Editor’s Note: This week, Peter suspends his usual commentary about the auto industry to offer some perspective on the Detroit Lions, and what the team – and its excruciating loss in San Francisco – really means to the people around these parts. He also takes on Porsche’s latest foray into EVs in On The Table with thew new Macan, along with Cadillac’s continued commitment to building V-Series machines. And our AE Song of the Week is “Brand New Key” by the recently departed Melanie. In Fumes, we bring you Peter’s popular series “The Muscle Boys, Part II” – when big block V8s ruled the racing world. And finally, in The Line, we bring you the latest results from the IMSA Rolex 24 at Daytona. Onward. -WG
By Peter M. DeLorenzo
Detroit. Well, let’s just say that the Detroit Lions game was exceedingly disappointing. To come out executing at a high level in every phase of the game in the first half and then to suffer a total collapse in the second half was just too cruel for words.
The reason I’m writing about it is that you have to understand just how much the travails of the Lions over the decades have ripped the guts out of this town. Yes, we have the Tigers and the Red Wings, but this has always been a football town first and foremost, and we have lived – and usually died – with the Lions in excruciating ways, including that winless, 0 for 16 season, which wasn’t all that long ago.
For me personally it has been a hard road. I first went to a Lions game at the old Briggs Stadium (and later, Tiger Stadium) on October 15, 1961. My dad took me to the game when the Lions were playing the Los Angeles Rams. The Lions won, 14-13 and I was hooked. My dad knew the legendary Lions announcer Van Patrick, and we were fortunate to visit the Rams and Lions locker rooms with him before the game. It was the first of many fabulous Sundays spent at that old dark, drafty and cold stadium (complete with the 20-foot galvanized steel “troughs,” which served as urinals in the bathrooms).
Our seats were in the equivalent of upper deck in right-center field if we were attending a Tigers game, but for the Lions the seats were damn-near perfect, overlooking one of the 40-yard-lines on the Lions side. And when I say “overlooking” I mean exactly that. The beauty of the old Briggs-Tiger stadium was that, unlike our modern stadiums, the stadium didn’t spread out away from the action. The outfield stands went straight up from the field, so our vantage point was exceptional.
The most memorable game I have ever attended – and to this day hands-down the most exciting – was the Thanksgiving Day game against our long-standing rivals, the Green Bay Packers. The Pack was rolling, and they brought their all-stars and undefeated season to play the Lions at (now Tiger) Stadium. And lo and behold, it turned out to be a crushing defeat for The Pack, and still, to this day, the most memorable win in Detroit Lions history, even more so than their three NFL championships in the 1950s. The Lions sacked Bart Starr eleven times, and the Lions won 26-14, spoiling the Packers’ undefeated season. It was the most electric big-game atmosphere I have ever experienced, and the crowd stood the entire game – you couldn’t even hear yourself talk. It was fantastic, riveting and spectacular, and as I said, the most memorable Lions day ever.
This town has ebbed and flowed with the Lions as they lurched through mediocrity punctuated by stellar performances, including by Barry Sanders, the best running back to ever play the game (if you ask people here anyway). The move to the stadium in Pontiac was a mixed bag, as the Silverdome – as it became to be known – was sterile and frankly a dump. The fans were detached from the action, and it just wasn’t the same. The move back to downtown Detroit at Ford Field was a huge step in the right direction, as at least the place has some character to it.
But still, we suffered through season after season with the lingering collective refrain around these parts being “the same-old Lions” as the team stumbled relentlessly as it tried to show some meaningful progress. But it was inevitably not to be, until Dan Campbell was hired as coach three years ago that is.
Then, everything seemed to change. The first season under the ex-tight end Campbell (2021) the Lions were 3-13-1; then they were 9-8 in 2022 after knocking the Packers from the playoffs in the last game of the season at Lambeau Field; and finally, 12-5 in 2023.
And then the NFC Playoffs, culminating in the game last Sunday against the San Francisco 49ers. That the Lions looked like the team everyone thought they could be in that first half was immensely gratifying, but for me it was filled with trepidation as well, because in my gut I knew that the 49ers were far too good to let that first-half performance stand. And, unfortunately that was exactly the case.
But the way the Lions lost was beyond excruciating. Defensive lapses, poor play calling, dropped passes, lucky breaks (that deflected pass that was caught by the 49er player) and just a huge letdown by the team when they absolutely couldn’t afford it. For long-suffering Lions fans around these parts and across the state, it was just beyond painful. It wasn’t just a loss; it was a crushing, breathtaking, gut-wrenching body slam to the senses.
But in spite of all of this, the things I can do without is all of the relentless post-game hand-wringing. The woulda-coulda-shoulda of all of it is just stupid and a giant waste of time. Coach Campbell called the game exactly like he did the entire season, good and bad. It is what it is, and it can’t be reversed in some cosmic time warp, so we will all move on. At least we should anyway.
Oh, and one more thing, this business of calling the Detroit Lions the new “America’s Team” is just too much unmitigated bullshit for me. That’s not who we are by any stretch of the imagination.
As I’ve written previously: The deal on Detroit is this:
Is this a tough town? Unquestionably. Are things on an upward trajectory? If you’re purely looking at the automobile industry that lives here, yes and no. But when looking at the health of the city and its environs, and the deep-rooted problems that plague this city and its educational system, the ones that are preventing this city from doing anything but a dismal, two-steps forward, five-back self-defeating dance of “progress,” then we have a long, long, long way to go.
Yes, as a town and as a region we do have a long way to go. But this is who we are, and this auto thing is what really matters to us. We don’t need sympathy, and the glossy stories of late are nice but they will never define us, or what it’s really like to be here and be from around here.
We’re a state of mind that’s filled with countless contradictions, and our great history is offset by some lurid realities.
We’ve contributed much to the American fabric, yet we have a historical propensity to make things brutally tough on our day-to-day well-being.
We’ve brought this country a sound like no other and a gritty, gutty context that’s second to none, yet we’ve created countless problems for ourselves, most all of them self-inflicted.
We created the “Arsenal of Democracy” when our country needed it most, yet we allowed a movement based on fairness to become a disease based on entitlement and rancor.
We’ve contributed much to this nation’s progress and standing, yet we can’t seem to get out of our own way at times, which is infuriating and debilitating.
But thankfully, the story never really ends for Detroit. At least not yet anyway. We’re still standing, warts and glaring faults and all. And you can forget the recent glory stories about our renaissance, because we don’t really need ‘em to validate us.
We know who we are. And we know that the perception isn’t often favorable. And we get that. But still there’s an exuberance and spirit here that no Super Bowl appearance can ever capture.
It’s a Detroit thing, or if you must, a Dee-troit thing. And we’re proud of what that means.
But “America’s Team”?
Not now. Not ever.
And that’s the High-Octane Truth for this week.