A year ago, the Lions were coming off their bye and mired in a 1-4 start. They would lose twice more before things got better. Now they're sitting atop their division, their conference and the entire NFL. They are 5-1 and winners of four straight after their 20-6 victory over the Bucs.
They are also just getting started.
"We’ve played well for six weeks," said Jared Goff. "It’s hard to play well all year, that’s our goal. At some point we’re going to hit some sort of adversity and have to fight through that. Right now we’re playing well. It’s four in a row for us and it’s a pretty good feeling. We know who we are. I’ve said it a million times: we feel like we can go beat anyone right now."
They went and beat the defending champs at Arrowhead to start the season. They went and beat the Packers under the Lambeau Lights for the second time in a row. On Sunday, they went and beat a good Buccaneers team in a stadium flooded with Honolulu blue. Their fans all but commandeered the pirate ship in Raymond James Stadium.
Not only are the Lions tied with the Chiefs, 49ers, Eagles and Dolphins for the best record in the league, they're the only team in that group with multiple wins over first-place teams. They're 3-0 on the road and their 2.5-game edge in the NFC North, a division they've never won, is the widest of any division leader in the NFL. Their defense, which allowed the most yards in the league last season, is suddenly as good as their offense. Teams ranked in the top 10 on both sides of the ball: Chiefs, 49ers, Eagles, Lions.
In other words:
Amon-Ra St. Brown was as clutch as it gets against Tampa. In a game where yards didn't come easy, St. Brown was happy to get them the hard way: over the middle, through contact, after the catch. He caught 12 passes, several of them drive-sustainers, for 124 yards, six first downs and a touchdown. He's living proof that the Lions aren't afraid.
"Last year we started off 1-6 and now to start off 5-1 is huge for us," St. Brown said. "We put so much focus into each week and so much preparation and to come out with a victory feels really good. But we know, man, we have bigger goals ahead of us. We want to keep doing what we’re doing, we want to get to the playoffs, we want to have home-field advantage for the playoffs.
"There’s so many things that we want to accomplish this year, but man, this is just a start for us. We gotta keep going."
It's hard to say enough about the chemistry between St. Brown and Goff, two of the faces of this franchise. They play on the same continuous wavelength. Goff is 38 of 47 with a passer rating of 110.5 when targeting St. Brown this season: "I trust the hell out of him and he’s earned it. He’s one of the best players in the league at his position." St. Brown threw the praise right back: "He’s playing lights-out. We’re not here without him. He’s our leader."
The Lions are somewhere they haven't been in a while, 5-1 for the first time since 2011. The might be going somewhere they've never been before. We'll see. So will they. Asked if the Lions have established themselves as one of the best teams in the NFL, St. Brown said, "I think so," before issuing a reminder: "It’s still early."
"Last year if you said the Lions are one of the worst teams in the league at this point, at the end of the year you might have been saying something different. So there’s still a lot of football left to be played," said St. Brown. "But man, we keep playing like this, we’ll have a good shot."