Super Bowl or bankruptcy? Detroit Lions fans share their predictions for 2024
Super Bowl 59 or bust? Detroit Lions fans will give their predictions for the 2024 NFL season on Sunday, September 8, before the season opener.
Jameson Williams still had the game ball under his arm when he finally showed up after midnight to talk to reporters.
“When was the last time you got something like this?” someone asked.
“I’ve never been given a game ball!” the 23-year-old explained. “Not at ‘Bama. Nowhere. I’m not going to lie, this one may never slip out of my hands. Maybe I’ll sleep like this!”
It was to be a sweet sleep – for him and for the numerous Detroit fans who held their breath until the last minutes of Sunday evening.
Here, in the fall of our new content, it took the Lions the entire opening game of the season – and even overtime – to remember that this year was about the young players, not the old man who left three years ago.
Mitch Albom: Not just a dream – this Lions team has real championship potential
Their epic battle against the LA Rams finally ended with the Lions’ first overtime victory in eight years, a brave, exhausting demonstration of overcoming obstacles: the rust from not being able to field regular players in the offseason, the burden of enormous expectations and, most difficult of all, their former quarterback Matthew Stafford, who almost single-handedly poured a Motown-sized bucket of ice water over his old franchise’s dreams of glory.
“He knew exactly what he had to do,” Lions coach Dan Campbell admitted after Stafford nearly ruined the night by throwing 34 quick passes for 317 yards to six different receivers who repeatedly evaded tackles and ran down the field.
If Stafford had been able to throw a pass to his favorite target, Cooper Kupp, in the fourth quarter, the game probably would have been over and Detroit would be a lot sadder this morning.
Instead, the Lions shook off their rust, marched 55 yards for a tying field goal, then won the overtime coin toss and never gave the ball away again. After surfing the big, quick plays of Williams’ best night as a Lion, they turned to what Jared Goff calls their “battering ram”: running back David Montgomery, whom the Lions rode in overtime the way jockey Ron Turcotte rode Secretariat in the 1973 Kentucky Derby: to the finish.
Montgomery needed five handoffs on that final OT drive, forcing its way through the Rams for 45 yards, including the final handoff that led into the end zone and brought the exhausted crowd to its feet.
One. Won. And phew.
“One less mistake”
“When you started in overtime, did you think anyone could stop you?” Montgomery was asked after sealing the 26-20 overtime victory.
“Oh, no,” he said. “Nothing against them, but I was in the mood. I was in a situation where I had to prove myself … but at the same time show how much bite this offense and this team has.”
There was already some bite. And bite was needed. The luxury of not being able to play with their regular players in the preseason weighed on the Lions like a damp rag. Their offense was not running smoothly. Their defense received too many penalties, did not get close to Stafford often enough, and allowed one receiver after another to make short catches and turn forward, even though the Rams were missing several offensive players and star receiver Puca Nakua for much of the evening.
LIONS LEVELS: David Montgomery and the defensive line receive good grades
The Rams dominated in terms of number of plays, first downs, yards and time of possession. But the Lions, who blew a two-touchdown lead in the second half, still won the game because they limited LA to field goals and the Rams made some well-timed mistakes. One of those was an interception of Stafford in the end zone. The other was a holding call when LA had the ball at the Lions’ 1-yard line.
“At the beginning of the season, many games come down to who makes the fewest mistakes,” Campbell said. “We made one less than them.”
The Lions won’t like some of the things they see when watching the game tape, but they’ll certainly smile at some of Williams’ plays. Let’s face it: “Jamo,” now in his third season, was, as the old song goes, like a horse that never left the post. Fans and teammates have been waiting for the former first-round draft pick to show his true potential.
On Sunday, he let it rip. A snatch over the middle where he outran three defenders and gained 37 yards. A reverse where he ran for 12 yards. A snatch in the fourth quarter that he extended by another 27 yards. And a double move where he left the LA defender so far behind that the guy needed binoculars to find him: a 52-yard touchdown.
Overall, Williams set a career high with five catches for 121 yards and one score. And he emphasizes that he’s only just getting started.
“I don’t plan on this being the best game of my career,” he said, still holding the ball. “I plan on this being just the beginning of me being myself.”
Detroit will embrace this.
One. Won. And phew.
Stafford: “I had a chance to win it”
Now a word about Stafford. He may be 36 and has a long list of injuries on his resume, but he played one of his best games Sunday night at Ford Field. Despite missing several players in the starting lineup and one of his two favorite receivers, he kept the Rams alive with a series of quick and familiar throws, some high, some whipped, some backwards, some without looking.
Stafford led scoring drives of 67, 70, 76 and 80 yards. He led the Rams from a 17-3 deficit to a 20-17 lead. And with less than three minutes left in the game and the Rams still ahead, he had a third-down pass that he narrowly missed to Kupp. The pass would have been a first down and potentially the game-winning pass. As the ball hit the turf, Stafford threw his hands on his helmet in dismay.
“That was the game,” he said later. “I had a chance to win it.”
BULLY-BALL: Lions finally remember their identity in overtime
Stafford, who had toiled here for so many lean years, was no longer the focus of the evening as he had been when the Rams came to Detroit for the wild-card playoff in January. In fact, there was precious little media coverage of the “Stafford is coming back” story this time. When asked if he thought that meant the sports world was done with this story, he grinned and said, “I am.”
That’s how he should be. That’s how the Lions should be. This is a new day, a new season and a new approach. Frankly, many worried that the Lions might be overconfident entering this season, a bit cocky from all the summer predictions of greatness and Super Bowls.
If that’s the case, then the deficit and the fact that they had to do everything they could to come back and win on Sunday should dispel the fairy dust of such illusions. In the NFL, nothing is a given. Nothing is predictable.
“You know it’s not going to be perfect,” Campbell said of the season openers. “You just want it to be cleaner. … At the end of the day, it’s always about us having to get better. And whether we won or lost today, we have to get better.”
Or as Goff put it: “It was good enough to win, but not good enough for our standard.”
Our claim. If you want proof that things have changed here, here it is.
A win that still needs improvement. A rising star who is just getting started. A battering ram who claims to be unstoppable. And a national television stage that no longer seems too big or too unknown for this franchise. You know what we call that in Motown? We call that a pretty good night.
One. Won. And phew.
What happens next?
Contact Mitch Albom: [email protected]. Stay up to date with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchhalbom.
