close
close

first Drop

Com TW NOw News 2024

    • Detroit Lions’ epic rally signals new beginning for franchise: Mitch Albom
    news

    Detroit Lions’ epic rally signals new beginning for franchise: Mitch Albom

    Vaseline Posted on

    play

    Jameson Williams still had the match ball under his arm when he finally came out to speak to reporters after midnight.

    “When was the last time you had one?” someone asked.

    “I’ve never been given a game ball!” the 23-year-old declared. “Not in ‘Bama. Not anywhere. I’m not going to lie, this might not get out of my hands. I could go to sleep right now!”

    It would be a sweet sleep – for him, and for the many Detroit fans who held their breath until the final minutes of Sunday night.

    Here, in the fall of our new content, it took the Lions the entire season opener — and even into overtime — for them to realize that this was about the young guys playing this year, and not the old guy who left three years ago.

    Mitch Albom: Not just a dream – this Lions team is championship material

    Their epic battle against the LA Rams would ultimately culminate in the Lions’ first overtime victory in eight years. It was a gutsy, exhaustive display of overcoming obstacles: the rust of not drafting starters in the offseason, the pressure of towering expectations and, most difficult of all, their former quarterback, Matthew Stafford, almost single-handedly dumping a bucket of ice water the size of a Motown player on his old franchise’s dreams of glory.

    “He knew exactly what to do,” Lions coach Dan Campbell admitted after Stafford nearly ruined the night by rushing 34 passes for 317 yards to six different receivers, who kept evading tackles and getting further up the field.

    If Stafford had been able to make one more pass to his favorite target, Cooper Kupp, in the fourth quarter, the game likely would have been over and Detroit would have been in a much sadder position this morning.

    Instead, the Lions shook off their rust, marched 55 yards for a tying field goal, then won the overtime coin flip and never gave the ball up again. After surfing the big, fast plays of Williams’s best night as a Lion, they switched to what Jared Goff calls their “battering ram,” running back David Montgomery, who rode the Lions in overtime the way jockey Ron Turcotte rode Secretariat in the 1973 Kentucky Derby: all the way to the roses.

    Montgomery took five handoffs on that final OT drive and tore through the Rams for 45 yards, including the final handoff that reached the end zone and brought the weary crowd to its feet.

    One. Won. And wow.

    ‘One less mistake’

    “Once you got going in overtime, did you think anyone could stop you?” Montgomery was asked after securing the 26-20 OT victory.

    “Oh, no,” he said. “Nothing against them (but) I was in the mode. I was already stuck in the mode where I felt like I had to prove myself to myself … but at the same time show how much guts this offense and this team has.”

    It had guts, yes. And it needed guts. The luxury of not having its starters play in the preseason weighed on the Lions like a wet blanket. Their offense didn’t work. Their defense, despite the Rams missing multiple offensive linemen and, for much of the night, star receiver Puca Nakua, took too many penalties, couldn’t reach Stafford enough, and let receiver after receiver make short catches and rotate forward.

    LIONS CLASSES: David Montgomery, defensive line earns high marks

    The Rams dominated in plays, first downs, yards and possession. But the Lions, who lost a two-touchdown lead in the second half, still won the game, thanks to limiting LA to field goals and a couple of timely Rams miscues. One was a Stafford interception in the end zone. The other was a holding call when LA had the ball on the Lions’ 1-yard line.

    “Early in the season, a lot of games come down to who makes the least mistakes,” Campbell said. “We made one less than they did.”

    The Lions won’t like some of what they see when they watch the game tape, but they’ll certainly smile at a handful of Williams’ plays. Let’s face it: “Jamo,” now in his third season, is, as the old song goes, like a horse that never left the post. Fans and teammates alike have been waiting for the former first-round draft pick to show his true potential.

    On Sunday, he let loose. A snatch over the middle that saw him run past three defenders for a gain of 37 yards. A reverse that saw him rush for 12 yards. A fourth-quarter grab that saw him gain another 27 yards. And a double-take that left the L.A. defender so far behind he needed binoculars to find him: a 52-yard touchdown.

    All told, Williams had a career-high five catches for 121 yards and a score. And he insists he’s just getting started.

    “I don’t expect this to be the best game of my career,” he said, still with the ball in his hand. “I expect this to just be the beginning of me being myself.”

    Detroit will accept that.

    One. Won. And wow.

    Stafford: ‘I had a chance to win’

    Now, a word about Stafford. He may be 36, with a laundry list of injuries on his resume, but he had one of his best games Sunday night at Ford Field. He was missing several starting linemen and one of his two favorite receivers, but he kept the Rams alive with a series of quick and confident slings, some lifted, some whipped, some backpedaled, some without looking.

    Stafford led scoring drives of 67, 70, 76 and 80 yards, leading 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 for a first down and potentially the game-clinching one. As the ball hit the turf, Stafford threw his hands up on his helmet in dismay.

    “That was the game,” he said later. “I had a chance to win.”

    BULLYING: Lions Finally Remember Their Identity in OT

    Stafford, who had worked here for so many lean years, was no longer the center of attention he was when the Rams came to Detroit in January for the wild-card playoff. In fact, there was little of the “Stafford is coming back” angle in the media this time around. When asked if he thought this meant the sports world was done with that story, he grinned and said, “I am.”

    As he should be. As the Lions should be. This is a new day, a new season, and a new approach. To be honest, many were concerned that the Lions might be overconfident at the start of this season, a little inflated by all the summertime predictions of greatness and Super Bowls.

    If so, then it would be falling behind and all it would take to come back and win on Sunday is to let go of the pixie dust of such illusions. Nothing is given in the NFL. 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 getting better. And whether we won or lost today, we’ve got to get better.”

    Or as Goff put it: “It was good enough for the win, but not good enough for our level.”

    Our standard. If you want proof that things have changed around here, this is it.

    A victory that needs improving. A rising star just getting started. A battering ram who says he’s unstoppable. And a national TV 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 wow.

    What now?

    Contact Mitch Albom at [email protected]. Get the latest updates on his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.

    Vaseline
    View all posts

    You Might Also Like