Thanksgiving this Thursday is also a football holiday in the USA. The Detroit Lions, who were the laughingstock of the NFL for years, always play. But not least because of the German Amon-Ra St. Brown, the team from “Motorcity” is now favorites for the title and is exciting fans, including in this country. The long-troubled Autostadt is upside down – as a visit shows.
Here you will find content from Facebook that is relevant to the topic. Click “View Post” to view the content.
Hissing clouds of smoke rise from the machine. From the dark maw of the players’ tunnel, cheerleaders hop onto the field with flowing manes of hair and a blue lion on their dresses. In an increasingly dense artificial fog, the gladiators of the day follow one by one, men as wide as refrigerators prance through the fan trellis to cracking music, the granules in the artificial turf spray under their feet. A jet taking off would now be no louder than the background noise in this huge hall, the Detroit Football Dome. And in the middle of the line are Marius Dell and his girlfriend from the first German Lions fan club. Unforgettable moments with your favorite NFL team pass by. “I still can’t say how awful this experience was,” said fan club president Dell later.
Detroit Lions vs Chicago Bears today on Nitro
This is roughly what it will look like this Thursday when, as usual, the Detroit Lions play a home game on the US holiday of Thanksgiving. This time they welcome the rival Chicago Bears (6.30 p.m./RTL+, RTL Nitro and DAZN) – instead of the Jacksonville Jaguars, like when the German fans visited almost two weeks ago – and heat up their crowd of fans with the warm-up show; although that is hardly necessary at the moment.
Lions have never been to the Super Bowl
“This Is Our Year,” is written on a sign that fans in the front row of seats at Ford Field hold up to the cameras of TV stations and photographers. This time it’s their turn! The team has been in Detroit since 1934. In the Super Bowl era of the National Football League, i.e. since the mid-1960s, the Lions were never in the finals. As the only team, apart from the very young expansion teams (like Jacksonville), that have only been playing for a few years.
The laughing stock of the entire league
That wasn’t the only reason why the Lions were the laughingstock of the entire country. In 2008 they even managed the feat of not winning a single game of the season. 0:16! A first in the NFL, which is so focused on balancing, providing the worst teams with the best young players. Despite the Ford family as owners, the Lions were the symbol of mismanagement. Talents of the century like running back Barry Sanders and wide receiver Calvin Johnson ended their careers prematurely, partly because they could no longer bear losing with the Lions. And many fans wore paper bags over their heads.
Fan representatives broadcast live from the stadium on RTL
And now? Meanwhile, Detroiters are scrambling for tickets. The Lions are the hottest ticket in the burgeoning motor city, the entire NFL. The minimum price paid for a seat at Ford Field is $150 or more. If you walk through Detroit, past the newly renovated high-rise buildings in downtown, you will primarily see blue. On people’s caps, T-shirts, jackets. None of the other three professional teams (Tigers, Red Wings, Pistons). “Lions Pride,” they say here. The pride in the team is omnipresent. This city has (football) fever. Lions fans also flood other stadiums as a pack, creating a home game atmosphere. And all hell is breaking loose at home anyway.
Fans boo the Jacksonville Jaguars in the players’ tunnel
Word of this has also spread to Germany, where Marius Dell, who comes from the Heilbronn area, and colleagues launched the first German fan club in the summer. “Lions Pride Germany,” it’s appropriately called. The associated banner is also a sought-after motif in Ford Field – just like Marius Dell himself, who the TV station RTL quickly includes in the program from Detroit with a live broadcast during the NFL broadcast in Germany. The well-traveled guests are also allowed to stay in the players’ tunnel – and join the other Lions fans in booing the opponent from Jacksonville as they go into the dressing room.
Franchise owned by the Ford family
At this moment, applause erupts in the stadium catacombs for Martha Firestone Ford. She, 99, with snow-white hair and black sunglasses, strolls in the golf cart towards the auto dynasty’s box. The team belonged to her until 2020, and before that to her husband William Clay Ford, the youngest grandson of the legendary car pioneer Henry Ford, to whom Detroit owes its still-sounding name as “Motor City”. When her daughter Sheila Hamp Ford took over the Lions four years ago, she turned everything around. New management, new coach. Dan Campbell, an ex-player, a man like a tree, teaches the team as the main trainer the work ethic of the hard-working people in the “Motor City” who have endured many crises in the structural change in the industry: biting, scratching, getting up again and again, after every rainfall. “And on the way up, we bite a kneecap off,” he swore to the press. In an in-fight, the athletic opponent’s kneecap has to believe in it. Detroiters proudly wear Campbell’s legendary saying on their T-shirts.
The players run through a concrete wall for Coach Campbell
Campbell himself was part of the 0:16 failure. That’s what shaped him, that’s what he passes on. For him, his players literally run through concrete walls. Everyone has something to prove. Both also apply to the German-born star player in the team, whose number 14 jersey is among the top ten best-selling fan items in the NFL: Amon-Ra St. Brown. Father John, once Mr. Universum, from America, mother Miriam from Leverkusen. St. Brown was selected in the fourth round as the 112th player from Detroit’s college football talent pool. The other teams selected 16 pass receivers ahead of him. St. Brown, 25, can name each one. He has now far surpassed almost all of them. That’s worth a $120 million contract to the Lions.
Amon-Ra St. Brown is expected to earn $120 million
When the German guests visited, the German-American caught two touchdowns and celebrated them as usual with a jump into the fan curve. It is his eighth game in a row with points, which is a club record. Marius Dell waves his fan club flag with St. Brown’s signature on it particularly intensively. The team achieved another milestone against the Jaguars that day: the offense covered 644 yards. Detroit is currently literally overwhelming its opponents. 52:6 against an overwhelmed Jacksonville, 47:9 against the (once) great Dallas Cowboys, 42:29 against the Seattle Seahawks. Balance sheet 10:1 after eleven of 17 main round games, making them the best team in the league and Super Bowl favorites. At the sports betting provider Bwin, the Lions have odds of 3.60, while defending champion Kansas City has odds of 5.50.
The Detroit Lions will soon play in Germany
Is this really the Year of the Lion? Finally from a fan perspective? The Lions have even forgotten the serious injury to their best defensive player Aidan Hutchinson (broken tibia). They have at least nominally signed a replacement in veteran Za’Darius Smith. The 32-year-old will be wearing “Honolulu Blue,” as the Lions’ colors are called, for the first time against Jacksonville. Squishes two plastic bottles as he enters the field through the artificial fog and pours the water over his face and jersey: washed with all water – or so hot for the title that he needs to cool down, that’s what that means. Smith is the most celebrated. Also from Marius Dell in the front row.
Party at the “Munich Game” in the state capital
The Lions will play in Germany next year or 2026 at the latest. “We applied,” Lions officials confirmed on the sidelines of the Jacksonville game. The franchise owns the marketing rights for the German market in the strictly regulated NFL and already threw a fan party at the “Munich Game” in the Bavarian capital at the beginning of the month. Of course, Dell and his fan club were also there and welcomed new members. St. Brown’s mother Miriam Steyer is already there. She won’t be the last newcomer from Germany if the Lions actually pull off their big coup.
mgb
