Foul Play: Did you know the Lions are bad at football?

By Eshaan Joshi

Hey guys, frazzled sports editor here, I just wanted to ask if you knew that the Detroit Lions, née the Portsmouth Spartans of Portsmouth, Ohio, have not been very good at football. Yes, I know; to most who casually follow the NFL, this is a shock. The Lions? Bad at football? A revolutionary development to all but the die-hard fans of this great American sport.

Of course, we’re only really talking about how breathtakingly bad the Detroit Lions are because, well, they… stopped? They stopped being horrendous, that is. Until about a month ago, the running joke was that the Detroit Lions, punching bags of the NFC North, had not won their division since before realignment, so much so that the damned Tampa Bay Buccaneers had won a division that the Lions were in before the Lions had won anything. Those narratives, of course, died in the year of our lord 2023, when the Lions clinched the NFC North for the first time since its inception, won their first divisional title, and hosted their first playoff game since… I dunno, something that makes your parents feel old.

The Lions then proceed to run the gauntlet of teams that had wronged them in the past, beating Matthew “99 Concussions and Counting” Stafford and his Rams 24-23. Stafford was, at one point, one of the better QBs in Detroit’s history, running his offense through Calvin Johnson, considered one of the greatest wide receivers in the NFL. Those teams never managed to put anything together, though, leading to the Lions trading Stafford to the Rams in exchange for the Rams’ Jared Goff, the QB that is currently leading this team on a tear. It’s one of the best trades in recent memory, with both teams getting what they wanted — Stafford won a ring with the Rams after being traded there, and Goff is putting together a legacy in Detroit.

The Lion’s next stop was against the Baker Mayfield led Buccaneers. Mayfield was another washed QB that put it together somewhere else, and the Lions finally got to say they beat “that one team that had won the division before them.” Take that Tampa, I hope you go cry into your two Super Bowl rings.

Detroit now faces two games before they can become champions. The NFC Conference Championship game, played Jan. 28, will decide if the Lions will play in their first Super Bowl in history. Seriously. Ever. And to do that, they have to beat the 49ers, their “Mr. Irrelevant” and one of the most stacked teams in the conference.

It’s no sweat, obviously. Should they pull it off, this squad will have the chance to play the winner of the Ravens-Chiefs matchup in the big game; though, according to some NFL bylaws, if a meteor hits the stadium, and both teams lose, the Lions win by default. As a hater, I’m rooting for that option.

Either way, the Detroit Lions have made huge gains in becoming a legitimate franchise in the last couple years. A team which at one point went 0-16, the first team to do so, is now on their way to maybe making history.