Washington at Detroit Divisional Playoff Thread

[CGVT]

Yeah, when you see Pickens pouting on Pittsburgh's bench, Hill taking himself out of a game and the "me first" attitude of other players around the league, it really makes you appreciate the type of players and team that the Lions have assembled.

[Coop]

Yeah, when you see Pickens pouting on Pittsburgh's bench, Hill taking himself out of a game and the "me first" attitude of other players around the league, it really makes you appreciate the type of players and team that the Lions have assembled.

^ THIS

There are no Divas or "me" players in Detroit. It is all about team and winning.

[chemiclord]

If the Patriots dynasty demonstrated one thing to me, it's that "team cancer" often translates into, "tired of incompetence." I swear, every other year, they brought in some "locker room poison" that was sure to tear the team apart... only for the world to discover that they operated perfectly fine (and even excelled) in a winning environment with capable teammates and bosses. It was almost like they weren't the problem and were merely the scapegoat that management used to deflect from their inability to run a competent franchise, and fans embraced because it was easier than admitting their favorite team was run by idiots and they were wasting their time and money on said team.

Sometimes, people aren't culture changers, sometimes they merely absorb the vibe of the team they are on. I'm also certain more than a handful of Lions are that way as well (for example, I suspect a certain receiver wearing #9 would be an absolute menace if he was playing for the Browns). What I appreciate is that the Lions finally have that leadership, finally have that competence, and are no longer running the same tired excuses and scapegoating that they embraced for decades under Ol' Willie.

[whatever_gong82]

Pride of Detroit Direct
by Jeremy Reisman


It’s Divisional Round week, and there’s a lot to talk about. So for this newsletter, we’re trying to cover it all. At the top, I talk about the weight of expectations, then I had a conversation with Lions linebacker Anthony Pittman about his unique journey in 2024. Then we cap it off with an awesome podcast with former NFL OL Ross Tucker, who is just a bundle of joy and a well of football knowledge.

Enjoy, and, as always, thanks for being a subscriber.


It’s okay to be confident

The Detroit Lions are 9.5-point favorites over the Washington Commanders this week and it undoubtedly feels weird. Those numbers feel a bit artificially inflated by bettors who have hammered the Lions–to their own benefit–all year. We’re in the Divisional Round now. Anything can happen.

And all you have to do is look at our good friend Arif Hasan, who penned a beautifully tragic article this week about the sudden downfall of the Minnesota Vikings. They were a team just a few missed passes away from being in the exact same spot the Detroit Lions are now. Yet it all collapsed in an instant. Such is playoff football. One day, you’re dreaming of lifting the Lombardi in New Orleans. Literally the next day, you’re cleaning out your locker until summer. For the Vikings–the best five seed in NFL playoff history–the high from Sam Darnold getting showered by his teammates to the low of Darnold now being shamed as a fraud three weeks later was sudden, unexpected, and devastating.


“I don’t regret asking fans to believe in the team with me,” Hasan wrote Monday night. “Belief can be informed by evidence, but the final leap has to be made in acknowledgment of the fact that we cannot know Truth or the future in any meaningful sense. People believe, secure in the knowledge that belief buys our participation in the community and gives us the ability to feel joy, even as it curses us with the possibility of pain.”

It can be terrifying knowing that belief, no matter how firm and overwhelming the evidence may be, cannot guarantee results. The world–and the NFL playoffs, in particular–can be cruelly random. As Hasan wrote, that shouldn’t prevent you from hope and belief; that’s what brings light into our lives and eagerness for our future. But there is a certain sense of dread that lingers just at the edge of hope, and it’s one we’re all too familiar with here in Detroit.


But with all due respect to the Vikings and Darnold, the Lions are not the same. It was considered a rebuild year for the Vikings for a reason. Their roster, while better than most expected, is not championship level. Their offensive line is full of holes, their defense is patched together by aging backs in the twilight of their career, and they’ve been led by a quarterback who was exorcized from two franchises with good reason. Vikings fans proudly declared, “We weren’t even supposed to be here,” and now they aren’t.

The Lions are supposed to be here. They’ve traveled six months with the weight of Super Bowl expectations and haven’t missed a stride. That’s because the Lions are playing like they’re weightless. Campbell was peppered with questions this week about if he felt extra pressure knowing they are Super Bowl favorites, the NFC’s one-seed, and hold big odds to win this week. Campbell kept insisting they are going about their business as always: one game at a time, and they’re confident in their process. When the reporter kept pushing for the quote he wanted, Campbell finally snapped back, clearly annoyed that he wasn’t being heard.


“I don’t think about, ‘Man, we’re the one seed, so if you guys don’t succeed then…” Campbell said. “I never think like that. I don’t know. To me, I look at it as like, I know who we are, I know what we’re about, I know how we have to prepare, I respect the opponent, and now it’s time to go to work. That’s how I look at it. I don’t look at anything else, I don’t think of, ‘What if it doesn’t, what if the –.’

“The ‘what ifs’–fuck, man–I couldn’t sleep at night if I lived that way. There’s no freaking way.”


I don’t expect Lions fans to be the same way. Hell, I know I’m still going to be playing the “what if” game through the fourth quarter of Saturday night’s game. Three years of success isn’t going to completely erase the previous 70 years of psychological conditioning for Lions fans.

But I do have a swelling of confidence as the week goes on, and I refuse to apologize or feel guilty about it. Commanders fans have taken offense to some Lions fans’ bravado this week. From their end, I get it. They’ve been doubted every step of the way, and have made it as far as they have. But their story is closer to the Vikings’ than the Lions’. They have obvious shortcoming and dormant fatal flaws that will eventually come to light. And given this Lions team has not overlooked a single opponent or come out flat since the first week of the season, there is no logical reason to believe Detroit falters this week. And I’m not afraid to say it.

 
1-on-1 interview with Anthony Pittman

You may think Anthony Pittman was an odd choice for this week’s 1-on-1 interview, but he was chosen for a reason. Pittman decided to bet on himself this offseason, leaving the Lions for the first time in his professional career to join the… Washington Commanders. I wanted to catch up with him on what he learned from that experience and if this week means anything more to him, considering the Commanders cut him before the start of the season. A sincere thank you to Anthony for sharing his story.


Jeremy: Do the Lions use you at all as intel this week from your time with the Commanders?

Pittman: “No, no, no. Everything they do is pretty much on film. They are who they show to be. Nothing tricky that they’re doing.”


Jeremy: What did you learn about the Commanders and Dan Quinn from your time there?

Pittman: “I know they’re tough, they’re gritty just as us. I know 5 (Jayden Daniels) is a great player, and I know they’ve got some good players over there.”


Jeremy: What did you learn about yourself from that entire experience?

Pittman: “A lot of things. Humility, patience. Obviously, it didn’t work out for me, but when things don’t work out, you kinda learn that in the league things aren’t guaranteed. So, just life lesson. It’s life. You learn that hard times happen. What are you going to do when things happen? Are you going to remain negative or are you going to push through and keep going?”


Jeremy: What was that month in between the Commanders and Jaguars jobs like? How did you remain mentally focused?

Pittman: “A lot of self reflecting. Looking back on how everything played out, what could I have done better. What do I need to do in the future? I learned a lot. It was a humbling time, experience. Like I said, I learned patience, waiting to (see) what team I’m going to go to. Am I going to go to a team? Stuff like that. And I’m glad you asked me that, because it’s kinda reminding me of that time and I appreciate that.”


Jeremy: Does that fuel you at all this week?

Pittman: “Not this week. It’s fueled me all year. Yeah, just in life. And I’ve grown so much. I feel like I’m wiser now. Even now, when things don’t go as planned, I kinda think back to what happened then, and now, ‘Okay, I need to respond. I need to push forward.’”


Jeremy: Flash forward to the call from Detroit, what’s that moment like?

Pittman: “It was full circle, because obviously I left Detroit earlier this year as a free agent, went to Jacksonville, played against Detroit. It was awesome coming back to Detroit. I love Detroit. I love the team and staff. Now I’m playing against Washington, so it’s kinda unreal, but I’m grateful for how the journey went. It’s crazy.”


Jeremy: Can you talk about the impact of Alex Anzalone, and the difference when he’s in the lineup?

Pittman: “Anzalone’s a great leader for us. He knows the whole defense, he knows every position and what they need to do. So he’s able to command the defense and then he plays with an energy level and passion that it brings guys around him. I love watching him play. He’s a hell of a player.”


Jeremy: What’s the thing that you missed most while away from Detroit and happy that is back in your life now?

Pittman: “My family.”


Jeremy: Anyone in particular?

Pittman: “My grandma. She used to come to every game. She is now. Every game she comes. So it’s good to be back so now she can enjoy every Sunday.”


Jeremy: What about any food that you’ve missed?

Pittman: “Definitely missed the African food. KG’s African Grill. Mediterranean food, of course. Those are the two biggest. Not much of that in Jacksonville.”


Jeremy: If you could change one rule in the NFL, what would it be?

Pittman: “I would change illegal contact at 5 (yards).”


Jeremy: Make it 10 yards before contact or just get rid of it?

Pittman: “I would make it like 7 or 8 (yards).”


Jeremy: This is something I’ve been stanning for: how about just getting rid of making it an automatic first down?

Pittman: “Yeah, it doesn’t need to be automatic.”


VIDEO: First Byte Lions vs. Commanders preview with Ross Tucker!

[Fraquar]

If the Patriots dynasty demonstrated one thing to me, it's that "team cancer" often translates into, "tired of incompetence." I swear, every other year, they brought in some "locker room poison" that was sure to tear the team apart... only for the world to discover that they operated perfectly fine (and even excelled) in a winning environment with capable teammates and bosses. It was almost like they weren't the problem and were merely the scapegoat that management used to deflect from their inability to run a competent franchise, and fans embraced because it was easier than admitting their favorite team was run by idiots and they were wasting their time and money on said team.

Sometimes, people aren't culture changers, sometimes they merely absorb the vibe of the team they are on. I'm also certain more than a handful of Lions are that way as well (for example, I suspect a certain receiver wearing #9 would be an absolute menace if he was playing for the Browns). What I appreciate is that the Lions finally have that leadership, finally have that competence, and are no longer running the same tired excuses and scapegoating that they embraced for decades under Ol' Willie.

There is a reason why they say it "all starts from the top".
If the guys at the top are just cashing paychecks - everything else will follow suit.

What you witnessed for your entire life (and mine is longer) is essentially leadership at the top just cashing paychecks.

Just a side: Aaron Glenn has been the one surprise for me. A year ago the scheme was a mess, and today he's scheming out his patoot every week because he doesn't know who's even healthy to play. And the players are totally on board. Guy literally made a career (coaching) defining move in one season.

[Iron Lion]

Empty? Because of concession and rest room lines?

Yes that is what I mean

[Iron Lion]

If the Patriots dynasty demonstrated one thing to me, it's that "team cancer" often translates into, "tired of incompetence." I swear, every other year, they brought in some "locker room poison" that was sure to tear the team apart... only for the world to discover that they operated perfectly fine (and even excelled) in a winning environment with capable teammates and bosses. It was almost like they weren't the problem and were merely the scapegoat that management used to deflect from their inability to run a competent franchise, and fans embraced because it was easier than admitting their favorite team was run by idiots and they were wasting their time and money on said team.

Sometimes, people aren't culture changers, sometimes they merely absorb the vibe of the team they are on. I'm also certain more than a handful of Lions are that way as well (for example, I suspect a certain receiver wearing #9 would be an absolute menace if he was playing for the Browns). What I appreciate is that the Lions finally have that leadership, finally have that competence, and are no longer running the same tired excuses and scapegoating that they embraced for decades under Ol' Willie.

Well, I believe those players - Corey Dillon, Rodney Harrison, Randy Moss, Ocho Cinco, Antonio Brown, etc - were chewed out and made examples of early on (like what FMP tried to do with Darius Slay), just to see if they could handle that, sorta like a deposit on an apparent lease, and from there the players knew that the slightest inkling of BS coming out of them would mean getting cut. And I don't think the Lions do it this way.

[DanO]

I'm going with Lions 38--23.

[Trickalicious]

Ran into a disgusting display of fan aggression today here in the DC area. Wearing my Barry jersey at Wegmans (uppity Meijer) and caught a seething "boooo" from a semi-threatening retiree, in the vitamin aisle. I used to consider the pharmacy area a safe space but according to the free blood pressure machine, I was shook. I sat there considering going full Philly ugly cunt on the whole place but I rose above. I whispered an insult about his gulf war trucker hat and I'm 50% sure he heard some of it. Social etiquette dictates that I sign up for the Twizzit-X and expose this monster. I can't even imagine what would have played out had I been wearing my lulu lemons today. Ughh. Dammit Lions, you better kick some Commie today. I'm so fired up, I think I'll go do a pushup.

Kitties, 35 - 21.

[whatever_gong82]

https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nfl/lions/2025/01/18/aidan-hutchinson-injury-update-super-bowl-return-lions/77728002007/

[whatever_gong82]

https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nfl/lions/2025/01/18/detroit-lions-fans-history-what-it-means/77777600007/

[whatever_gong82]

https://www.freep.com/story/sports/nfl/lions/2025/01/18/lions-hype-video-commanders-playoffs/77803229007/

[whatever_gong82]

An adored man adored the Lions. Why isn’t he here to enjoy this?

One Detroit Lions fan waited a lifetime for a team like this. Now, as the team chases its first Super Bowl berth, his grieving family cheers for him.

Paywall article.


By Chuck Culpepper

TAYLOR, Mich. — On a surpassing Detroit night in an unsurpassed basement near Detroit last January, a supersize TV showed true scenes from old, unfulfilled daydreams. On a play the basement had craved for just about forever, with a one-point lead both merciful and merciless, Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff looked briefly right, then threw back toward the left hash mark to Amon-Ra St. Brown, whose trademark smarts and crisp route helped snare 11 yards and a first down with 1:54 remaining. “Mom!” then-48-year-old Nathan Beauchamp hollered up the stairs. “You’ve got to come down and see this!”


The nerve endings of his mother, Bobbie, often forbade her from watching and ushered her upstairs. She would sew. She would make more food. Now, on the night of Jan. 14, 2024 — “I must make 20 trips down the stairs [per game]!” she says — she descended as Goff took a snap and a knee, a snap and a knee, a snap and a knee. The Lions won a playoff game for the first time in 32 soul-bruising seasons. The NBC broadcast cut to a man in the stands crying hard both for happiness and for his departed father.


Within moments in the basement, four people wound up in a far corner, apart from the other beloved revelers, back between the food table and the bar. There, Bobbie and Nathan and Nathan’s brother Shane and Joe Jaber, a longtime family friend and essential family member, hugged and wept and grappled with an impossible emotional tangle. “We knew exactly that we all kind of felt the same emotion, no words needed,” Shane Beauchamp says, “and then Nathan said, ‘I can’t believe he’s not here to see this.’”

Their group hug placed them between one of the hallmarks of following sports, the games’ capacity to connect us to the departed we adored, and one of the harshnesses of same, the idea that long-devoted fans of long-futile teams sometimes die precisely before that team ascends. They knew the universe screwed up when David Beauchamp Sr. died suddenly at 73 the previous May of a heart attack while reaching his daughter and son-in-law’s house to feed their cats. They knew the idea that an adored man with a populous funeral who hatched this basement tradition decades ago, who marshaled it through the 0-16 season of 2008 by stressing that togetherness should transcend scoreboards, who made this bunker a gallery of homage to Detroit sports teams and a place of welcoming humanity, diligent fandom and serial swearing, could miss this two-season breakthrough …


They knew how wrong it felt.

Mr. Beauchamp had such an array of interests that you could wonder whether he found a wrinkle in the clock affording six extra hours. He seemed tireless from his tiring job in shipping at a dental products company and would come home and hurl himself into the interests of his and Bobbie’s four sons and one daughter, with 13 grandchildren later on. He bowled. He fed feral cats. He gardened. He fished. He golfed. He frequented Mass. “I used to go long-distance bike-riding with him during summers,” says longtime chum Chris Seay, who once was David’s boss and tears up during a call.


He joined VFW Post 1136. He organized fundraisers. He absorbed history. He watched documentaries about venomous snakes, about mountain climbing, about organized crime. He liked action movies but also romcoms such as “You’ve Got Mail” and “Sleepless in Seattle.” He excelled at the fine art of welcoming. He exemplified the importance of curiosity.


He asked his kids questions until “we always joked he was a man of a million questions,” said the youngest, Jeff — about their friends, why they liked their friends, their interests, their friends’ interests. He built, with his brothers and one brother’s cement mixer, a backyard basketball court that lured umpteen friends to, as Shane says, “play three-on-three all day long.” When it turned out Jeff didn’t fancy sports as did the first three sons, they would talk history or heavy metal or Steven Seagal vs. Jean-Claude Van Damme. (Jeff’s an AP history teacher in South Carolina nowadays.) If on some night Jeff couldn’t join at David’s bowling league where Jeff would make a beeline to the arcade, David would come home at 8:30 p.m. and take Jeff to a nearby arcade, stand beside as he played, then scurry across the room to fetch more cash when needed.


He often spoke of a childhood cat, Frisky, who would walk partway to his school to greet him and shepherd him home, and in adult years, when neighbors began selling exotic birds and cats began alighting nearby, David began feeding the cats diligently until one day one dragged her six or seven kittens one by cute, scraggly one to David because she knew he would help. He would adorn his iridescent flower gardens with the little signs indicating species. “He was very particular about his lawn,” son David Jr. says, “and he had a certain way he always wanted it cut — always diagonal.”


When he fly-fished with sons or with longtime buddy Gary Simon, he infused the occasion with joy even as, Simon jokes, “He was a little uncoordinated sometimes.” His golfing in later years proved so meaningful that son Nathan can’t bear even to drive past the last two courses they played together. He would drive to bowling listening to Celine Dion’s “When I Fall In Love,” David Jr. recalls, and he would end movies with a streaming tear that would make Bobbie say, “Good grief!” and David Sr. reply, “I know!”


“I know this is going to sound weird and it’s going to come across as weird,” says Jaber, whom David treated like a fifth son once best friend Nathan started bringing him around in their teen years, “but when I found out he was a Vietnam vet [and a Marine], it was a complete shock. You just didn’t see any of that hardness that you always grew up to expect people to have after they’d been to ’Nam and what they’d been through. How are you this sweet and kind when you’ve been through this much hell?”


Get a load of these passages from the guest book from David Beauchamp’s online obituary: “such a warm-spirited man” … “eyes were always twinkling” … “one of the greatest people I ever knew” ... “What a great man he was” … “the light in every room and at every function” ... “one of the warmest and kindest people I ever met.”

“He was always open to talking with you if you had any kind of issue whatsoever,” daughter Renee says. “He was great at talking you down from a ledge and making you see a different point of view. He was very — I don’t know how to explain it, but he was so nice.”


When Jim Macek arrived in 1969 in Da Nang, Vietnam, to join the unit, he and David marveled that they hailed from homes five minutes apart and began a lasting friendship that would feature this gruff old exchange: “He’d always say, ‘I love you, Jimmy Macek!’ And I’d say, ‘I love you, too, David Beauchamp!’”

He loved Michigan football yet did not hate Ohio State.


What rare humanity.

Such a man, of course, should fashion such a warmhearted bunker of a basement. The Beauchamps bought the house in 1988 from a family who fretted intensely about the Soviet Union to the extent of maps of Europe on the paneling. The small windows up near the ceiling reveal little of the outside world, and the concrete ceiling feels so uncommonly fortified that one son or another has joked to Bobbie that she probably couldn’t even hear a tornado if it menaced.


And the walls — the busy, busy walls. They brim with memorabilia of the Tigers, the Red Wings, the Pistons, the Wolverines, Barry Sanders, Al Kaline — there’s Mark Fidrych! — and here’s the thing: He bought just about all of it at flea markets, delighting in the puny prices. Above all, it’s a Lions den: Lions helmets on a table, Lions-blue tree ornaments and lights, Lions-blue candy canes. As the Lions play, the viewing party reacts emphatically to details. There’s high-fiving and there’s fleeting anger and there’s ample food and there’s the curious fact that everybody seems not only to love one another but to like one another.


“It’s kind of like a place that’s not even on Earth,” says 19-year-old Kyle Jaber, Joe’s son, a sophomore at Central Michigan. “It’s like some other dimension.”

Long after David married Bobbie in 1972 well after impressing her with his kindness and his deep-orange Camaro Z28 with its black front stripes and its big rear tires, he mourned once Nathan reached his young 20s and bought a house and brought David Jr. and Shane with him. The sons had a TV over there 15 minutes away, but Dad decided he could outdo their TV to help lure them back more often than not. “We went out to a Circuit City,” Bobbie says. “He got himself one of those big-screen projection TVs.”


The bunker gathered steam. David Sr. and Nathan would take days off to watch the opening Thursdays and Fridays of March Madness. With the Lions, everyone can recollect his lurches forward and his slouches backward in his usual chair, the one he would give up if the room filled, the one they left empty for a while after his death. The NFL draft became a must, and in April 2023, following a 9-8 season in 2022 with its gritty closing win at Green Bay that shooed the Packers from the playoffs, and with the Lions’ culture amassing power, they watched the selections with great hope and stir.


David Beauchamp died almost exactly one month later, a shock somehow preceding 12-5 and the NFC championship game, then 15-2 and an unprecedented No. 1 seed this postseason, all of it redefining the act of watching the Lions. Now all watch while thinking of one man and how he might respond to every single little thing. Now Renee starts each game by saying to her father, “Sprinkle some magic on your guys today.” Now Jeff and wife Megan in South Carolina up and bought an NFL TV package, a matter that would have floored his father. “I’m going to be honest,” Jeff says. “That’s really the only reason I watch it. I enjoy it, but I think at a very subconscious level it’s my connection.”


With each win, he cries some.

Everyone tries to process the universe’s unconscionable blunder. David Jr. says, “We’d probably be talking almost every day on the phone about the Lions,” and, “I would love to see how my dad would react.” Sadness, happiness, traces of anger and bits of disgust mingle, as do some unforeseeable phenomena. “It’s almost too difficult to process, honestly,” Shane says. “The sad part about it, I told my brother, when they lost to San Francisco [34-31 in the NFC championship game last January], ‘As sad as it is, I’m kind of glad they didn’t win it this year.’ It’s not that I was rooting for them to lose — I wasn’t rooting for them to lose — but it just made it a little bit easier, that it wouldn’t have been that year.”


Whatever the emotion of each of the brigade of the bereaved, all agree: The basement must carry on. It must carry on even through the emotional gantlet that would accompany the Lions to the Super Bowl, long after he used to joke to his sons that they would probably die without seeing the Lions in one. It must continue both without him and very much with him, in its roomful of hearts in which a departed gem of a human being long since took up permanent residence.


Chuck Culpepper covers national college sports as well as some tennis, golf and international sports for The Washington Post. He wrote previously for Sports On Earth/USA Today, The National (Abu Dhabi), the Los Angeles Times (while London-based), Newsday, the Oregonian, the Lexington Herald-Leader and, from age 14, the Suffolk Sun/Virginian-Pilot.