After a brutal start, the Lions have won five of six. They have clawed back into the playoff race with four games to go. They are one of the hottest teams in the NFL, confirmed by Sunday's double-digit win over the first-place Vikings.
“We’re becoming the team that Detroit has always wanted," Aidan Hutchinson said after another big performance in which he notched his seventh sack of the season and stopped one Vikings drive basically by himself. "We had the rough start, but we’re going to close this season out and see how far we can go."
They've come a long way as it is. Last month, the Lions were 1-6. They were headed for a franchise-worst fifth-straight last-place finish. Their close losses felt less and less encouraging, their words increasingly more hollow. "We're close," they kept saying. "We're there." Turns out they were right.
"We dug ourselves into a hole to where it was only up to us to climb out of it," said Taylor Decker. "There’s no other way to do that than to go out there and play fearless and free and confident, and we’ve been able to do it for six weeks now. Now we got four more to do it again and see if we can sustain this, because if you want to be a good team, a playoff-contention team, you gotta sustain success."
Detroit's six-game surge started with a stand against longtime nemesis Aaron Rodgers. The next week, the Lions won back-to-back games for the first time under Dan Campbell. They pushed the Super Bowl-favorite Bills to the limit on Thanksgiving, then dismantled the Giants on the road, before dismantling the Jaguars at home. On Sunday, they led the Vikings from basically start to finish. This is what good teams do.
Ain't that right, Herman Moore?
"Looking at where they are now, going 4-1 in their last five games, it has set the tone because of the diversity of teams that they’ve played," the Lions former star receiver said during a conversation last week. "They’ve played a Super Bowl contender, they’ve played playoff-bound teams, they’ve played division or conference leaders, so they understand where they stack up.
"This is a team that is seemingly growing not just with confidence but with discipline as the year goes on."
Moore has unique perspective here. He was a key cog of the closest thing to a perennial contender the Lions have produced in the Super Bowl era. Detroit made the playoffs in six of Moore's first nine seasons with the team (1991-99), an almost unfathomable stretch of success for a team whose last playoff win came before all but one player on its current roster was born.
A three-time All-Pro who twice led the NFL in receptions, Moore still follows the Lions closely and likes where they're headed under GM Brad Holmes.
"If you want to really look and say, ‘What makes Detroit different right now?’ it’s the fact that most teams will draft first- and second-round players to become their starters or their next succession. The Lions have been able to do what championship teams do, and that is draft third-, fourth-, fifth-round (players) and turn them into starters without having to burn the cap, and that gives them the ability to put together trades and get more draft picks to build the team quicker," said Moore.
To Moore's point, many of Holmes' mid-to-late-round draft picks have made big contributions this season. That includes receiver and rising superstar Amon-Ra St. Brown (4h round), starting defensive tackle Alim McNeill (3rd), starting linebacker Malcolm Rodriguez (6th), starting safety Kerby Joseph (3rd) and more recently, pass-rush extraordinaire James Houston (6th). This is to say nothing of bargain-bin free agents like starting defensive tackle Isaiah Buggs and starting cornerback Jerry Jacobs.
"This is a young team that is accelerating the development of its players," said Moore. "And now their path and their trajectory is more toward really being a competitor in the NFC North and then potentially being a playoff-bound team on an annual basis, with an opportunity to go further."
Holmes has yet to really dive into free agency, but he'll have money to spend this offseason -- and a rising team to sell. He'll also have a wealth of picks in the draft, including two first-rounders and two second-rounders courtesy of the Matthew Stafford and T.J. Hockenson trades. Stafford was gone either way after requesting a trade. But Hockenson was expendable because of Holmes' confidence in what the Lions already had on offense. They haven't missed a beat without him, and their roster stands to benefit next season.
Whatever happens the rest of this season, the Lions' arrow is pointing up. They are winning games with one of the youngest rosters in the NFL and still have so much room to grow. They've proven this season, even through their frustrating first half, that they can compete with anyone. America laughed last week when the Lions were listed as 2.5-point favorites against a 10-2 team. The Lions laughed back by winning by 11.
December football means something again in Detroit, with January on the horizon.
"It was one of the reasons I wanted to be here because I knew this could be a special place, man," Campbell said Sunday. "You get a winner here in Detroit and it’ll be something special. And it’s not like that everywhere, it’s not."
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