Eric Thomas: Lions Hysteria Is Spreading

The Lions spilled a whole bunch of enthusiasm all over Michigan on Saturday night, and the national punditry is desperate to cram it back in the box.

"It's just a pre season game!" they gasp, or "The Patriots had 8 members of their starting defense in Foxboro!" You are wasting your breath. The attempts at stifling this excitement are just dry word bricks that fall lazily at the feet of uninterested parties.

Cynicism has melted away as if it looked directly into the Ark of the Covenant. Lions fans have awoken, and the voracity cup runs over. You hear the phone calls, read the comment threads and Facebook updates. It's not unusual to see or hear "10 wins" since Saturday.

Lions fans deserve this. There is reason to be enthusiastic. The fan base in metro Detroit likes hearing Suh "IS A BEAST!!!!" We haven't heard anything positive about anyone in a Lions uniform for quite some time.

The guy who sits in front of me at Ford Field sounded almost weepy when he said: "I have been watching this team for 30 years, it's finally time!" (I cleaned that up a little bit, I sit in the end zone People bring up Suh and Stafford so much that we regularly forget that we have arguably the best WR in the game on the roster. Remember when we only bragged about Jason Hanson?

The pundits bring up the 0-16 season a lot, but they forget that was only one year of a decade of misery. Bringing up the 0-16 season excuses the numerous 2-14 gems and the 3-13 debacles. Matt Millen's record was 31-81 and I swear it felt a lot worse than that. It's an easy buzz word to say "long suffering Lions fans", but I don't think that phrase even comes close to accurately describing the breadth of this misery.

It's not like Lions fans were feeling good about the state of the team when Millen came to town. The last decade was the worst, but it was only the latest in the long tragedy of a city desperate for a winning football team.

You can credit Millen with one thing: He cured one of the most onerous ills of Lions "fan-dom." The Lions are a tortured franchise, but part of the problem has been the impatience of the fan base. This problem tends to infect all sports franchises in Detroit, but the Lions have always gotten the most heat.

We are pretty quick to drag goalies, quarterbacks and coaches out in front of everyone for a proper spankin'. When Millen came in, he cut numerous 60 second ads where he monotonously proclaimed: "The bar is high." At the merciful end of his reign, the opposite is true. The bar is low.

There are thousands of fans who spin their shirts around like the proverbial helicopter at the suggestion the team might just be competitive. With that patience, we got continuity. Matt Stafford is entering his third year with the exact same coaching staff! Did Joey ever have that?

We saw a no huddle offense on Saturday! From the Lions! Wasn't it awesome?!
They can shake their heads and cup their hands to cover smiles, smugly chortling at the blue and silver delusion. Go ahead, but this is not going away. Never before has a preseason game created such a thunderstorm. The usual cynicism is gone, with fans gleefully screwing Lions flags into the drivers' side roof, and what the heck, the trunk latch.

 Lions fans are acting a bit like a dog, when you pretend to throw the ball then hold it behind your back. They have enthusiastically chased after a phantom ball, not caring whether or not they have been duped.

Believe me; you can count me as one of these people. In the back of my mind, I know there are huge running game questions and I don't know if Stafford can stay healthy. I know the defensive secondary is hopelessly porous, and Stephen Tulloch looks really short to be a middle linebacker.

I don't care. Despite all of my caveats, I am all in. And yes I know better. This enthusiasm is awesome and I am hopelessly caught up in it. Cynicism has been almost a constant companion in my decades as a Lions fan and I am happy to let it go... even if it's only temporarily. I am, too, hammering a Lions flag into the top of my leased car. I am painting a giant letter "L" on my chest and bringing 4 friends to Ford Field.

Let's just hope that in November the "L" still stands for "Lions". Okay, maybe that cynicism isn't totally gone. I am working on it.