It was so easy to be cynical about the Detroit Lions entering their game against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday. Hell, it was so easy to be cynical about the Lions this season in general.

Understand, cynicism, complete with a dash of a never-ceasing sense of doom, is the default position for most Lions fans. Sixty years of misery will do that, the cumulative effect of crushing losses, handed down from one generation to the next.

I’ll spare you the list of atrocities inflicted upon Lions fans since their last NFL championship — which came three years before JFK was elected president, just to be clear — but if you need a nice summation, think of the Cleveland Browns’ overall ineptitude, mixed with the unyielding sense of failure that the once-cursed* Chicago Cubs endured, and you get a good sense of what I mean.

(*There actually is a Lions curse. They traded their star quarterback, Bobby Layne, after the 1957 title and it’s rumored he said they’d never win another championship again. Bobby nailed that one.)

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So when the Lions went 6-10 last season under new coach Matt Patricia amid reports the team wasn’t taking kindly to his tough-love approach, it was easy to fear where the 2019 season was headed. Even though Lions general manager Bob Quinn — whose butt is on the line with Patricia — assured me in training camp that Patricia was working hard to make sure the worst-case scenario wouldn’t happen.

“This guy grinds more than he should ... I worry about him not getting enough sleep at night,” Quinn said. “He’s doing everything in his power. The people who really know Matt understand [him]. I think our players are definitely starting to see that.”

View photos Lions receiver Marvin Jones celebrates a long reception in Sunday's game against the Chiefs. (Getty Images) More

Yet, the Lions were arguably the least-talented team in a super-competitive division, even with a spate of high-dollar free-agent additions. They also had a ridiculously difficult early schedule to contend with, one that looked more daunting following their season-opening tie against the sorry Arizona Cardinals, a game in which they bumbled away an 18-point fourth quarter lead. After that game, you could already feel fans in Detroit — a place where they booed the Lions during the first half of the first preseason game this year — readying their paper bags.

Then something unexpected happened: The Lions used a late interception of Philip Rivers to stave off an all-but-certain Los Angeles Chargers rally and held on for a 13-10 home win in Week 2 against a team that went 12-4 last year.

A cynic could explain that away as Rivers — who is going late-stage Dan Marino on us at this point in his career — going Rivers. And last week, when the Lions went into Philadelphia and beat the Eagles despite showing a complete inability to run the ball, a cynic could also explain that as the beat-up Eagles simply not having the offensive firepower to hang.

However, after the Lions’ showing on Sunday against the AFC favorite, it’s harder for any cynic to dismiss the Lions as anything but competent.

Yes, the Chiefs came away with a 34-30 win. But they needed a game-winning drive, complete with some magic from reigning MVP Patrick Mahomes, to do it. Mahomes had to pull a 15-yard scramble out of his keister on fourth-and-8 at his own 34-yard line to counter the drop-eight coverage Patricia has used so effectively recently to close out games.

From there, Mahomes, who failed to throw a touchdown pass for the first time since last October, had to make a few more “I’m-the-effing-MVP” throws to set up the game-winning touchdown plunge by Darrel Williams with 20 seconds left. By the time it was over, Mahomes’ stats looked fairly pedestrian (24 of 42 for 315 yards, his lowest total of the season) as the Lions played hard and looked like a well-coached team.

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