Close game turns into frenzy for jubilant Lions fans
Detroit — It wasn’t until Amon-Ra St. Brown pulled in an 11-yard pass, sealing the Lions' victory Sunday, that Becky Kaufman allowed herself to breathe again. Before that, she had forgotten how.
That’s how tight the team’s first home playoff game in 30 years was. It may be another 30 years before Kaufman of Franklin is ever this nervous again.
“I’m so happy,” she said about the Lions’ victory, not the ability to take and expel air from her lungs.
In truth, her lungs were a bit tired. She had been yelling a lot during the harrowing game, where the Lions beat the Los Angeles Rams 24-23.
When Lions’ receiver St. Brown caught the pass from Jared Goff with 2 minutes left in the contest, it sounded like Kaufman and 66,367 of her best friends were yelling. That was the attendance at Ford Field.
Jubilant fans streamed from Ford Field and into the frosty streets of Detroit chanting “Let’s go, Lions.” Cold? What cold?
“Super Bowl 2024,” said Nathan Frankel, 21, of Bloomfield Hills. “I’ve been waiting for this my whole life.”
Dan Ritter, 51, of Grosse Pointe Shores has been waiting longer.
“This is America’s new team,” he said. “There’s a lot of pride in the city.”
Some fans weren’t sure how they felt about the historic day. They had been too nervous. They were cheering or mourning every play at the end. Maybe the best word was frenzied.
“I can’t watch. It’s intense,” Kaufman said she watched from a standing-room section near the 50-yard-line.
In the end, it was a happy frenzy.
Jessica Wells has tailgated at many a Lions game, so many that she can walk from her usual parking spot to Ford Field with her eyes closed.
What she has never done is tailgate before a playoff game.
What should she do? Wake up five hours earlier than usual to ensure her spot is available? Bring money to bribe the parking lot attendant?
This is what happens when your football team hasn’t been home for the playoffs for three decades. Life becomes a confounding mystery.
Wells, 48, of Waterford Township rolled the dice Sunday and, following her normal routine, snagged her usual spot along a snow-crusted blacktop on Elizabeth Street.
Normal for Wells involves a race with the sun to see who reaches downtown Detroit first. Abnormal was the temperature, a blustery 6 degrees, and chipping iceberg-size chunks of ice off her Toyota.
“Nothing was going to stop me,” she said. “I would have come in a blizzard.”
The beginning of the game brought a blizzard of noise.
Fans serenaded their quarterback, Jared Goff, and lustily booed the other team’s QB, someone named Matthew Stafford.
When it appeared the noise couldn’t get any louder, the stadium celebrated the Lions’ first touchdown, and then a second one, with fireworks.
“I didn’t know they did that,” said Maddie Hayes of Taylor after jumping in her seat after the first set of pyrotechnics.
The atmosphere at football-crazed gatherings inside and out of Ford Field was happy and lighthearted before the playoff game Sunday between the Lions and Los Angeles Rams.
Some fans admitted to pre-game jitters, and it had nothing to do with the deep freeze outside. The more hopeful said they anticipated an evening of unadulterated joy.
Things were fine and dandy at WynnBET sports bar in Ford Field until a stranger wielding a pen asked about He Who Shall Not Be Named.
For Sunday wasn’t just the return of the playoffs to Ford Field. It was the reappearance of Matthew Stafford, who had been the Lions quarterback for a dozen years.
Stafford left Detroit in 2021 to win a Super Bowl for the Rams and, on Sunday, accompanied by his new paramours, was threatening to ruin the Lions’ dream season.
The boys at WynnBET were having none of it. The mood at their mug-strewn table lowered a little when asked about their one-time hero.
Boo, Ralph Robinson said at the mention of Stafford’s name. Boo, he added for emphasis, although he was smiling.
And then this:
“I actually like him. I wanted him to win the Super Bowl,” said Robinson, 27, of Ferndale.
On Sunday, however, he was hoping the QB would throw six interceptions.
In other parts of the city-within-a-city that is called Ford Field, nostalgia was in the air.
Beth Stevens of St. Clair Shores was giving a history lesson as she stood in the mammoth concourse of the stadium. She talked about a gridiron far, far away, or, as the crow flies, about 25 miles.
It was a hulking structure called the Pontiac Silverdome that, like Ford Field, also had a roof but maybe one that wasn’t quite as sturdy. It was there that, in 1994, Stevens spied the mythical beast called a Lions’ home playoff game.
The less said about that sad affair the better (a 28-24 loss to the hated Packers), but Stevens said she had no idea it would take 30 years for the team to host a similar spectacle.
“It will be worth it,” she said about the long wait for this year’s game. “They’re going to win. I know it.”
After waiting three decades, there was no way Stevens was going to miss Sunday’s contest. She and her husband paid heavily for tickets on the resale market. How heavily is a family secret.
Another site passing strange in the Ford Field concourse was a Lions’ jersey that was even rarer than Stafford’s on Sunday.
Dave Fleming wore the No. 19 of Scott Mitchell, a former Lions’ quarterback who is blamed, fairly or unfairly, depending on the last fan you asked, for the team not doing better during the Barry Sanders’ years.
Fleming, 65, of Wyandotte is lukewarm about Mitchell but said he was making a point, that Stafford should be the least popular player in team history, at least for one day.
“He didn’t leave us,” Fleming said about Mitchell.
The Lions, however, did leave the quarterback, benching him in 1998 and trading him the following year.
In other Lion-crazed precincts, with frosted solo cups and fire pits blazing, Lions fans' resolve to tailgate and celebrate Detroit's first home playoff game in three decades was not shaken by Sunday's sub-freezing temperatures.
Hundreds flooded the streets of downtown Detroit to tailgate while lines stretched out the doors of every sports bar within a five-block radius of Ford Field as dozens more, like Erin and John Onofrey, sought refuge from the cold.
Erin Onofrey, 35, was clad in a full-body Lion onesie, which she saves for special games only. She and her husband, John Onofrey, of Romeo have had season tickets for at least seven years but said the stadium has been louder this year than any season in recent memory.
"Lions fans just have a vibe about them," Erin Onofrey said. "It's more of a roar than a vibe. ... They definitely have come a long way and they aren't the same old Lions and I think we've proved that this season."
John Onofrey, 39, agreed and said the excitement is the result of three decades of pent-up energy. The Lions were hosting their first playoff game in 30 years Sunday night, but it was also the first playoff game ever to be held at Ford Field.
Onofrey recalled his parents going to the Lions' last playoff game at the Silverdome in 1994. They have since passed away, but Onofrey is carrying on the tradition.
"To come out of it with a win, I mean talk about uplifting the city. ... If the Lions ever won the Super Bowl, I think the city would just explode," John Onofrey said. "Everybody's got a shot any given Sunday."
January football in Detroit is a foreign concept to any Lions fans born in this century, but hundreds were coping with freezing temperatures, nonetheless. Zach Ficht, of Detroit was tailgating outside with his father and three uncles ahead of the game. The cold had knocked the group's keg out of commission and frozen the foam on Ficht's beer, all the more reason to drink it fast, he said.
"It would mean the world to have a deep run and to get validation from everyone within the NFL that we're not, you know, a doormat anymore," Ficht said. "Hopefully, we can continue to prove them wrong."
But Ficht, 34, was feeling nervous ahead of the game. Until recently he had carried on the family tradition, started by his grandfather, of holding Lions season tickets.
"I have three boys at home. ... they'll be watching from afar," Ficht said. "They're getting to see a totally different experience where you know, on Sundays, they have a better chance to win."
Special edition Lions tequila kept Michael Benner, 30, warm all afternoon. The Sterling Heights resident had been tailgating since 2 p.m. with friends.
"I woke up this morning, this is the biggest playoff game, the biggest game of my entire life. There's so much excitement it's — I don't even know how to describe it," Benner said. "I got all the friends here, to see everyone out here, the entire city is 1 degree, and we don't care. This is what Detroit does."
This is Benner's inaugural year as a Lions season ticket holder and the first home playoff game in his lifetime.
"People have told me 'SOL' (same old Lions) my entire life, I've told them they were wrong," Brenner said. "We're the brand-new Lions now, no more of that SOL. ... I bleed Honolulu blue."
Longtime Lions fan Corey Holliday of Algonac predicted a close game and thinks it'll come down to whoever has the ball last.
"Hopefully, it's a blowout, but I'm being a little optimistic," Holliday said. "I'm gonna cry probably if we win or lose. I'm crying today. I'm ready for it."
He may have something. The Detroit News spoke with Holliday ahead of the Lions home opener against the Seattle Seahawks in September, and he predicted Detroit would go 13-4. They finished the regular season 12-5, but he also said Detroit would have its first playoff game at Ford Field.
The Green Bay Packers lead the Dallas Cowboys and the victor will play the winner Sunday of the Lions-Rams game next week.
"We're Green Bay fans right now for the next couple of hours. ... We need another home game here so, hopefully, next week," Holliday said.
Friends Kevin Longe and Kevin Kelly started attending Lions games together 15 years ago when the team went 0-16.
"There might not be another one for another 30 years or so got take advantage of this one," Kelly, 34, said. "Last time they were in a home, or had a playoff game, we were what, four years old? So, we've never even been a part of something like this."
Sunday's playoff game feels like a great culmination, Longe, 34, said, adding that if the Lions win it will be the best day of his life topping even his wedding day.
Longe and Kelly were tailgating with friends and family and had a tent set up to keep warm. A Matthew Stafford jersey served as the welcome mat.
"We didn't want to get the parking lot dirty," Kelly joked. "I think this is going to be one of the most electric home atmospheres ever. I think that's why we're gonna win today."
Most fans agreed that it would not be a pleasant homecoming for Stafford, the former Lions quarterback.
"He was our quarterback for 12 years, but he's not anymore. We ride with Jared Goff now," Brenner said. "When we win today, this city will erupt. ... If we can get another home game out here, oh boy, I can't even imagine."
Brent Clodgio, of Livonia agreed that he loved Stafford while he played for Detroit but is hoping he throws at least one pick 6 today.
"Every time we try to go through what they say a new era or a new culture change, nothing's ever worked until my man MCDC, Motor City Darren Campbell, comes around," said Clodgio, 39. "We've been rebuilding since 1957. We've not been able to host a playoff game in 30 years so, you know, it's all coming to fruition."
(313) 223-4186
@prima_donnelly