Detroit Lions blow huge opportunity that isn't guaranteed for years to come

The silence felt heavy, the emotions raw, the pain on every face.

Detroit Lions tackle Penei Sewell stood in front of his locker, staring straight ahead, and he looked crushed.

They all did.

The Lions’ locker room reflected how most Lions fans probably felt.

Stunned. Disappointed. Heartbroken. Dejected. Mad. Sad. Ticked off. All of it.

There was no satisfaction in reaching the NFC championship game, being so agonizingly close to getting to the Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history.

There was no talk about how far this team had climbed, winning the NFC North for the first time in franchise history and winning two playoff games.

There was no sense, at least not in the immediate aftermath of this game, of how much this organization has improved under general manager Brad Holmes and coach Dan Campbell, or even a subtle appreciation or even acknowledgement for how this is still a work in progress.

The steps of progress seemed pointless then.

“Actually, it doesn't matter,” Sewell said after an epic collapse in which the Lions blew a 17-point lead and lost to the San Francisco 49ers, 34-31.

Several players said the same thing.

There were no moral victories.

Just ticked off players.

"At the end of the day, if you’re not winning it all, it’s a failure in my book,” Frank Ragnow said.

Maybe, a day will come when this pain starts to fade and it is replaced with perspective.

But here is a harder truth: the window was cracked open — actually, that window had turned into a giant doorway in the first half — but the Lions failed to jump through it.

Actually, they tried to get through it and got stuck.

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And it’s only going to get harder from here.

There’s no guarantee — as Lions fans know more than any other fan base — that they will return to this stage next season.

Or even the year after that. Or the decade after that.

From this point on, the Lions are going to be the hunted.

“Everybody is going to want a piece of you,” coach Dan Campbell said.

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When you take a 24-7 lead in the NFC championship game, even if you end up losing, the rest of the NFL takes notice.

“It's just hard to climb that mountain,” Taylor Decker said. “It's hard to put yourself in a position. You know, it's probably gonna be even harder next year to get back to this point. That's why you play the game though.”

Through this playoff run, the Lions were fighting history, even if they didn’t acknowledge it often. They had not won a road playoff game in 66 seasons, losing 11 straight.

Now, you can make it 12.

Magic runs out

This team had a magical quality that ran out in San Francisco.

But it will never be the same. The roster will turn over again. New draft picks will arrive. Some players will leave in free agency and some new ones will arrive.

It’s the nature of the NFL.

And this team has several areas it needs to improve, including their secondary and another edge rusher for starters.

And yes, ideally, they will find a kicker who can blast them from long range. To make those fourth-down decisions easier.

In addition, it’s possible, if not probable, the Lions will lose some coaches.

There is speculation that offensive coordinator Ben Johnson will take over in Washington, and it wouldn’t be surprising that he would take at least one coach with him.

“I’ve played on enough teams to know that I'm not going to see all of these guys anymore,” Decker said. “So that sucks. But you're just appreciative of other guys in here because man it's hard and hard to win and hard to get to this point. But we didn’t do enough.”

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A horrible second half

So what happened Sunday?

A whole bunch of bad in the second half.

While it’s fair to criticize this team for how it collapsed, the blame should be spread across the team. There were dropped passes and missed blocks and far too many missed tackles and blown opportunities and a dropped interception and a failure to make the biggest plays when they needed it the most.

Certainly, you can criticize Campbell for coming up empty on fourth down — twice.

But if you dig deeper, you will realize the real problem was not having a strong-legged kicker — something I pointed out repeatedly this season, warning that it could cost a game in the most crucial situation. And even more than that, it was a reflection of having a defensive secondary that couldn’t stop somebody when it mattered the most.

Campbell knew that deficiency and tried to coach to cover it up. But it backfired.

“I don’t regret those decisions,” Campbell said.

What now?

The players have confidence they are on the right track, that they have the right front office, that they have the right coaches and the right nucleus, and it's hard to argue in the big picture.

"We feel like we got the guys and we're hungry,” Amon-Ra St. Brown said. “We're gonna be ready next year.”

But being ready doesn’t win games.

Getting over the top of the mountain is harder than the climb getting there. The 49ers lost in this game for two straight seasons before figuring out how to win it on Sunday.

“Sometimes, you can only say so much, you’ve got to live it unfortunately,” Campbell said. “You’ve got to get your heart ripped out, which we did, and it’s a lesson learned.”

So, let’s try to offer some perspective.

Forty-four quarterbacks have started for the Lions during the Super Bowl era. On Sunday, Jared Goff started his 49th game for the Lions, which moved him into eighth all time for the organization.

Yes, already.

Matthew Stafford, by the way, has the most starts (165), followed by Greg Landry (84 games), then Eric Hipple and Scott Mitchell both started 57.

But none of them could do what Goff has done — lead them to the NFC title game.

And right now, in the wake of this loss, that should be pointed out.

In the Super Bowl era, the Lions have had 19 coaches, counting interim placeholders.

But Campbell is the second one to get his team to this spot. (Wayne Fontes was the other.)

“I’m proud of that group,” Campbell said. “I’ll go anywhere with that group, and you wish you could keep it all together, but that’s not the reality.”

And Holmes is the Lions’ eighth general manager in the Super Bowl era — but the first to get his team to win two playoff games.

So, was it a failure of a season?

I don’t think so.

But Sunday was a failure. A failure to jump through that window. A failure to grab this amazing opportunity that slipped away.

And that could haunt this organization for years to come.

Here’s the sad, scary truth: It might not get better than this.

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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 blow huge opportunity that isn't guaranteed in future