And then there were four. The two number one seeds – the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers advanced to Championship Sunday, one more comfortably than the other. And they will be joined by the ever-present Kansas City Chiefs and the Cinderella Detroit Lions.
Among the vanquished, good seasons can be savoured by the Houston Texans, Green Bay Packers and Tampa Bay Buccaneers once the initial pain of defeat has softened. But, the Buffalo Bills are going to take longer to digest their loss to the Chiefs as they endured further 'wide right agony' almost 33 years after Scott Norwood's heartbreaking Super Bowl miss at the end of the 1990 season.
But let's get to one of the victors first in the Detroit Lions. What a story. In his third season in charge of the perennial strugglers, head coach Dan Campbell has taken his talented team to the NFC title game for the first time since the 1991 season.
And I can use words like 'plucky' and 'Cinderella' all day long, but this fact remains… the Lions deserve to be playing for the right to reach the Super Bowl this coming Sunday. They have been among the best teams in the league since the middle of last season and put everyone on notice in 2023 when they went into Arrowhead Stadium on opening night and knocked off the Chiefs. There could still be a chance for Patrick Mahomes to gain some revenge for that defeat.
When Campbell arrived in Detroit in 2021, he was mocked for what seemed like an overly-hyped opening press conference in which the new head coach talked about biting the kneecaps of opponents. Only figuratively, of course! But what Campbell was doing was insisting that he was going to change Detroit's culture, to back down from no opponent and to put an end to the losing.
He
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