The Detroit Lions have won five of six and have a somewhat realistic chance to earn a playoff spot. No one saw any of this coming after they began the season 1-6 and people were calling for Dan Campbell's job. Up here in Michigan we really don't know what to do with our hands or the overwhelming sense that something actually good could happen to this franchise over the next few months or, more realistically, the next few years. It's really not our fault because how would we have any idea what to do, considering this team has one playoff game since NASA was established? The two longest-running curses in American sports were broken when the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs won World Series. But there's no comp for the sheer, unadulterated ineptitude the Detroit Lions have consistently turned in, with apologies to the Cleveland Browns who also suck a tremendous amount all of the time.

I was going to write something yesterday contextualizing just how monumental getting to 6-7 against all odds has been. And how impossibly sad that is. The main point I wanted to make about Lions fans is that we have been robbed, decade after decade, from ever truly participating in NFL fandom in a meaningful way. There has been no reward for investment and only the criminally insane among us even consider the franchise to be on the same footing as the ones who, you know, occasionally accomplish things. Being forced to be on the outside looking into this nation's most popular thing is just ... well it's weird.

Here's a different way to put it. Mina Kimes drawing a picture of Penei Sewell and posting it online is among the top-10 moments of my Lions fandom, which spans 35 years. No hyperbole.