Watch the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game this Sunday, with kickoff at 8pm live on Sky Sports NFL; the San Francisco 49ers then host the Detroit Lions in the NFC Championship Game from 11.30pm; watch Super Bowl LVIII live on Sunday, February 11
Thursday 25 January 2024 20:22, UK
Motown lives. Motor City is purring. The Super Bowl is calling.
The NFL and its cult of all-scrutinising followers grimaced when Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell began talking about biting kneecaps at his introductory press conference in 2021. Rah-rah was out, it was dated, it was everything that would foreshadow doomed fate in the modern league, where nerdy analytics and pristine scheme architecture tends to supersede old-fashioned moxie.
Another string to the could-be-gimmicky bow emerged when Campbell revealed that he begins his day with two 40-oz coffees consisting of two espresso shots in each, which could have been force-fed as a tenuous metaphor for the full throttle brand of football he sought to install. Bottom line: he was tuned in, and his players had better be, too. Spoiler: they were.
The caveat to taking on the job in Detroit was always the necessity of an outright culture transformation; it would take the rallying cries that risked ridicule in the event of empty promises, it would take divisive brashness, unfiltered emotion and a universal buy-in to mundane, cliche work ethic, all of which could make for shaky grounds without the personnel or play design to prop them up.
Prop them up, they have. Ford Field logged a stadium-record decibel level of 134.3 as the Lions beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their Divisional Round clash last weekend, such has been its role as an amphitheatre for the release of decades-spanning pain.
Campbell arrived at a franchise that had been without a playoff win since 1991, the most recent and only time Detroit have reached the NFC Championship Game. He entered a building that had advanced to the postseason on just three occasions in the past 20 years, a building that had seen their Barry Sanders-spearheaded team come up shy in the 90s, a building that endured the bitter disappointment of unfulfilled hope for a side led by Matthew Stafford, a prime Calvin Johnson and one of the league's most potent offenses.
The Lions were synonymous with Thanksgiving football, the gritty DNA on which they leant in times of turmoil and, well, losing. Two years on from the introduction of Campbell and General Manager Brad Holmes, they were reflecting excitedly over a 9-8 record after finishing the 2022 campaign with eight wins in their last 10. Three years on from the introduction of Campbell and Holmes, they are a game away from the Super Bowl. The culture changed, and so too the narrative. For the foreseeable, they hope.
Jared Goff has been a fitting face of revival while marrying his California image to the hard-nosed steel of Detroit in something of a beautiful oxymoron, reigniting his own career as a starting quarterback in the NFL as he seeks a return to the Super Bowl after falling at the final hurdle with the Los Angeles Rams in 2019.
Goff's entrance is where, in many ways, it began. He was shipped off to Detroit by the Rams in March 2021 as part of a trade that would see Stafford head in the opposite direction in a bid to end his wait for a Championship ring - a wait that did end later that season as he out-duelled Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals in the campaign finale at Super Bowl LVI. In doing so he was deemed as little more than a make-shift bridge to Detroit's next face of the franchise, with his experience just enough to compensate for perceptions of a career in decline. Goff wasn't the answer to progress, until he was.
Rarely do you find two winners of a trade. This might be an exception. Stafford won his Super Bowl and Goff just dumped out his counterpart along with Sean McVay, Puka Nacua, Aaron Donald and Cooper Kupp's dangerous Rams on Super Wild Card Weekend, before dicing up Todd Bowles' Super Bowl champion-stacked Buccaneers defense to take the Lions to the NFC title game.
He has only grown in poise as the stakes have heightened. Bowles blitzed him over 50 per cent of the time at the weekend, only for Goff to respond with a clinic in field diagnosis, matchup exploitation, quick release and accuracy to the tune of 30-of-43 passing for 287 yards and two touchdowns.
The flashpoint came in the fourth quarter when Goff delivered a sublime back-shoulder touchdown strike to Amon-Ra St. Brown in the narrowing corner of the end zone, caressing his pass with flawless touch and placement to leave Zyon McCollum helpless in coverage. It capped a decisive 10-play 89-yard drive that Goff had kept alive with a sucker-punch third-and-15 conversion to his favourite target again, burying Baker Mayfield and the Bucs.
He isn't your modernised out-of-structure killer or off-script dash-and-toss playmaker, but one of few active beacons of the old pocket-passer and mechanics-reliant mould. Behind one of the NFL's most violent and mobile offensive lines, in tandem with the imagination of offensive coordinator Ben Johnson and with a blossoming chemistry between himself and St. Brown, it has worked in the face of a Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson-driven world of bendy quarterbacks.
The St. Brown touchdown would be another leading instalment of the Johnson experience, the future NFL head coach baiting Tampa into man coverage to give his best receiver a one-on-one matchup before dialling up a rub route to create conflict outside and buy Goff the window he needed. Sure, it took perfect timing and accuracy, but Goff can do that.
With Detroit's ascent has come Johnson's rapid rise to head coach contention, within which has been a masterclass in line of scrimmage control, three-level route concepts and the balanced scheme customary to any effective offense. Penei Sewell has become a centre-piece to said system while playing as well as any right tackle in the league this season, not only allowing Goff a clean stage on which to work in the backfield but flying east-to-west as Detroit's lane-ploughing enforcer to a rushing attack that ranked fifth in yards and sixth in rush EPA this season.
Sewell was the seventh overall pick at the 2021 NFL Draft, and has since springboarded Detroit's ground game with the speed and agility to which no man who measures up at 6'5" and 335lbs should be entitled. He mauls, he clobbers, he lives for destruction. As do Campbell's Lions. Goff has been excellent, but the story is Johnson's offensive line and the doors it continues to open.
It is a team built on youth production. Multi-purpose rookie running back Jahmyr Gibbs has posted 1,261 yards and 11 touchdowns from scrimmage, 2021 fourth-round pick St. Brown has closed the gap on the league's elite pass-catchers with a team-high 119 catches for 1,515 yards and 10 touchdowns, and rookie tight end Sam LaPorta has erupted with 86 catches (a single-season rookie record) for 889 yards and 10 scores.
Detroit's business decision to not hand Jamaal Williams a pay rise despite his team-high 17 touchdowns in 2022 has meanwhile been rewarded by the team-leading 1,015 rushing yards and 13 end zone trips put up by David Montgomery since signing in free agency.
The theme has carried over onto the Lions defense, where second-year edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson has registered a team-leading 21 sacks since being taken No. 2 overall in 2022, while second-round rookie defensive back Brian Branch has made the rest of the league pay for passing on him at last year's Draft as one of the league's most gifted nickels.
If Sewell is the story of the offense, Branch might be the story of Aaron Glenn's defense. The former Alabama man has amassed 74 tackles, a sack, three interceptions and 13 pass defenses as Detroit's do-it-all chess piece, be it bringing the heat as a disguised late blitzer or tracking the league's best pass catchers.
Now for the big one. A San Francisco 49ers team awoken by its scare against the Green Bay Packers and led by a coach in Kyle Shanahan who preys on weakness; everything on Sunday will be designed to dare Goff into a mistake.
Detroit can't attest to the resume of others in the final four. As far as success against contenders goes, they were handily trashed by the Baltimore Ravens in a 38-6 defeat in Week Seven before falling to Jordan Love's Packers in Week 12 and coming up shy in a 20-19 loss to the Dallas Cowboys in Week 17. But setbacks have never snowballed into chaos, and postseason football is a different game.
Hutchinson's post-game interview following Sunday's win over the Bucs centred on this Detroit team's devotion to rewarding its city and fanbase, embracing the pageantry and ecstasy that had fuelled one of the great atmospheres in recent Lions history. Linebacker Derrick Barnes followed up immediately after by analysing his game-sealing interception, citing the Cade Otton seam route that had featured prominently on film during preparations; "Oh you got the football answer," joked an impressed Hutchinson.
It was a small embodiment of what the Lions have become as a complementary balance of both emotionally charged, no-quit football and a reflection of some of the NFL's smartest, most innovative and detail-orientated young players and minds.
They head into Levi's Stadium on undisputed merit as one of the stories of the 2023 season. Perennial contention was the aim, now they could win it all.
Watch the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game this Sunday, with kickoff at 8pm live on Sky Sports NFL; the San Francisco 49ers then host the Detroit Lions in the NFC Championship Game from 11.30pm; watch Super Bowl LVIII live on Sunday, February 11
