The running joke on the internet for a few weeks has been that with Matthew Stafford starting at quarterback for the Los Angeles Rams and Eminem among a group of hip-hop icons performing at halftime, Super Bowl LVI might be the closest that the Detroit Lions get to the sport's biggest stage for some time.
So, while the iron is hot, here's another loose connection to the Lions in Super Bowl LVI.
Rams' head coach Sean McVay won the 2003 Georgia High School Player of the Year Award, while playing quarterback for Marist High School. That year, he edged out Sandy Creek High School wide receiver Calvin Johnson:
As noted by Kaelen Jones of Sports Illustrated, McVay "was the first player in Marist history to record 1,000 yards rushing and passing in back-to-back seasons."
Despite a tremendous high school career, McVay was just 5-foot-10 in an era before Drew Brees became a Hall of Famer. In the mid-2000s, being under 6-foot tall usually meant you were destined to shift to another position. McVay did that at the collegiate level, playing wide receiver at Miami (Ohio) from 2005-2007. In three seasons, McVay caught 39 passes for 312 yards.
McVay ultimately transitioned into coaching, with his first NFL job coming as an offensive assistant under Jon Gruden with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2008. That was Johnson's second of nine seasons with the Detroit Lions. The No. 2 overall pick in the 2007 NFL Draft, Johnson recorded 78 catches for 1,331 yards and a league-leading 12 touchdowns. That didn't prevent the Lions from becoming the first team in NFL history to go 0-16.
By going 0-16, though, the Lions earned the No. 1 pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, which they used to select another Georgia product, quarterback Matthew Stafford. With Stafford throwing him the ball, Johnson set a new NFL single-season record with 1,964 receiving yards in 2012, the finest year in a Hall of Fame career.
Now, nine-and-a-half years later, Stafford will look to cement his status as a future Hall of Famer by winning his first Super Bowl title. The man designing the game plan he and the Rams will use against the Cincinnati Bengals just so happens to be McVay, nearly two decades after he edged out Johnson for the top high school football honor in Georgia.
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