I'm not a zoologist but lucky for me I'm not talking about the lions in Africa, I'm talking about the Lions of Detroit and their fans. The Franchise has four championships to their name but in the rest of the leagues eyes they don't matter. They all came before the merger and even before the AFL was founded, just like their playoff success. As most fans know you can have successful seasons and not win championships but in Detroit it's a tad different. Since 1957 the Lions have made the playoffs twelve times, the kicker is they are 1-12 in the thirteen games. With that one win coming during the 1992 playoffs on the back a of Barry Sanders, the teams best player in franchise history. The last 64 years have not just been sad and mediocre they have been historically bad, being the first team to go 0-16.
The sadness continues when you take a look at the Playoffs games in the 21st century. In the 2011 seasons playoffs they traveled to New Orleans and got slaughtered 45-28 by the eventual superbowl champs. In 2017 they went to Seattle and got stomped by the Seahawks 26-6 giving up almost 400 yards of offense. The worst of all though, the 2014 playoffs was more hopeful when they traveled to Dallas to face the Cowboys. Matt Stafford was down 24-20 with ball in the fourth quarter driving to get into position to take the game. Dallas pushed them to a 4th&5 on the Cowboys 41 yard line. Detroit drew up a play that would put Brandon Pettigrew in single coverage just beyond the yard to gain, then disaster happened. The Cowboys defender interfered with Pettigrew but no flag was thrown, turning the ball back over to the Cowboys and ending the game and continuing the suffrage of the Detroit Lions.
Unfortunately for Lions fans this year doesn't look to be better than the last after they traded away star quarterback Matthew Stafford and letting the top receivers on the team leave in free agency. They did however sign Dan Campbell to 6 year contract to try and rebuild from the ground up. Trading Stafford gave them an extra first round pick in next years draft and they do have the 8th overall pick in this years draft, setting them up for potential success but we'll have to wait and see.
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