DETROIT — Sixteen years ago, Michelle Alessandri of Dearborn Heights, Mich., gathered with family and friends on Thanksgiving as they always do, outside Ford Field for a Detroit Lions tailgate.
The team was on its way to an 0-16 season, the first in NFL history at the time. High above in a nearby jail sat the city’s former mayor, convicted on two counts of obstruction of justice (he’d later serve federal time as well). A nearby casino had just filed for bankruptcy and the city government would soon follow. General Motors, headquartered down the block, recently received a $13 billion emergency loan from the government to stay afloat.
As the tailgaters were wrapping up its turkey and dressing and desserts to head inside, a downtrodden man came by, in need of some food. They fixed him a plate.
He took a few bites, but didn’t seem too impressed before noting to Alessandri, “It’s kind of dry, isn’t it?”
The tailgaters could only laugh at the chutzpah.
Welcome to Thanksgiving in Detroit.
For years, America groaned that the early game on the national holiday was populated by the lowly Lions. The franchise invented the concept back in 1934 — trying to capture crowds of downtown parade goers to check out the team. They remained because television networks determined that it didn’t matter, ratings wise, who played on Thanksgiving. A captured audience was going to watch, so why waste a good game on the time slot?
Yet the Lions — other than a few seasons of Barry Sanders brilliance — were the team no one wanted to see.
There was a 66-year stretch where they won just a single playoff game. Six or seven wins were often considered a good season. Former QB Joey Harrington was a former first round pick who never played for a winning team in Detroit, but once called his time there the franchise’s “hey-days.” He wasn’t all wrong.
Thanksgiving was often Detroit’s only national television appearance, going 37-45-2 all-time on the holiday. The Lions are just 4-16 the last two decades and on a current seven-game losing streak.
It’s a new day, though. The city and area around Ford Field are far more developed than in the past — luxury high rises and packed restaurants and bars. And the Lions, too, are much better — not just 10-1 and a Super Bowl betting favorite coming off a NFC championship game appearance, but with a dynamic offense and one of the most exciting teams in the league.
No one, perhaps oddly or perhaps appropriately, represents the mood around the team and the city quite like a blonde-haired 30-year old from Marin County, California, who came here against his will.
Jared Goff is his name and you’ll hear it chanted all over not just Ford Field or Detroit itself or even the state of Michigan, but anywhere anyone who once lived in those places now resides.
“JAR-ed Goff! JAR-ed Goff!” isn’t just a salute to the starting quarterback, but a battle cry for a discarded city and fan base, a can-you-believe-it bit of bravado.
You’ll hear it at Lions road games, of course, where Honolulu-clad fans have begun to overwhelm the stands, but also Detroit Red Wings or Detroit Tigers games across the continent. Or at destination weddings full of Michiganders. Or among passing fans in a far off bar or airport or store.
It’s not “Let’s go, Lions.” It’s not, “Here we go, Detroit.”
It’s literally “JAR-ed Goff.”
It’s a chant that only emerged last January when the Lions hosted (and won) its first playoff game since the 1991 season. The pregame Ford Field crowd wanted to acknowledge their current QB over their former one, Matthew Stafford of the Los Angeles Rams.
Stafford was a hero here too, but he was shipped off for a slew of draft picks in the Lions latest rebuilding effort. Goff, the former No. 1 overall draft pick, was tossed in in return as an almost valueless add-on. He’d had his moments with the Rams, but had become an interception machine the team didn’t believe could win a Super Bowl.
Then he became the catalyst for this wild, victory-filled ride in Detroit, the perfect symbol for everything. The fans that day last January wanted Goff to know they believed in him.
“The people here are special, man,” Goff said after that playoff victory that led to a run to the NFC championship game. “I’m grateful. It meant a lot. I love these guys.”
Once discarded and beaten down, Goff is now soaring and making the rest of the country believe in his team, which just happens to represent a city long discarded and beaten down that desperately wants the rest of the country to believe in it as well.
Rather than regress or give up when he arrived in Detroit, Goff found a second life among kindred spirits. Rather than pushback at leaving sunny, glamorous Los Angeles for the industrial Midwest, he found a home.
He’s better than ever, a legit MVP candidate this season. This, it bears repeating, is one of the great stories in the National Football League.
“To see us come from where we were, to see us where we are, and the fans have experienced that,” Goff said. “This place is special to me. Like I said, these people are special.”
And so the Lions will be back on everyone’s television this Thanksgiving — 12:30 p.m. ET per usual — hosting Chicago. Only this time they will be 9.5-point favorites. Only this time the hope will not center on avoiding embarrassment. Only this time, America will happily tune in because everything has changed.
“JAR-ed Goff,” they will no doubt chant — the unlikely centerpiece of this unlikely renaissance, a long way from the desperate and hungry critiquing a free slice of turkey in a parking lot outside the home of a winless team in a broke and broken city.
