Detroit Lions fans have been neglected before. It's why they cheered Jared Goff so loudly.

Even the memes of crying Detroit Lions fans Sunday night can’t fully explain to the outside world what the first playoff win in three decades meant to this place. But then how could they?

And how would anyone beyond the state lines know what it means to be from here and to love this team?

A person’s got to spend a little time here, suffer a little, struggle to get seen, feel misunderstood. They’ve got to know pain, of course, but also a particular kind of pain, Lions pain, the pain of unrequited love, the pain of loving something so much and not having anyone recognize the depth of that love.

They’ve got to have felt what it’s like to watch sports empathy skip around the country, from Boston to Chicago to Buffalo to Cleveland without ever stopping here.

Oh, those poor Red Sox or Cubs or Bills or Browns ... look at how they love their teams? How they live for them?

Alex Anzalone didn’t completely understand this fan base until late in his first season, three years ago. They were 0-10-1. It was early December. The Vikings were in town.

“And the fans were still showing up and cheering,” he said.

Supporting a losing team isn’t unique, obviously, but there are levels, and there is no level like there is here, no place that combines losing and anonymity quite like here, no place that loved in so much darkness, so to speak. Besides, that 0-10-1 start wasn’t a one-off, right? It was just another miserable start in a long line of misery.

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Yet there they were, filling Ford Field. Which is to say, there you were.

Dan Campbell understood the dynamic immediately. He talked about it during his introductory news conference.

He played here, though. He’s lived a while. He’s a coach, and coaches, the best of them, anyway, are supposed to understand a sense of place, so that they can connect their players to that place, as Campbell as done here.

But players?

They’re different. They’re in a kind of bubble. Trying to stick in the NFL. Trying to make a living. An impression. A commercial.

When a player connects with the spirit of a place? Well, they get serenaded. They get seen. As Jared Goff was Sunday night.

Goff was a star in high school, a star in college, a No. 1 NFL draft pick, a Super Bowl quarterback in the second-largest media market in the country.

And never — never — had he felt, or experienced anything like he did Sunday night. Detroit gets him. Because he gets Detroit.

It began when he took the field during warmups and the crowd chanted his name. Partly to boost him. Partly to show the quarterback he replaced — Matthew Stafford, who’d come out around the same time — what he was missing, and that he was no longer the guy.

Partly because plenty of folks at Ford Field also know what it’s like to be overlooked, to be discarded, to be an afterthought, and they were grateful that Goff came here and went to work, despite the fact that he didn’t choose Detroit — he was traded — despite the fact that he left a franchise that had been to the playoffs for one that was starting from the beginning.

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Still, Goff never complained. He never blamed anyone when he struggled. Never blamed anyone for his mistakes, and his picks, and his fumbles. He just said I’ve got to be better.

Then he got better.

First toward the end of his first season, when the Lions won three of their last six games. Then through the back half of the second season, when he led an 8-2 finish.

Then, finally, this season, making the throws to knock off the defending champs to kick off the season, making the throws that made sure the Lions never lost two in a row, making the throws to clinch the division, to clinch the No. 3 seed, to clinch the team’s first playoff win in 32 years.

And so, the chants.

During warmups, during the first quarter, during the fourth quarter, during the walk-off, when almost everyone else had left the field.

Ja-red Goff! Ja-red Goff!

Goosebumps?

Yeah, goosebumps.

“Yeah, it was pretty unbelievable,” he said. “The people here are special, man. I’m grateful and I’m grateful for their support and today with the circumstances that were there, it meant a lot ... I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like that.”

And why would he?

So few experience anything like that. Not in a wild card game. Not in a game that is usual January business in so many other markets.

This wasn’t Tom Brady aiming for another Super Bowl. Or Michael Jordan vying for his sixth title.

This was a quarterback trying to win a single playoff game, trying to prove he belonged, and that he was worthy of leading an NFL franchise, and that he is more than an afterthought in a trade.

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This was a quarterback who understood what was at stake for him and for everyone watching in the stands. He may not have predicted the tears would flow around the stadium if the Lions won, but he could have predicted.

As he said, this is a special place.

Now it’s his place. No wonder he kept hearing his name, after playing near perfect football. From the stands to the locker room, where, when he walked in after the game, his teammates serenaded him, too.

“You think he liked that?” Campell asked, when asked what he thought about the crowd chanting his quarterback.  “Would you like that?”

Of course, you would. Anyone would. The crowd knew that, too. And they know Goff. Recognize him. See him. See themselves in him.

As Campbell told Goff when he gave him a game ball in the victorious locker room:

“You’re good enough for (expletive) Detroit, Jared Goff.”

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions fans had Jared Goff's back. And he returned the favor.