His assignment on that blisteringly hot January afternoon was to write about the losing team; So I found myself in a windowless room deep inside RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., watching a fat football coach climb to the top of a platform for a press conference.
It’s no fun writing about losing teams, let alone a team that lost in the NFC championship game for the first time (and only until this Sunday). But Wayne Fontes was that big-bodied coach. He was fun, enthusiastic and always had something interesting to say.
Fontes looked into the microphone, took a deep breath, and exclaimed: “Wow! God! Was this like the last game?”
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Fontes and the Detroit Lions were beaten 45-0 by the same team in the season opener, four months before losing 41-10 to Washington in the 1991 NFC championship game. But between those two games, a lot of things had gone right for Detroit. They had hope.
The Lions won their last six regular season games, then defeated the Dallas Cowboys 38-6 in their home playoff opener. These were the rising Cowboys of Jerry Jones, Jimmy Johnson, Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin. A year later they would win it all.
Against Washington, Detroit trailed just 17-10 at halftime. But the Lions were more or less outmatched in the second half, and Washington scored 24 unanswered points to win easily. Detroit’s great running back Barry Sanders gained 44 yards rushing, losing two yards on his final carry.
“The holes weren’t there,” Sanders later said of his locker.
Fontes had already apologized to Metro Detroit “for our poor effort,” and Washington was a tremendous team that went on to win Super Bowl XXVI by narrowly defeating the Buffalo Bills two weeks later. Despite the loss, the Lions were viewed as a team on the rise.
That was Jan. 12, 1992 — 32 years ago, half a lifetime for me — and the Lions didn’t get back to the NFC championship game until they beat Tampa Bay this past Sunday in a different, newer stadium in Detroit. Where they smothered Dallas. It’s been a while.
The Lions are one of four active NFL teams that have never appeared in the Super Bowl, but they were founded in Ohio in 1928 as the Portsmouth Spartans and have been around much longer than the other No-Supes: Jacksonville (1995), Cleveland (in their most recent incarnation 1999 ) and Houston (2002).
Five years ago, after the Lions finished 6-10 under first-year head coach Matt Patricia (who recently lost his job as Philadelphia’s leaky defensive coach), I wrote a piece for Forbes.com with the headline: Meet the NFL Team That Will Never Be Make it to the Super Bowl.
At the time, the Lions seemed cursed. Look at poor old Fontes: He led the Lions to the playoffs in 1993, 1994 and 1995, but they lost three wild-card games; The first two were to Brett Favre and the Packers, and the third was an upset defeat. Leading 51-7 at Gaziler Stadium, the Eagles won with a score of 58-37.
Sanders retired in 1998 at age 30 and the Lions faded into obscurity, making the playoffs just three times between 2000 and 2022. Detroit lost at least 10 games in 14 of those 23 seasons, hitting rock bottom by losing all 16 games. Their play in 2008 was a first in the NFL at the time.
Even current head coach Dan Campbell has struggled for success after taking over in 2021, losing his first eight games and avoiding defeat, going just 16-16 with Pittsburgh in his first 11 games as coach. 2021 Lions win first game 5 December.
“We have to play near-perfectly to win, and that’s in our hands,” Campbell said after Detroit fell to 0-8 following a random 44-6 loss to the Eagles on Oct. 31, 2021. “As coaches, I’ve been accused of this.”
Campbell, a hard-working Texan, surprised some NFL followers and made others chuckle (or shudder) after taking the job in Detroit when he said: “When you knock us down, we’ll get up and keep going.” We’ll bite off his kneecap on the way up.
Fontes took a different approach when he became Detroit’s permanent head coach in 1988. He took care of his players, ordering pasta for lunch and a television in the locker room (these were the old days). She treated the lions as if they were first class.
Fontes also made them play better. He was left with a journeyman backup quarterback named Erik Kramer after starter Rodney Peete was injured and Kramer lost his first two starts. It made magic happen: Detroit didn’t lose again until facing Washington at RFK Stadium in January.
Fontes, now 83, was contacted by a Detroit radio station last week after the Lions beat Tampa Bay for their first playoff win in 32 years. He had his own reasons to wish the Lions postseason success. “He finally got the monkey off my back,” Fontes said.
He told the hosts on WWJ Newsradio how he noticed an increase in interest in the Lions at the sports bar where he watched the Lions play this year and how it would be smart for the bettors to take the Lions to beat Tampa Bay. I give up six and a half points. (Detroit would win 31-23.)
How similar the narratives are: an energetic, popular coach, with a lot of help from a quarterback once considered a backup (current QB Jared Goff was the Rams’ No. 1 overall draft pick), getting the team going for a Super Bowl berth. in victory.
Sunday’s NFC championship game will be played in San Francisco against the determined 49ers, and the Lions are not favored to win that game either. Maybe this game can come away from Detroit like it did 32 years ago when Washington took a big lead in the first 20 minutes of the second half.
The Lions are just seven-point underdogs, not 14-point long shots like they were when they played before 55,585 (with zero no-shows) at RFK Stadium on that sunny afternoon in 1992. But Detroit has looked solid so far this offseason, and the Niners came close to losing to the Packers last week. This time, the Lions’ head coach may not need to regret a poor effort or apologize afterward.
I’m rooting for them – not just for Campbell, Goff and the current team, but for Fontes, Kramer, Sanders (who now has a statue outside Ford Field) and the people in the Motor City who’ve been waiting too long. To make the professional team in the city good again.