Ford Field opened for business in 2002. Since that time, it has played host to a slew of significant events.

Super Bowl 40 was decided there, the Steelers besting the Seahawks in a proper send-off for Detroit native and future Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis.

Kentucky and Michigan State threw down on the hardwood in 2003’s “Basketbowl,” a game that broke all sorts of hoops attendance records with close to 80,000 passing through the Ford Field turnstiles.

Steph Curry did his thing in the 2008 Elite Eight, then the Spartans got a de-facto home game playing for the ’09 national title. North Carolina, looking more like an NBA playoff contender than a collection of student-athletes, rolled Tom Izzo and Co. by approximately 245 points.

And the venue has done much more than just football and basketball.

College hockey’s Frozen Four. Wrestlemania 23. There have been bull riders and monster trucks. The Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift, and Guns N’ Roses jammed there, too.

But the one event that Ford Field has yet to experience is the one it was most specifically designed to host: an NFL playoff game. (Excluding the Super Bowl, of course)

The Detroit Lions are the ones that call this place home, and defying the odds, have yet to bring postseason pigskin to their post-Silverdome digs. In NFL circles, that makes it pretty unique.

In this century, just one of 16 franchises in the NFC is yet to act as the home team for a playoff game: take a wild guess who that might be. But to borrow a silly sports clique, “If the season ended today,” Ford Field would get what it has been waiting almost a decade and a half for.

The season is more than halfway complete. And the Detroit Lions are in first place.

No Better Time

If ever there was a year for this unenviable bubble to burst, 2016 would be it. The NFC North, the division that the Lions call home, houses arguably the least intimidating foursome in football.

The Minnesota Vikings, darlings of the league for the first month of the season, have taken a precipitous fall ever since. They were 5-0. Now they stand at 5-4. The offensive attack, initially thought to have overcome the loss of quarterback Teddy Bridgewater, is averaging a scant 14 PPG during the losing streak. Oh, and the Lions own a road victory over the Vikes, meaning a win on Thanksgiving would secure the all-important divisional tiebreaker.



Detroit Lions photo

The longtime class of the group, the Green Bay Packers, might be sinking even deeper than Minnesota. They’ve won just one of their past five contests. The most recent defeat came at the hands of mediocre Tennessee, a game in which the Pack surrendered a whopping 47 points. Aaron Rodgers is still one of the league’s top signal-callers, but he can’t also be counted on to block, tackle, and organize the Lambeau Leaps, as well; the Packers as a whole appear to be taking on water from too many critical places.

And then there are Da Bears. They are among the league’s most punchless outfits. They’ve played nine games and have racked up just two victories. Jay Cutler is this generation’s Scott Mitchell, and even that might be too kind. If the Lions do somehow miss out on winning this leaderless division, they will no doubt look back to their flat-as-a-pancake effort in early October at Soldier Field. Matt Stafford’s offense went almost the entire 60 minutes of that contest without reaching the end zone, and it could very well wind up being the most regrettable four quarters of the 2016 season.

Not Stafford’s First Rodeo

The issue is this; we’ve seen this exact episode of the program before.

The Lions reach a certain point in the season, the record looks better than most would have expected, and the remaining schedule sets up like a traffic-free road map to the playoffs.

Only, it almost never goes according to plan. Remember, this franchise has not captured a division title of any sort since 1993, a stunning run of futility when you consider that the divisions themselves are really quite small. You have a 25% of finishing in first place every year; at some point, sheer mathematics almost insist that you come out on top.

Their first test as NFC North pacesetters should be a breeze. On paper, at least. The Jacksonville Jaguars and their 2-7 record come to downtown Detroit this Sunday. They’ve dropped four in a row and their head coach, Gus Bradley, is currently occupying the hottest of seats while simultaneously tiptoeing on the thinnest of ice. It wouldn’t be a surprise if he was pink-slipped during the actual game itself.

But all you have to do is go back to 2013, another year that saw the Lions in prime position to grab the North by the throat only to see it slip through their paws. That particular unit, the last of the Jim Schwartz era, was 6-4 and bringing in the repulsive Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a team playing its backup QB and toting a 2-10 mark. None of that mattered. Mike Freaking Glennon (actual middle name) invaded Ford Field, outplayed Stafford by a wide margin (no picks to Stafford’s FOUR), and the Bucs danced out the door to Brush St. with a three-point victory.

For all intents and purposes, that game signaled the end of the season. The Lions would bounce back nicely with a blowout of Green Bay on Thanksgiving, but then it was a quartet of losses to finish out the schedule; another promising campaign ending with nothing but empty promises and shattered dreams. Where else have I heard that lately??

All About You

The truth of the matter is that we can analyze the schedule from here until Christmas, figure out which games should be wins and which are likely losses. At the end of the day, those prognostications generally aren’t worth the napkins they are scribbled on. It’s the NFL; for the most part, you can lose to just about anyone in any given week. Unless you’re playing the Browns, of course.

So we can peek ahead and see Jaguars, Vikings, Saints, Bears over the next four weeks -- and start getting all excited, ordering NFC North Championship Fan Rings by the dozen. But the opponents really are secondary. It will be the performance of this Detroit Lions team that will ultimately decide their fate.

Three years ago, the Lions had basically this exact game on their schedule at almost the identical juncture of the season. Stafford went out and threw a million interceptions and the rest was history.

As is the case in pro sports, wait long enough and that same opportunity is likely to come around again. Just ask the Cubs. So here the Lions stand, a few years removed from that 2013 collapse, with another possible division title sitting right there on a custom-made Honolulu blue & silver platter.

A playoff berth of any kind would be a thrill. But in order to really get the juices flowing around town, said postseason game would have to be at home. At Ford Field.

Facts are facts, and the fact is that the Lions have played ten road playoff games in the Super Bowl era, and they have come up empty every single time. Zero wins, ten defeats. It’s like rooting for the Washington Generals, only without the comedy.

If this club is to accomplish anything of significance in January, it will have to happen in the city of Detroit. It’s as simple as that.

Ford Field has been waiting its turn patiently. It has feigned interest when Gold Cup soccer came to town and forced a smile when Kid Rock threw a 40th birthday there. But in the stadium’s heart of hearts, it knows it was built to host the Detroit Lions in the NFL playoffs.

In a calendar year chock-full of curses being broken and dreams becoming reality, why not throw another log on the fire?

The Detroit Lions are in first place.

That means, if the season ended today...