As I got off an airplane Tuesday morning, a man leaned in and said, "Monday night was the first time I let my 9-year-old son stay up and watch a Detroit Lions game."
I cracked that he should treat his children better. He laughed. Some folks around us laughed. And then we sighed. We all sighed.
It felt like the whole state was sighing Tuesday, didn't it? When we weren't pounding on tables or screaming at replays?
It's not like we've never experienced a loss before. Are you kidding? Lions fans experience loss? Are a wine maker's fingers purple?
But Monday night was different. Monday night, two weeks after taking arguably the AFC's best team, Kansas City, to the final minutes, the Lions took arguably the NFC's best team, Green Bay, to the final minutes _ and lost again, with the outcome determined by a blown call.
"It was a long plane ride home," Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford admitted in our radio interview Tuesday. "(But) ... here's the deal. It's over now. We lost the game. We didn't make enough plays, truthfully, that's the gist of it.
"Yeah, there were calls that went against us. But there were probably some calls that went against them, too."
Not really. Not when it mattered. Not with the game in the balance. No, that's Detroit's specialty. The Packers did just enough to steal that win by a single point, and even their head coach, Matt LaFleur, in the victorious locker room, yelled, "Hey fellas, I don't know how the hell we pulled that off."
Lions Luck. That's how. Not "Same Old Lions," because these are not the same old Lions, they're way more talented now.
And not "The Curse of Bobby Layne," because that's as outdated as Nehru jackets.
"Lions Luck." It has its own definition. If buzzard's luck means "can't kill nothing and nothing will die," then Lions Luck means, "can't put the other guys away early, can't stop something from putting us away late."
