At the end of the 1957 NFL season, the Detroit Lions were champions of the world. Led by future hall of fame quarterback Bobby Layne, no one wanted to cross through Detroit. Unfortunately, in the 1957 championship game, Layne sustained an injury, and the Lions thought his career was over. During that offseason, the Lions traded this star QB to the Pittsburgh Steelers. Layne infamously declared that the Lions “would not win for another fifty years.”
Since what is now known as the “Curse of Bobby Layne”, the Detroit Lions have never made it to a Super Bowl. They have suffered through many miserable losing seasons, including being the first team to have a winless record in the Super Bowl Era.
Last year, the Lions began with a 1-6 record, the worst in the NFL. The Curse of Bobby Layne was still causing frustration across the city of Detroit. To change this, avid Lions fan and actor Jeff Daniels made a guest appearance on former NFL star Peyton Manning’s TV show to lift the curse of Bobby Layne. They comically conducted an exorcism ritual involving a bathtub and candles to end the Lions years of losing.
Since then, the Detroit Lions have gone 9-3.
Years of pain and losing seem to be paying off this season as the Lions finally seem to have hope. Led by energetic head coach Dan Campbell, the Honolulu Blue are entering this season as the favorites to win their division.
Prior to the season, many fans and critics alike were unsure if the hype was real. The Lions closed out the 2022 season with a whopping 8-2 record. They were impressive, to say the least. Their offseason bode well. Despite their success, the defense tended to struggle. So general manager Brad Holmes signed multiple free agents and drafted rookie prospects to fill those positions.
Even so, people were unsure. An 8-2 finish is impressive, but the Lions still went 9-8 as a whole on the season and missed the playoffs. The new defense was unproven. Many people found some of their draft decisions to be questionable. They traded back in the draft to get a lower-ranked running back. They reached and drafted a linebacker in the late first round that people thought should have been a second-round pick. Their quarterback, Jared Goff, is known to be incredibly inconsistent in past years, so even he raised questions. Was last season a fluke? Is Goff going to regress and be terrible? Or, even worse, could he get hurt?
All questions would be answered early on in the season, because the Lions kicked off the year against the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs on Thursday Night Football. In the most difficult possible game, the Lions marched into Arrowhead and took Patrick Mahomes head on. It wasn’t pretty, but the Lions showed the world that they were for real by edging out the Chiefs, 21-20.
And, for the first time in nearly sixty years, the people of Detroit have hope for their football team.
Students at Berkley are feeling the hype surrounding the Honolulu Blue building, too.
“It feels amazing to finally have hope for the Lions,” senior Adin Weiner says, ”Never in my life have I felt more comfortable with the state of the team. It’s a big stress reliever knowing we can get it done on Sundays.”
Senior Liam Chudler feels that “the culture of the team is great in general. It seems like this group is really together and playing for one another, and in years past it hasn’t felt like that, which is awesome, and us fans have head coach Dan Campbell to thank for that.”
“Dan Campbell is the messiah that this football team needed, and what he is doing will lead us to the promised land in the very future,” says Weiner.
Expectations for the Lions season are at an all-time high. Both Weiner and Chudler expect the playoffs (and possibly more), and that seems to be the consensus amongst all fans of this team.
The fans and this city are more than ready for this season, as sixty years of misery and losing finally looks like it will come to an end.
