointing sophomore year. He can get better and should remain in the mix. But the outside corners need A LOT of work, and more help at safety wouldn’t hurt. The Lions, at minimum, need to sign an impact corner and draft one in the first two rounds. And I wouldn’t mind drafting an additional corner in the mid-rounds. Toss your resources at this problem, as it was the biggest non-luck/randomness reason why the team is not playing in the Super Bowl.
2.) Are the young linebackers ready for primetime?
Answer then: Unclear. I was high on Jack Campbell but still uncertain if the whole unit was ready to play a key role on a good defense.
Answer now: They took steps forward but were not ready to be stars, which was reasonable. Derrick Barnes started the season well, struggled for awhile, and reappeared in the playoffs to make the play of his life. Jack Campbell had a horrendous opening to his career but got better as the year went along. I like him a lot as a run defender, the next step is improving in coverage (same can be said for Barnes). Malcolm Rodriguez faded into the background before also reappearing to make a huge play in the playoffs.
The biggest positive development was quality work from Alex Anzalone, who went from being a liability in 2021-22 to a legitimately solid linebacker this year. Not a star, but a fine player. He, Campbell, and Barnes all showed a nose for run defense and they deserve a lot of credit for fixing what I anticipated a weakness would be (more on that later). Now they have to make a leap in coverage so that the Lions can begin to fix their leaky pass defense.
3.) Should we be worried about the WR room?
Answer then: Yes and it’s a five-alarm fire if Amon-Ra St. Brown gets hurt.
Answer now: It never manifested into a concern, but St. Brown’s health was the difference maker. Had the Lions lost Amon-Ra for any extended period of time, they’d have been in trouble, but thankfully that didn’t happen. Hurrah! With Amon-Ra healthy, WR was fine, especially because Reynolds did give the Lions a very nice season before [REDACTED] happened on Sunday. I’m not sure he will be back next year, especially after his performance in SF, but he was serviceable and gave the Lions some nice games.
Next year will be when we hope to see a leap from Jameson Williams. Jamo got better as the year went along and by the end of it was a player I was hoping would get more touches. Yes he still has some tracking issues down the field, as we saw with the deep ball late against the Niners, but he’s made measurable progress in his game. After being a drop-factory to start his career, he did not drop a ball that hit his hands after the bye week, making a number of really nice catches (including two, one for a TD) against the Niners. His rushing TD against SF shows how they need to find more ways to get Jamo the ball and I hope that he and St. Brown are a reliable tandem you can lean on next year, while using UFA or maybe a mid-round pick to fill in the depth.
4.) Do the Lions have too many EDGEs?
Answer then: I was fine keeping seven EDGE players on the roster because I was unsure if any of them besides Aidan Hutchinson were good and they had a wide skillset.
Answer now: Actually, they don’t have enough quality EDGEs. Hutchinson is a real good player. He had a disappointing game against the Niners, but he was money in every other game down the stretch so you can’t be too upset. If he’s not on the field forcing a holding call and a pressure on the final drive, the Lions don’t beat the Rams. Period. Get him some more help and he will post a gaudy sack total next season (assuming health, obviously).
But the picture outside of Hutchinson isn’t good enough. James Houston had a lost season due to the ankle issue. Next year feels like make-it-or-break-it for the talented rusher. The Okwaras added nothing of value and will likely be gone in the offseason. Same for Charles Harris, who ended in scratch territory. Josh Paschal showed some growth but he’s merely a decent rotational lineman right now, same for John Cominsky. The Lions need help through the draft and UFA at EDGE. They need another Dude to line up opposite of Hutchinson and actually have a chance of getting home rushing the passer. After cornerback, that’s the second biggest need this offseason.
5.) What impact do the new running backs have?
Answer then: The new RBs would be better than Swift/Williams and would add an exciting element as passcatchers.
Answer now: Gibbs and David Montgomery didn’t end up adding as much as receivers as I think they are capable of, but they were definitely better than Swift/Williams and the offense benefitted. Gibbs was much healthier than Swift ever was as a Lion, while Montgomery did deal with some injuries but his speed/acceleration, vision, and receiving chops were superior to Jamaal Williams. I will always be a Williams fan because of how his infectious personality helped turn this franchise around but moving on from him was the right call because Montgomery is a much better football player. I’m glad the Lions will have a high-end RB tandem for the next two seasons thanks to these guys.
6.) What is the biggest weakness on the team?
Answer then: My concerns from most to least were DT, WR, and K.
Answer now: Hahahaha I didn’t even list cornerback. Defensive tackle wasn’t as much of a concern as I expected, since Alim McNeill leveled up majorly to become a very good player. He’s a building block of the defense. The other DT spot was a weakness, which the PFF grades showed, but my concern that this defense would just get paved on the ground because the DT spot next to McNeill never came to fruition. They kept plugging random UDFA/waiver wire guys in and holding up with an elite run D because they played heavy fronts and the LBs + Brian Branch added a ton as run defenders. Continuing to build up depth at DT wouldn’t be bad for the defense in the offseason, but it’s not my priority #1-2.
WR I’ve already covered and kicker, well, yeah. The Lions’ kicking situation has been a major issue for years now and I do think it plays a role in why Campbell is so aggressive on 4th downs. I did not feel comfortable putting Michael Badgley out there for a 45 yarder in San Francisco and I don’t think Campbell did either. To say that as an NFL team is a really bad sign. Brad Holmes can’t keep blowing this off, just go get a good kicker. It’s not that hard. Sign one, draft one, get all the UFL kickers in a room and pick the best one. Do something besides Riley Patterson and Badgley. Please.
7.) Where should we set expectations for the offense and defense as units in 2023?
Answer then: I said the offense should be top 10 and the defense should be in the 17-24 range.
Answer now: Those ended up mostly coming true. The offense ended up fringe top 5, which was higher than I was expecting, while the defense was roughly in that third quartile range. They were higher in DVOA, lower in metrics like EPA/play. They weren’t a good or even mediocre defense but they weren’t totally catastrophic, having some good efforts throughout the year and then found away to limit points while bleeding yards in the playoffs. It wasn’t super sustainable and why I didn’t feel this was a Super Bowl caliber roster, even if we ended up coming so close to making it there. They made some progress this year but there needs to be a major investment of resources into the defense in the offseason and the unit has to take a more significant step forward next season.
8.) Will the Lions win the NFC North? How should we feel about the schedule?
Answer then: I said they should win the NFC North because the schedule didn’t seem super difficult and the division seemed weaker.
Answer now: They did win the NFC North, but the division/schedule didn’t end up being that weak. The Packers were weak early in the season but came on very strong late. I think they are going to be a good team for the next few years too, while the Lions and Packers have some fun years duking it out for the division crown. The Bears were also dreadful early but much stronger later and unfortunately for the Lions, both games with Chicago were later in the season. With the Bears possibly getting a new QB with the #1 overall pick (via Carolina), plus another top 10 pick, they seem on the track to be a really solid team in this division too. The NFC North is going to be a good division and I think it will be putting 2-3 teams in the playoffs pretty regularly for the next half-decade.
Minnesota has the more grim long term future, uncertainty at QB and an older roster as opposed to GB/CHI/DET, all of whom were among the five youngest teams in the NFL. But even they are a well-run organization with a number of decent players. They’d probably have been in the playoffs had Kirk Cousins not gotten hurt. The flip side to the Bears being stronger when the Lions finally saw them is they also got the Cousins-less Vikings on the schedule too. The Lions were the best, most consistent team in the division wire-to-wire and took advantage of that, winning the NFC North as they should. In the future, it will just keep getting harder because the Lions and their rivals are all building good teams. Iron sharpens iron.
9.) What does a successful 2023 Detroit Lions season constitute?
Answer then: The perfect Lions season of success was winning the division and a home playoff game
Answer now: I think the answer shifted to “win two home playoff games” when the bracket broke open the way it did, getting the Bucs in round two. But they ticked every box, even the shifted box. Maybe you can say the successful season included finishing off San Francisco in that game on Sunday but at the end of the day I can’t say they needed to beat a team who was clearly better than them (as all the results and metrics from Week 1 to the Divisional round demonstrated) for the season to be a success. Not when this franchise had the history that it did coming into this year.
What the Lions achieved this season is something every single fan would’e signed up for in a heartbeat at the start of the year. Winning the division, winning two playoff games (more than every Lions team from 1958-2022 won combined), and then playing on the road in the NFC Championship Game against the Super Bowl favorite, and playing them in an even game that ends in a three point defeat… that was miraculous for the DETROIT LIONS to accomplish. It would’ve felt much better if the Lions had lost a back-and-forth affair on Sunday rather than *that*, but the thousand-eye view is the same. This team was one of the five best teams in the NFL this season and proved it on the field. To be in this place just two years after the team was 3-13-1 with one of the worst rosters in the league, is remarkable.
My main worry preseason was that the hope of winning the division and a playoff game was too lofty. I wrote that “anything beyond that, though, is a stretch. Progressing further (likely) requires beating one of Philadelphia or San Francisco on the road and I don’t think the Lions have a roster that is there yet.” If I was skeptical of beating SF in the preseason, and SF went out and had an exceptional season that has them favored over Patrick Freakin’ Mahomes in the Super Bowl, I can’t come down too hard on the Lions for Sunday. This was a 100% successful season, regardless of heartbreak on Sunday.
10.) Is the slasher about to jump out of the darkness and hack us to death with a chainsaw?
Answer then: This was my satirical question where I said fans should enjoy the ride and believe in their team and then predicted the Lions to be 11-6, 1st in the North.
Answer now: I don’t know how I’m alive enough to write this when the slasher hacked us up on Sunday night. In all seriousness, I’ve said most of what I want to say about this already, but I guess it’s cool that my record prediction was too pessimistic. I’m glad I believed in this team and the ride was a lot of fun, even if it ended too soon. At least it felt like the Lions blew a chance at the Super Bowl in a year where they were already on a bit of a Cinderella run, outperforming expectations and making a run at the trophy a year ahead of schedule, rather than in a win-now, peak roster year. Maybe the Lions will never come as close in the playoffs to the Super Bowl again, but if Holmes/Campbell are worth believing in, then this won’t be the best TEAM the Lions put together over the next few years.
Legendary Hockey Twitter satirist and long-suffering Maple Leafs fan Acting The Fulemin had a famous tweet years ago that may be the single best three sentences ever written about being a sports fan:
We were all sad in a group at the end of this season, but it was still the most fun I’ve had being sad in a group as a Detroit Lions fan in my entire life. Let’s be sad in a group again next year.