After helping the Lions to their fifth win in the past six games Sunday against the Vikings, Dearborn native Aidan Hutchinson said, "Detroit feels it. They feel we're coming along right now. We’re going to make this playoff push and do everything we can to get in."
Don't count them out. At 6-7 with four games to go, the math says the Lions have about a 20 percent chance of claiming the final NFC playoff spot. They could boost those odds to nearly 50 percent with a win Sunday against the Jets. And the second overall pick has been at the center of all of it.
This is why Hutchinson wanted to land in Detroit. This is why he wanted to stay home.
“I got the chance to come (here) and be part of coming alive and building a great team,” Hutchinson told NBC Sports after Sunday's win in which he extended his lead among NFL rookies in sacks and QB pressures and was a general problem for the Vikings from start to finish.
The 22-year-old Hutchinson wasn't a Lions fan growing up. Son of legendary Michigan football player Chris Hutchinson, he cheered for fellow Michigan great Tom Brady and the Patriots. But he was well aware of his hometown team's woes. He was plenty familiar with the Same Old Lions.
He says these Lions are different.
“The chemistry we’ve got right now is kind of unmatched,” Hutchinson said. “We’re so complimentary right now offensively and defensively and we never flinch at the end. It’s no longer the Same Old Lions. We’ve overcome that. Now we’re on our way to becoming a really good football team.”
Hutchinson is echoing offensive lineman Taylor Decker, Detroit's longest-tenured player. Prior to the Lions' gut-wrenching Thanksgiving loss to the Bills, Decker told his teammates, "It's not the fu*king Same Old Lions anymore!" They failed to prove as much that day when they lost on a last-second field goal, but they've begun -- begun -- proving it since.
"They are hot and fired up," Hall of Famer Tony Dungy said Sunday night on NBC's Football Night in America.
"They're like that sleeper" team, Hall of Famer Michael Strahan said on FOX's postgame show. "I wouldn't want to play the Lions. They're the real deal."
"I think the Lions are a top-eight NFL team right now, I think they’re the third best team in the NFC," NFL Network's Kyle Brandt said Monday morning. "I think they’re behind Philadelphia and San Francisco, I think they would beat Dallas right now if they played."
Are the Same Old Lions truly a thing of the past? We'll see -- but they sure wouldn't have the NFL talking like this.
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