The Thrill of Defeat
Even now I can still see him, the man in gold and white, streaking down the sideline all alone.
And then the ball was in the air. It hung up there for what felt like my entire childhood, spiraling in slow motion, traveling 50 yards in total. I remember gasping. Just a few minutes earlier, my favorite team—my first true love—the Detroit Lions, had taken a three-point lead over the hated Green Bay Packers. It was the first round of the 1993 NFC playoffs, and it was my first time at a Lions game. The sound of the 80,000 souls crammed into the Pontiac Silverdome—a glorified warehouse in the blue-collar suburbs of Detroit—was deafening, a roar of humanity unlike anything I’d ever heard, the decibel level shaking the cement beneath our bleacher seats. But now, with less than one minute remaining, as the football dropped into the hands of Sterling Sharpe, the man in gold and white, there was silence. The Packers’ unproven young quarterback, Brett Favre, had just made the most spectacular touchdown throw of his career and eliminated the Lions from the playoffs.
I was inconsolable. The Lions had been the better team; even a kid could see that. We’d outgained the Packers, out-converted them, outplayed them. But we’d lost anyway—in dramatic, dream-shattering fashion. It was too much for my 7-year-old emotions to process. So, I wept. First in the stands as time expired, then in the swarming, beer-soaked concourse as my family searched for the exit, and for the entire hour-long car ride home. Finally, as we pulled into our driveway, my dad spun the radio knob leftward, turning down the postmortem show. “It’s just a game,” he said, smiling gently. “We’ll win the next one.”
It was the only lie my dad ever told me.
A year later, the Lions met the Packers again in the playoffs—and, again, the Lions lost. The next time they reached the postseason, they lost. And the time after that. And the time after that. Since falling to Green Bay that ill-fated night, the Lions have appeared in seven playoff games. They have lost every single one. This streak of futility, going more than 30 years without a playoff win, is unmatched in the annals of the National Football League. But the historical context is even worse. Since winning an NFL championship in 1957—a decade before the first Super Bowl was played—the Lions have won just one playoff game, in the 1991 season, against the Dallas Cowboys. That’s right: one playoff victory since the Eisenhower administration.
Every loss I’ve witnessed has been painful, but none more than that Packers game. The Lions were stacked with elite talent: linebacker Chris Spielman, offensive tackle Lomas Brown, return specialist Mel Gray. And of course, the most electrifying player in football, running back Barry Sanders. The team was poised to become one of the league’s best. But that loss to the Packers broke them. Suddenly, Favre and his Green Bay squad were ascendant, racking up division titles and conference championships and winning a Super Bowl. Meanwhile, the Lions fell apart. In the summer of 1999, on the eve of training camp, Sanders floored the football world by announcing his retirement. Despite being in the prime of his career—one season away from breaking Walter Payton’s rushing record—he was worn down by the losing. Two years later, the Lions brought in Matt Millen to rebuild the team as president and CEO. What ensued was the most disastrous tenure the football world had ever seen: The Lions went 31–97 during the eight seasons Millen oversaw the roster, solidifying our reputation as the laughingstock of professional
