Brace yourself for Matthew Stafford Week: Detroit Lions have a chance to slay 2 dragons

Justin Jefferson stood outside the Minnesota Vikings locker room, saying things that sounded so familiar to Detroit Lions fans.

“It's just tough,” Jefferson said after the Lions beat the Vikings, 30-20, on Sunday afternoon at Ford Field. “It's tough having a good game and we're not executing as a team. So what does it matter if I'm getting my individual stats if we're not winning? I want to be in the playoffs, competing for the Super Bowl.”

Jefferson’s season was done, and he sounded like Matthew Stafford, back in the day, when the start of the playoffs signaled the end of another Lions season, at least most of the time. Or maybe, more precisely, he sounded like many Lions fans talking about Stafford.

Yes, we’ll get back to Stafford in a second.

A moment later, the Lions' locker room opened.

“We got two more banners to hang,” said C.J. Gardner-Johnson, the Lions safety.

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Let me pause here to just thank the heavens this quote machine is back.

“We're not falling short,” he said. “We work too hard. Like coach Dan (Campbell) said, ‘We're seasoned for this. We're perfectly scarred for this.’”

As he talked, I turned my head and saw Lions general manager Brad Holmes walk through the locker room and disappear through a door. Holmes was the one who traded Stafford to the Rams, kick-starting this organization's amazing transformation.

Can we just stop for a second and appreciate this moment? Can we just appreciate where this team is? The Lions are about to host the Rams — and Stafford — in the playoffs; and that is itself an amazing accomplishment.

Two years ago, this team didn’t win its first game until Dec. 5 — also, fittingly enough, against these Vikings. Last year, this team started off the season 1-6.

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But now, after this remarkable transformation, this team must learn how to win in the playoffs.

“I’ll try to explain this as best I can,” Lions quarterback Jared Goff said. “When Week 1 happens, the speed is at an all-time high and then throughout the year, it kind of does that — just people are banged up and it kind of lowers, and then towards the end of the year it comes back up. Then that first week of that playoff game, it goes back to what it was Week 1, typically, that speed and how hard and fast everyone on the field is playing regardless of injury or anything. So, that’s the one thing I guess that I could tell guys.”

It's almost too perfect of a story

After the game, a reporter asked Lions offensive lineman Taylor Decker if he had thought about what it would be like if the Lions played the Rams and Stafford.

“That would definitely be poetic,” Decker said. “I don't play against him. So it'd be good to see him, say hi to him. But that's about it.”

Yes, this is a full-circle moment.

Perhaps the best quarterback in the franchise's history is returning to the home of the team that drafted him and, after 12 years, traded him away, which helped propel this current run to the playoffs.

But it’s important to remember: The trade worked out for everybody.

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I learned the Lions would play the Rams as I walked down a ramp, heading to a plane on my way to Houston for the College Football Playoff title game between Michigan and Washington.

“We are playing the Rams,” somebody informed everybody in line, waiting to board the plane.

“Oh no!” one fan blurted. “I don’t want to see Stafford.”

“I’ve seen Stafford throw three interceptions in Ford Field,” a woman said.

Everybody laughed.

I sat down in my seat, next to a Lions fans.

“I love it,” he said. “You wanna slay the dragon.”

Once you get past the pure poetry of this moment, it’s also a tremendous opportunity.

It’s a chance for Goff to shove it in the Rams' faces for trading him.

“He’s gonna play mad,” a fan next to me on the plane said.

It’s a chance for this team to take the next step — and actually win a playoff game for the first time in 32 years — against the quarterback who couldn’t win one in Detroit in three chances.

It’s all just so poetic.

A little scary? Sure.

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Stafford is still a heck of a quarterback, who can sling it around the field. He threw for nearly 4,000 yards and 24 touchdowns this season, and the Lions' pass defense just gave up a ton of yards to Jefferson.

Yes, that’s more than a little scary.

But I don’t think this team will freak out playing against Stafford.

This Lions team is seasoned. It has suffered scars and survived.

“It is a resilient group,” Campbell said. “They’re able to overcome adversity, snap back, and they’ve done that again.”

But here’s another way to look at this:

This team has already accomplished more with Goff in three seasons than it did with Stafford in 12.

It won 12 games for only the second time in organization history. Yes, I know it took 17 games, but Stafford never won 12 games.

It put up a division championship banner for the first time in 30 years.

And it has won 21 games over the past two seasons — a two-year total unequaled in Lions history.

“To get 12 wins that’s significant,” Campbell said. “And it’s a credit to our players and our coaches, man, all the hard work that’s been put in, everybody’s gunning for you, and you just keep going out and knocking them off so it says a lot, and to me more than anything after what we just got through today and what we did, it tells me we’re ready for what’s next. This team is ready, it’s ready. … They’ve been through it all, and they’re battle-tested, they’re scarred to perfection and we will be ready.”

This promises to be an amazing week.

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You might as well slay all the dragons in one fell swoop.

Not just Stafford.

But 32 years of playoff frustration.

Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @seideljeff.

To read his recent columns, go to freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions can to slay two dragons: Matthew Stafford, playoff skid