Adam Ostermeier Introduces His New Column About Lions’ History.
When you think about the Detroit Lions the first thing that typically comes to mind is pain. It’s the inevitable truth that fans have to face when signing on to cheering for this franchise after decades of mismanagement, poor play, and amazingly bad luck.
In the Super bowl era the Lions have the dubious distinction of playing a mere 13 playoff games in 51 years of existence, with a 1-12 record in those games. Even when things seem to be turning around for the better in recent years a series of events that border on the incredible pop up, ranging from plays that change rule books to blatantly blown calls and wide open missed opportunities that sink a once hopeful season.
These faults however occasionally make fans forget the team’s storied past. Detroit’s football history is filled with tradition and many great players and moments sprinkled throughout. Now with a front office and core in place that truly gives fans undeniable reason for hope, it is the perfect time to look back on where we came from before hopefully stepping on to new, long awaited frontiers.
In this series, we will try to pay fair homage to that past. Over the next few weeks we will profile the best and worst Lions starters at every position in the team’s history. In true Lions form, there are going to be some incredible high’s and some near unbearable lows. From boozed up heroes, to massive draft busts, there’s plenty of incredible and depressing stories to go around. I promise we can get through this trip down a very treacherous memory lane together. So strap in, it’s going to be a wild ride.
Before we start however I need to outline who qualifies for this list. There are a lot of players who have started a game(s) for Detroit yet we would not call them “starters”. Therefore, to be included as a ‘best or worst candidate’ a player had to be:
1) Named the week 1 starter or
2) Started in eight consecutive games (half a season or more depending on the era).
Don’t worry about some obvious players or moments that may not apply on this list. Several of them might make an appearance on the honorable (or dis-honorable) mentions list at the end of the section. If there’s an obvious moment or player that needs to be included it will probably be there, but if it’s not let me know on the sub.
Also I would like to give a shout out to user wwillcoxson for first bringing up the idea in the Detroit Lions’ sub-reddit and being the inspiration for this piece.
So be prepared, get your picks ready, and see where they stack up against this list as we go through a position group every Tuesday and Thursday.
