The Detroit Lions Win Playoff Games Now?

Ford Field was a madhouse. A refuge in the frigid storm for 67,000 fans to publicly exorcise demons together after 30 years or 65 years or however long they’d been personally plagued by the plague of the Detroit Lions. They were avatars for millions upon millions watching at home. Three or four generations gathered together in snow-covered homes to see something they’d stopped believing could exist.

The favorite prodigal son returned but was welcomed with ferocious resistance instead of open arms. The best writers could not have written the scene any better. The result — a white-knuckle one-point win to secure the chance to only wait a week between playoff wins after waiting 32 years — could not be any more perfect.

For Lions fans, the future matters but what matters most is that the book has been closed on a horrific past. We can move on and feel like full members of American sports’ most cherished and lucrative institution. Dan Campbell and his downright lovable bunch of overachievers are playing with house money right now — and playing the type of football that could realistically push this whole surreal experience deeper into shared lucid dreaming.

You’ll read better columns today on this but for now I simply want to say what’s most obvious and true. Like Michael Scott, my heart is very full right now. And the possibility of it getting even fuller is almost too much to comprehend. Perhaps it’s not flowery or particularly smart yet the guttural goodness and pureness of the experience is still reverberating through Michigan bodies this morning.

Campbell, of course, is the avatar for this feeling. It’s one measly postseason win yet he’s already an all time great Detroit coach. Low bar, sure, but he manifested this into existence, knowing exactly what it would mean.

So there he was in the triumphant locker room as he’s made a habit of over the past year and a half, addressing his team. Being the shame charismatic, wouldn’t-you-just-die-to-go-to-war-with-this-guy vibe he’s perfected because it comes easily. There he was shouting out Brad Holmes, who has built a winner on a construction site that was condemned so many times before. There he was telling Jard Goff that he was good enough for Detroit — a phrase that will sell thousands of T-shirts and make some dudes who weren’t expecting to cry … well up a little.

Hell yeah. That happened. It could happen agin in a few days. How electric was that? The most electric. So electric that it’s scary to imagine another win. Or playing in a conference championship game. Or the game after the conference championship game.

But that’s a thing Lions fans can do now.