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That won't be the case this week, with Detroit kicking off Thursday’s tripleheader by welcoming the Packers to Ford Field, and doing so—surprise, surprise—as the team squarely on the marquee.
And the team will do it coming off a game that served as another sign that, as we’ve said the past few weeks, this Cinderella story of 2022, the team that surged late, has become a powerhouse in ’23.
These Lions had already administered impressive beatdowns of teams like the Panthers and Buccaneers. They’d beaten the champion Chiefs on opening night, won a shootout with Justin Herbert and bounced back after their one no-show of the season, in Baltimore. Along those lines, Week 11 checked another box. The Lions didn’t have their A game with the Bears in town—but it didn’t matter because they could summon what they needed.
Detroit trailed 26–14 when it took possession with 4:15 left. Detroit won 29–26.
So what happened?
“The great players started making great plays,” one of those great players, second-year terror Aidan Hutchinson, told me from the victorious locker room postgame. “JG [Jared Goff] was going down the field, playing at a high level. Everyone was doing their jobs, man. And I really just think it’s that the great players started making great plays.”
That’s the other thing the Lions have going into Thanksgiving this year—a lot of those great players.
And that was really the starting point for the Lions’ scratching out their eighth win Sunday. On that second-to-last possession, with 4:15 showing, Goff connected on all five of his throws, good for 71 yards, and capped by a dime to Jameson Williams (drafted 10 picks after Hutchinson but hampered to this point in his career by injury and a gambling suspension) on a corner route for a 32-yard touchdown just 1:16 later.
“Great play by Jamo, man,” Hutchinson says. “I’m really happy for him. I know he had a touchdown called back last week, so he earned that one.”
The defense then forced a three-and-out that took just 14 seconds off the clock (“it just flipped,” Hutchinson says), and the offense got the ball back on its own 27 with 2:33 left, which was more than enough time for Goff to go back to work. From there, the Lions didn’t so much as face a third down until they were inside the Bears’ 10. By then, Goff had hit on 5-of-7 for 44 yards. Jahmyr Gibbs then went for six on third-and-2 from the 7, and former Bear David Mongomery chewed through the final yard to put Detroit in front.
Hutchinson closed it out with a strip sack of Justin Fields on the next play from scrimmage.
“I hit my rush that I wanted to hit,” Hutchinson says. “He ended up sitting in the pocket, I don’t think he ever really saw me; he was looking downfield. So it all worked out well. I was waiting all game to hit that rush.”
And as he hit his rush, the Lions hit 8–2, and the history that came with it.
The last time the team was 8–2, as you may have read by now, was in 1962. Dick LeBeau was on that team—as a player. So too were Night Train Lane, Alex Karras, Earl Morrall and Harlon Hill (you may have heard of the trophy named after him, which Bears QB Tyson Bagent won in 2021). My dad was an eighth-grader in Grosse Pointe, Mich., that fall, and those Lions finished two games back of Vince Lombardi’s second title team in Green Bay, which put Detroit in the consolation/third-place “Playoff Bowl” (where they beat the Steelers).
It's been a while, for sure, since things looked this way in the Motor City, which is something that Hutchinson, a kid who grew up nearby in Plymouth and went to school in Dearborn and Ann Arbor, knows all too well. In fact, if the Lions win next week, it’ll mean the team will finish with winning records in consecutive years for just the second time in Hutchinson’s life.
Things have most certainly changed.
“No doubt,” Hutchinson says. “We got something special going on here. So, growing up watching the Lions, you know that’s where the ‘Same old Lions’ saying comes in. But, nah, I think this team is different, man. And it might not be our best every week, but we’re going to find a way to finish it. And really that’s all I got to say.”
It’s all he needed to say, with Thanksgiving next, a Thanksgiving he said himself that’ll be “a lot different than last year.”
Last year, of course, was like a lot of previous years. The Lions went in at 4–6 and lost.
They’ve lost only three games since.
And no one’s complaining anymore that they’ll be the first thing we see on Turkey Day.
