NFL offseason power rankings: No. 2 Detroit Lions want a historic Super Bowl trip

Jared Goff had 4,575 yards and 30 touchdowns last season. (Yahoo Sports/Grant Thomas)

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If you’d have asked any Detroit Lions fan through the years for the probability they’d ever see their team in the Super Bowl, the answer surely would not have been 90%. It might not have been 9%. Maybe not even 0.9%.

But during the third quarter of last season’s NFC championship game, the Lions’ win probability reached 90.4%, according to Next Gen Stats. The Lions led 24-10. They’d just picked up a first down on a David Montgomery run. With less than nine minutes left in the third quarter, the Lions — the franchise of 0-16, Barry Sanders and Calvin Johnson retiring rather than continuing to lose, not one Super Bowl appearance ever and just one playoff win from 1957 to last season — were seemingly on their way to a Super Bowl.

It changed in a blink. All of those searches for flight prices and hotel rooms in Las Vegas that were originating in Michigan abruptly ended. The 49ers got a stop on a questionable decision by Detroit to go for it on fourth down, had a miraculous long catch from Brandon Aiyuk, recovered a fumble by Jahmyr Gibbs and tied it 24-24. San Francisco won 34-31. The Lions weren’t the first team to blow a lead in a playoff game. But that seemed like it happened faster than any other memorable collapse. Or maybe it just seemed like it happened so fast because everyone knew the Lions, their history and what a Super Bowl would have meant.

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nfl-offseason-power-rankings-no-2-detroit-lions-want-a-historic-super-bowl-trip-123314668.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2024-07-30 12:33:14

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