Detroit Lions can still roar into NFL play-offs despite pitiful post-season record

The Detroit Lions are well-placed to reach the NFL play-offs and can therefore begin to improve their luckless post-season record, writes Gregg Patton.

Detroit Lions receiver Golden Tate is confident of his team's play-off chances. Leon Halip / Getty Images

You can feel misery lurking for the Detroit Lions, even as they sit in first place in their division, with control of a post-season berth in their own hands.

“We are right where we want to be, still,” said wide receiver Golden Tate confidently this week.

Should not someone tell him? Things never work out for the NFL’s least successful Super Bowl-era franchise.

Only four teams in the league have not made at least one trip to the NFL’s biggest game since its inauguration in 1967. Of the quartet, the Lions are the only continuously existing franchise from that time.

Their 0-for-50 legacy is not sprinkled with just-misses, either. They have reached the playoffs just 11 times since the first Super Bowl, and have an embarrassing 1-11 post-season record.

The Lions’s 0-16 record in 2008 has no equal in futility, although the 0-14 Cleveland Browns are currently working on matching it.

There is some glimmer of hope. Today’s Lions are 9-5, leading the NFC North by one game over the Green Bay Packers with two games to play, and in position to snag a Wild Card spot, even if they do not hold off the Packers, the division’s traditional bully.

Detroit also might take heart knowing there has been a phenomenal wave of joy in team sports sweeping through previously morose outposts.

Long-suffering organisations such as the Cleveland Cavaliers, Leicester City in English football and the Chicago Cubs in baseball bear the name “champions” right this minute after preposterously long waits.

The Lions cannot be thinking in those terms, yet. The immediate problem is reaching the post-season.

Their final two games are against the NFC’s best team, the 12-2 Dallas Cowboys, on the road, then at home against Green Bay, who are getting stronger as the season winds down.

The Packers stumbled out of the gate, but have won their last four, including a 38-10 dismantling of the NFC West champion Seattle Seahawks.

Two losses would mean a 9-7 finish for Detroit, and, most likely, a seat on the sidelines when the play-offs begin next month.

“I’m not concerned about any of that,” coach Jim Caldwell assured reporters. “I’m looking straight forward at the team we have to face.”

Easy for the coach to say. Certainly anxiety is running high among loyalists who are used to bad things happening.

The last time the Lions were in the play-offs, two seasons ago, they led Dallas in the fourth quarter, were moving the ball for a possible game-clinching score and had the drive extended by an obvious pass interference call against the Cowboys.

However, the referees decided to huddle, then inexplicably reversed the call. Detroit punted, Dallas drove to the game-winning score and the wronged Lions were eliminated.

Even the officials cannot believe the Lions are any good judging by that incident and recent ones this year.

An internet word search for “NFL worst call of the year” will reveal a pair of comically bad decisions by referee Jeff Triplette against Detroit each of the past two weeks.

The one decidedly good thing about Detroit is quarterback Matthew Stafford. The eight-year veteran has led the Lions to eight, fourth-quarter, game-winning scores this season, an NFL record.

In keeping with their doom-and-gloom theme, however, he is playing the final three games, including last week’s road loss to the New York Giants, with a dislocated finger on his throwing hand.

Yes, the Lions do have a rare opportunity these finishing weeks to call themselves a play-off team and chip away at their legacy of despair.

No one, however, really anticipates this will be fun to watch.

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