How Lions' last NFL playoff win and ultra-rare triumph shaped one USA TODAY reporter

The Detroit Lions have won one NFL playoff game in the Super Bowl era.

I was there at the Silverdome 32 years ago, covering the game for the Lansing State Journal as a sidebar and notebook reporter – just a 21-year-old college student.

The Lions will try to end the NFL’s longest stretch without a playoff victory against the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday in their first home playoff game since 1994.

Looking back 30-plus years, receiving the responsibility to cover Lions games at the Silverdome was as surreal as it was motivational as it was educational as it was preposterous.

I’m forever thankful for the opportunity and grateful to a writer (Jack Ebling) and sports editor (Steve Klein) for believing I belonged in that press box. What I learned then, I’ve carried with me.

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The Lions went 12-4 in the 1991 season, winning the NFC Central and hosting a divisional-round game on Jan. 5, 1992 against the Dallas Cowboys, who beat the Chicago Bears in a wild-card game. The Cowboys, with Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin, were on the verge of greatness but not quite there. That came one year later when Dallas beat Buffalo in Super Bowl 27.

As the Lions rolled toward a 38-6 victory over Dallas, I was assigned a sidebar from the Cowboys locker room and a notebook.

Aikman didn’t hold back when asked his thoughts on a Washington-Detroit NFC championship game. “They don’t have the team to beat them,” Aikman said of the Lions. “If Washington gets on top of Detroit, it will be a long Sunday for the Lions.”

If “going viral” were a thing then like it is today, the headline and quote would have been viral and led all the yelling on sports TV shows and internet sites.

Aikman and the other Cowboys who didn’t think the Lions had a chance were right. Washington stomped the Lions 41-10.

Being around those Lions that season and the couple of seasons after that were important in shaping the way I cover and view sports, and to a degree, how I view life in general.

Appreciating greatness

You don’t root or cheer in the press box. You can be critical, but you shouldn’t be so jaded that you can’t appreciate greatness and chronicle that for readers. There has to be joy in the work.

Watching Barry Sanders taught me that.

One of the joys of watching Sanders on a regular basis was the anticipation that an amazing run was just a handoff away. It didn’t matter the score or quarter.

A 3-yard loss was possible, but so was a 50-yard touchdown run with Sanders bouncing off defenders, with defenders grasping at a ghost – Sanders, Houdini-like, was long gone and in another direction – and with Sanders headed for the end zone.

He turned less than nothing into something much larger than nothing.

That has served me well as an NBA writer for USA TODAY, covering Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Nikola Jokic.

Sobering realizations

Significant and insignificant, nothing lasts forever. The Lions started the 1991 season 5-1 and were 6-4 when they played the Los Angeles Rams in Week 12.

Lions offensive lineman Mike Utley sustained an injury to his sixth and seventh vertebrae, causing paralysis. He gave a thumbs up as he was carted off the field, and that has became a symbol for the Mike Utley Foundation, which aims to help find a cure for paralysis. In one play, his career was over and his life changed.

Utley never played again, but his teammates played for him. The Lions beat the Rams, closing out the regular season with six consecutive victories, and Utley remained an inspiration not only for that team but others. There is great emotion and power in that.

While the Lions reached the playoffs in five of the next eight seasons, they never won another playoff game. In the three times they missed the postseason during that era, they were 5-11 each season. Abysmal seasons followed, including 0-16 in 2008.

Sanders, a Hall of Famer, abruptly retired just before the 1999 season – and he had rushed for 2,053 yards in 1997 and 1,491 yards in 1998.

Hope and promise are there one day, absent the next.

Being a professional

Going back to grade school, I wanted to do this job, and along the way, certain things happened that made me believe I could do it. Covering Lions games was one of them, a place where I learned about being a professional, writing on deadline, reporting what I saw and heard and delivering that to readers.

When most of my college friends were sleeping in on Sunday, I was headed to a 1 p.m. Lions game. We got there early and were prepared. After reporters filed stories, we waited until editors edited. This was before cell phones, so we didn’t leave the press box until editors signed off the stories via a call on a landline.

It was a graduate school seminar – and I was getting paid. I was never in awe of being there. But I was cognizant of how special it was that I had a pressbox seat alongside many of the writers I grew up reading in the Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, Toledo Blade, Flint Journal, Saginaw News and Grand Rapid Press. Accurate or not, I felt I belonged, and that confidence can’t be understated.

Michiganders love their football

Throughout all the losing seasons and hopelessness, Lions fans show up. Football is huge in the state at all levels, a community event in towns and cities across the state. During the season, it’s possible to attend a prep, college and NFL game on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

At a home game at Ford Field, fans of Michigan, Michigan State, Western Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Central Michigan, Northern Michigan, Lake Superior State, Alma, Grand Valley State, Hope, Albion and Adrian are all on the same side rooting for the Lions.

They pack establishments before, during and after games and tailgate downtown. And they started to see this Lions team come together over the past two seasons – 9-8 last season and 12-5 this season.

Long-suffering Lions fans have waited three decades for another playoff victory, just as fans had waited more than three decades for that playoff victory in 1992.

In sports – as in life sometimes – what you deserve, what you need and what you get aren’t always equal.

Those Lions fans, they deserve a playoff victory.