The chants started well before kickoff, then briefly turned to boos when you-know-who ran onto Ford Field for the first time as the foe. Matthew Stafford couldn't have expected anything else. Detroit is loyal to its own, territorial of its turf. So the chants resumed moments later, even louder than before, a salute to the quarterback who has taken the Lions to places that Stafford never could: Ja-red Goff! Ja-red Goff!!
"I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like that," Goff would say. "Yeah, man, I love these guys.”
They weren't sure of him at first, because everyone else was sure he was cooked. Sean McVay said so, right? The Rams shipped Goff to Detroit two years after he helped them reach the Super Bowl because they decided he couldn't operate McVay's offense, and the Lions received him as a tax for better draft capital in exchange for Stafford. The narratives said so, right? Brad Holmes never saw it that way, insisting that a big piece of the trade for the Lions was "just being able to acquire Jared." Goff saw it as an opportunity to revive a franchise, and his own career.
"Sometimes when one team doesn’t believe in you, it doesn’t mean that everyone doesn’t believe in you," he said after last season. "I think that’s what may have gotten confused amongst the national audience."
There's no confusing it now: Jared Goff is the guy in Detroit. With the national audience fixated on a homecoming for Stafford, who tried and failed for 12 years to lug the Lions somewhere new, Goff lifted the Lions into the second round of the playoffs Sunday night for the first time in 32 years. He was close to perfect in the first half as Detroit raced out to a 21-10 lead, and he was clutch when he had to be on the final drive of the game.
Goff completed his first 11 throws, behind his typically stout offensive line. He also zipped a touchdown to Sam LaPorta on fourth and goal, on a daring decision by Dan Campbell. And after the offense slowed in the second half, Goff completed his last two throws, the second a tried-and-true curl route to Amon-Ra St. Brown -- who else? -- to seize the night and seal shut the past.
The fans roared when Goff took the final knee, as fireworks exploded inside Ford Field and blue and white streamers rained down from the rafters. This was the sound of catharsis. Goff called it "surreal," a scene pulled straight out of a dream.
"From the moment I got here, you imagine getting that playoff win and having this type of atmosphere in front of our home crowd and being able to sit on the ball like that and finish it out," he said. "It kind of all hit me there at once. Had to subdue a lot of emotions this week and was able to enjoy that moment.”
Goff spent most of the week downplaying his rematch with McVay and the Rams, out of respect for his teammates. His teammates said they wanted to win it for him. Alex Anzalone, one of the only veterans who arrived with Goff at the outset of the Lions rebuild, smiled in the locker room after Detroit's 24-23 win and said, "He played it off well all week, that it was just another game." It wasn't, of course. It couldn't have been.
"It was a great statement for him, and I think that as his teammate, it was our job to get this win for him," said Anzalone, who returned to the game after injuring his shoulder in the fourth quarter and finished with a team-high eight tackles.
"His old team coming back, they kind of wrote him off," said guard Jonah Jackson. "It is what is. Sometimes new beginnings are better beginnings."
Stafford's new beginning immediately crested in a Super Bowl, as Detroit cheered from a distance. It was lonesome more than it was loyal, a longing for what could have been. Goff's new beginning felt more like his end, amid the misery of his first season as Lions quarterback. Now it's just getting started. Goff almost surely has an extension coming his way this offseason, no matter what happens next. That there is a next for the Lions, with most of the NFL at home, is exactly the point.
"I know Stafford did a lot here for the fans and the organization, but it’s different times now," said St. Brown. "Jared’s here. We won the division for the first time in 30 years, so we’re doing things that haven’t been done in a while. But we gotta keep going."
A fourth-round pick in Holmes' first draft class, St. Brown has grown into a superstar with Goff throwing him the ball. A global icon, even: He answered a couple postgame questions Sunday night in German. In his first do-or-die game since high school, St. Brown caught seven passes for 110 yards, after saying this week that he personally wanted to help Goff level the score with the Rams.
Goff's stalwart right tackle and St. Brown's fellow first-team All-Pro Penei Sewell said "it means a lot" to the Lions to see their quarterback get his due. The players echoed the crowd -- Ja-red Goff! Ja-red Goff!! -- as Goff entered the locker room after the game. Goff flexed his arms, screamed at the top of his lungs and said some words we can't repeat.
"Everyone knows the story, so everyone was hyping it up, and it feels good to get that get-back for him," said Sewell. "And not only for him, but for the city of Detroit."
The city was true to Stafford when he was a Lion, and wasn't going to fake it when he returned as a Ram. These fans had waited too long for this night to pretend No. 9 wasn't the enemy. Remember, Stafford asked out of Detroit -- understandably so -- when the Lions descended into yet another rebuild after the 2020 season. The Lions sent him to a team of his choosing, and finally sent him packing Sunday night. Stafford mostly understood the boos, saying "you almost hope (the fans) would" do exactly as they did: cheer their quarterback, jeer the other.
"It’s a playoff game," he said, and he didn't need to say anything more.
Safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, who was all over the field and shut down a potential go-ahead touchdown pass to Puka Nakua in the fourth quarter, may have said it best: "These fans with J-G, they not with no Matthew Stafford. Matthew Stafford’s over there. So don’t talk about that sh*t. I wanted this bad, because I know what people talk about (Goff). So if anybody got something to say about my quarterback, he just showed you what he can do."
He also showed the Lions, in case they needed convincing. With everyone watching, and many wondering whether he would raise his game in the playoffs, Goff went 22-27 for 277 yards and a touchdown -- and no picks. The Lions won a playoff game on a night where they struggled to run the ball and where their defense surrendered 425 yards because their quarterback was good enough to make up for it. The defense deserves credit for bowing its neck in the red zone, but this was a game in which the Lions followed their leader.
"What he means to us, and his play today, I bring it back again: He’s one of the reasons that we won this division and he’s another reason why we just won our first playoff game here in 30 years, so what a stud," said Campbell.
Goff, per usual, tried to deflect the attention afterward, shifting the focus to the team. Taylor Decker, while signing his quarterback's praises, pointed out that "this game was about a lot more than (Goff against the Rams). To me, to the city, it was about us. It's about Detroit. It’s about the Lions, and what we’ve built here." Goff has just had a huge hand in the project, "and the guys love him," said Campbell, if that wasn't already clear.
This was the Lions' night, and Goff's moment. It was Detroit's reward for decades of heartache, and its quarterback's retort to the team that dumped him. It was less about the past than it was the present, inside a season that has a future in the middle of January. Stafford got validation when he left Detroit, and Goff has found vindication in his wake.
"This place is special to me and these people are special," said Goff. "That’s the best home atmosphere I’ve ever played in front of. I’ve only been here for three years, but to see us come from where we were to where we are now and the fans to endure some of that, it’s special to be able to get this W for them and for this group in our locker room.”
The chants continued after the game and into the night, warming the air and thawing doubt. They rang from the city and echoed across the state: Ja-red Goff! Ja-red Goff!! If he wasn't good enough for McVay and Los Angeles, so be it. Dan Campbell flipped him a game ball in a jubilant locker room and said, "You're good enough for fu**ing Detroit, Jared Goff."