This is an opinion piece by MLive.com reporter Kyle Meinke.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Rick Wagner was limping through the locker room. So was Graham Glasgow, who had a wrap on his left knee. In the far corner, Ameer Abdullah wasn't moving so great after rolling his ankle. And T.J. Lang was leaning against his locker as he held court with a small group of reporters.

Perhaps that's just how he wanted to stand. Or, perhaps, it had something to do with getting speared in the back so hard that the officials upstairs thought he might have sustained a concussion.

After watching him dip into the trainers' room after his chat, that seems like a good bet.

Minnesota features one of the most violent defensive lines in the game, and everyone except Greg Robinson appeared to be dealing with some kind of injury on Detroit's front. The Vikings took their best swing, and punched Detroit right in the face.

Just ask Matthew Stafford. He was sacked six times, something that hadn't happened since back when Detroit was trying to install the Cooter Ball offense on a flight to Europe. This might have been his worst game of 2017.

According to ProFootballFocus, he was Detroit's worst player on the field.

Yet the Lions won. Again.

"The biggest thing coming off today's performance is, obviously, you know, a good win for us on the road against a division opponent," Lang said after the 14-7 win. "But I don't think anybody's sitting in here celebrating. Guys know we have a lot of work to do, especially on offense, to get to where the rest of the team is playing at. And once we do that, we'll kind of separate ourselves as a football team. A lot of good things will happen.

"It hasn't been pretty week in and week out, but we're sitting in here 3-1 and in a good spot."

Nobody in the Lions locker room has won more than Lang, a longtime Packer, so perhaps it should be no surprise that the offensive lineman is so good at putting wins into perspective.

Consider Detroit's last victory, in New York against the Giants. Lang was the last man standing in that locker room. Everyone else was long gone for the trainers room or the postgame spread or the team bus. And he stood there with one foot on a stool, arm resting on his leg, answering every single question put to him.

He just kept saying, over and over, the Lions had a hell of team. He said it at least four times. We kept asking different questions. He kept saying the Lions had a hell of a team.

And it's time we believe him.

The Lions are sitting atop the NFC North at 3-1. They're good enough to win the division too. They should at least make the playoffs, that much is clear. They could -- and I know this is sacrilege to say in Detroit -- but they could advance once they're there.

Look at the teams that compete for championships. They almost always have a good quarterback, almost always win the turnover battle, and almost always are good enough to win in different ways. And with a quarter of the season in the books, it's obvious Detroit is all of these things.

Watching the Lions every year has a way of conditioning people to be suspicious of nice things. Like last year, when the Lions advanced to the playoffs but then were immediately broomed by Seattle. But that team did almost all of its damage relying on Stafford. Without his fourth-quarter comebacks, Detroit would have been a losing team.

Just look at what happened here in Minnesota last year. The Lions were at their own 25-yard line with no timeouts, and trailing by three with just 27 seconds left. Their win probability was, literally, 1 percent.

They needed an actual miracle. So Stafford put on his cape, threw two perfect passes, then rushed to the line to stop the clock. And even after executing everything so perfectly, Detroit had only 2 seconds to spare as Matt Prater teed up the second-longest kick in team history.

He made it, of course, and the Lions won in overtime. Fun stuff. But hardly sustainable.

And that's what makes this team so different. They don't need miracles. They just punch back, often harder. They won their first two games by double digits, something only one other NFC team did. They went toe to toe with that one other team last week, and lost to the Falcons by about 6 inches -- on a day when they didn't force a punt until late in the fourth quarter.

Then they went back on the road to face the co-division leading Vikings, and watched their most important player turn into their worst player on the field. And they never even trailed in the fourth quarter.

Yeah. This team is different.

The Lions squeezed just 14 turnovers out of last season. They already have 11 this year, including two that turned around Sunday's game. Anthony Zettel and Tahir Whitehead hopped on fumbles to open the second half, which flipped a 7-3 deficit into a 14-7 lead.

Minnesota kept punching. But Detroit kept punching harder. When the Vikings drove to the goal line late in the fourth, Zettel crushed the scoring opportunity by dropping Case Keenum for a sack. When the Vikings got a quick defensive stop and one more shot, Glover Quin stripped Adam Thielen from behind and Whitehead pounced on another ball.

Oh yeah. This team is different all right.

This is what good teams do. They turn people over. They win games when they're not at their best. They win games in different ways. One week, it's the safeties. Another week, it's Stafford. This week, it's Zettel.

Next week, who knows?

Nobody is suspicious of nice things more than Lions fans. Six decades of getting your ears kicked in will do that. But this team is different. It's OK to believe in them. It's OK to admit they're good, because that's exactly what they are. The only question is just how good.

Just take it from the dude who knows good football better than anyone else in that locker room. Take it from Lang, once again the last man to head for the bus because he wanted to tell anyone who would listen, yes, it's OK to believe.

"When your defense is playing elite football, and your special teams are keeping you around in games, I think we all kind of understand when our offense gets to that level, we won't have to make every game close," Lang said. "We're a dangerous football team."

Indeed.