DETROIT – Amon-Ra St. Brown was asked after the win over the Buccaneers if he thinks the Detroit Lions are one of the best teams in the NFL. He had the perfect answer.
“I think so,” St. Brown said. “It’s still early. Last year, if you said the Lions are one of the worst teams in the league at this point, at the end of the year, you might have been saying something different. So there’s still a lot of football left to be played, but if we keep playing like this, we’ll have a good shot.”
This is such a great response from Detroit’s 23-year-old captain. The Lions are off to a 5-1 start, so fans have a right to be excited. But a lot can change over the next two-thirds of the season.
“To start off 5-1 is huge for us, but for us, I think we take it one week at a time,” St. Brown said. “We’re going to celebrate this win, but as soon as this next week approaches, we’re onto the next game, onto Baltimore.”
Lions fans have waited decades for a team capable of competing for a Super Bowl. Heck, the Lions have never even won an NFC North title or hosted a playoff game at Ford Field.
But it looks like both of those droughts could end this season, as the Lions hold a 2.5-game lead over the Green Bay Packers in the division.
St. Brown walked the tightrope of providing relevant perspective without being a buzzkill.
Last season, the Lions got off to a 1-6 start and looked like one of the worst teams in the NFL. Dan Campbell was 4-19-1 as head coach, and it was starting to look like maybe this would be another failed era.
Then, out of nowhere, a switch flipped. The Lions finished the season 6-2 and nearly snuck into the playoffs. They eliminated the Packers, finished with a winning record, and laid the foundation for this year’s 5-1 start.
So if there’s anyone who knows how fast things can change in the NFL, it’s St. Brown and his teammates.
“We put so much focus into each week and so much preparation, and to come out with a victory, it feels really good,” St. Brown said. “But we know we have bigger goals ahead of us. We want to keep doing what we’re doing. We want to get to the playoffs. We want to have home-field advantage for the playoffs, so there’s so many things that we want to accomplish this year. It’s just the start for us. We want to keep going.”
It’s been a long time since we had a winning football team in Detroit, so this served as a good reminder to enjoy the ride while keeping each week in perspective.
