FMIA: Do The Hungry Lions Have The Horses To ‘Rich Strike’ Their Way To A .500 Record In 2022 NFL Season?

ALLEN PARK, Mich. — When you set out to write something positive about the Detroit Lions, there’s got to be a certain amount of wishful thinking involved. And so what, really? The Lions being mostly rancid for generations seems cruel and unusual punishment for any fan base, never mind this good one, so when you see signs the franchise might actually be competent, you leap on it. Like, well, a lion on wagyu.

As a Lions’ May OTA workout finished and 50-some players filed off the field in small groups, player after player came to greet Detroit GM Brad Holmes on the edge of the field. “Bossman!” one said with a big hug. Fifteen, 20 players embraced or bro-hugged or fist-bumped, some stopping for five seconds, some for a minute. This was not the dog days of training camp, or a Wednesday practice with the team on a four-game losing streak, but still it was a little unusual to see this affection for a general manager. PDAs with GMs are not all that common in the world I cover.

“Good observation,” Holmes said when I asked him about it later. “We’ve got a really good group, a group of men who are in this for the right reasons, who really want to win and invest the time in their team. Sometimes we talk about deeper things. I’ll tell them about books I’ve read, lessons I’ve learned. I care about them as people.”

The Lions have won one playoff game in the last 60 years—two less than the Bengals won last January—and we all know that the players being cool with the general manager won’t equate to wins. But it says something to me that players on a team with 11 wins in the last three years might actually like where they are.

This team has some momentum after a competitive end to 2021; Detroit was 3-3 after Dec. 1. I’ll be surprised if