Shawn WindsorDetroit Free Press
Dan Campbell made us whole. So said a reader in my inbox last week.
“The team.The city. The state ... He brought it together,” he wrote, “shaped and molded it.He told everyonethis team will have the identity of the city.He (mostly)fixed all of us.”
I’ve thought a lot about these words the last several days, about the lengths some went to get to a game — more on one of them in a bit — about multi-generational families that filled Ford Field for two playoff games, about so many strangers high-fiving and hugging, about the weeping, in victory and in defeat.
But mostly, I’ve thought about what this reader meant, and that he is right, and that for a moment, maybe even for several moments, Dan Campbell did make us whole.
Oh, not literally, of course. Campbell and the Lions didn’t change the way we vote, or change public policy, or change the way we view the world. The Lions’ run to the NFC title game isn’t going to fill potholes, or end poverty, negate our differences on abortion, or religion, or how religion fits into society.
Yet for several weeks, even months, he took us all to the same church, where even non-believers were welcome.
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Today is the first Sunday without NFL games since Labor Day weekend (unless you count the Pro Bowl, and you shouldn’t).
Not having a real game should help the grieving process. Next Sunday will be harder though. When a team the Lions beat to open their season plays a team the Lions should have beat, ending their season, on the biggest stage in sports.
That’ll hurt. Then again, it hurts now, too, doesn’t it?
A week isn’t enough time. Not when the Lions were so close. Not when they led by 17 points at the half. Not when one mistake became another mistake, and another mistake became another. A slow drip of pain, and while many took the optimistic view in the immediate aftermath — mostly to survive the aftermath — by Monday morning, it felt worse.
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As Campbell said, that may have been the Lions’ only shot. Now, he doesn’t believe that, and said as much, but his point stands, and that cold truth is part of what stings, still.
Yet it’s not just the missed opportunity that’s caused the emotional hangover. Nor is it just the realization that the Lions might not have such a good chance to get to a Super Bowl — and win it — for a while.
It’s that the ride itself is finished, at least for now. The weekly buildup acted as an adrenaline shot that peaked every Sunday, a collective boost to the heart. But it wasn’t just physical. The emotional and psychological satisfaction may have been even more powerful.
As has been noted, few things in sports provide what a rise from the ashes provides. This wasn’t the Carolina Panthers making a run to the Super Bowl, though. History matters. Context matters.
Carolina, for example, is a team housed in a region that’s grown exponentially the last few decades. Its identity is tied to tech and education, to the “new South,” which is to say to the future. That's why the NFL opened shop there.
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The Panthers started play in 1995, or 61 years after the Lions moved to Detroit from Portsmouth, Ohio. Back then, when the Lions arrived in 1934, Detroit was the city of the future, too. Think about how much has changed since then, some obviously for the better.
But economically?
Identities change. The country changed. This region's’ view of itself changed. And though the Lions won four titles in their first 23 years in the city — with the last coming in 1957 — the view of the franchise changed, too, and as the losses mounted, became a proxy for a struggling city.
Campbell, of course, tapped into the struggle, leaned into it, owned it.
“Man, it’s harsh winters, auto industry, blue collar,” he was saying after the Lions beat Tampa Bay to advance to the NFC title game, “... that’s what we’re about. You want something the city can be proud of ... I feel like we’ve done that. And I think these guys, they have a kinship with this city and this area, and they love it, man.”
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He became Detroit’s megaphone, its champion, its adopted son, and losing that voice — and that representation — is part of what hurts, too. Not that that voice won’t return, or the team, or the games. They will. In September, when the cycle ramps up once more.
And when it does, it will inspire, frustrate, bring joy and pain as always. Yet it won’t be quite the same. Because the Lions won’t be coming from the same place. The narrative will be different. Expectations will be different.
Yes, those who love this team and this place will trek across the country to bear witness to the sermon, or even across oceans. Remember the stories of the lengths some went to go find a seat in hostile stadiums? In San Francisco?(Or, rather, Santa Clara?)
Tim Evans was one of those true believers. He joined the Lions church long ago, back in 1985, by way of London — England, not Ontario — then Bowling Green, Ohio, where he’d taken a job in finance and quickly fell in love with all things Detroit.
He moved back to England three years later but left his sporting heart in this city — your city, now his adopted city. For most of the last two decades, he has held season tickets. After meeting Evans though email in December, I randomly ran into him while I made my own way to the West Coast last month, then tracked him down in Levi's Stadium.
He knows it’s kinda crazy to travel so far for a sport he didn’t grow up with. He knows it’s downright fanatical to leave London for San Francisco, as he did a week and a few days ago, to catch an American football game.
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But then it wasn’t just a football game, was it? It was a call to prayer.
Evans was touched by the spirit of this place, and the spirit of the football team that represented it. He was struck, he said, “by the warmth and humility of folks from the ‘D.’ ”
Now there’s a word: humility. Campbell uses it in his sermons whenever he can. Count Evans among the faithful, and among the burgeoning congregation.
For Detroit is a place, but it’s also an idea, and, as this Lions’ run just showed, an ideal. The story of it will just quiet down for a bit.
Don’t fret, though, at least for long. More sermons are coming. It will be a while, though, and the wait to begin anew will feel as long as it ever has. Good thing the church is open, its doors as wide as ever.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 orswindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
