Mitch Albom: Detroit Lions fall one half short of Super Bowl, but that shouldn't spoil this run

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Once upon a time, starry-eyed dreamers came to California in search of gold. On Sunday afternoon, the most beleaguered franchise in NFL history brought its dream to the Golden State, put its pan in the water, thought it saw a bright, shiny nugget…

Then came up empty.

“You feel like you got your heart ripped out,” coach Dan Campbell said when it was all over and the Detroit Lions had lost a big lead and the NFC championship to the San Francisco 49ers, 34-31.

Campbell’s face was red. His eyes were red. His voice was hoarse and low and contained the agony that comes with a night that lets you see your brightest future, then brings a curtain crashing down on it.

“We did accomplish a lot. But there’s a piece of me that I just feel we’re a little bit like everybody else who didn’t make it, and everybody else who lost.”

That’s because, in the cold hard math of the playoffs, they are. They are home for the year, short of their dream. It died one win shy of a Super Bowl, in a second-half collapse that is as heartbreaking to Lions fans as the season was exhilarating. It was tantalizing for much of the game. It was so close you could smell the buffets in Las Vegas.

And then a lucky bomb catch, and a Lions fumble, and not one but two questionable fourth-down calls and oh, me, oh, my, this is how a season dies. You look up and the 49ers are suddenly on a podium hoisting a trophy and screaming to their fans “FAITHFUL!” — while the Lions are packing roller bags and silently heading to a bus.

Winter just got cold again.

Live by the fourth down, die by the fourth down

Sure, for a while there, things were blazing. The Lions had a division title and double playoff wins, and were stirring up so much heat Detroiters were walking through the snow in shirtsleeves.

And here, on Sunday afternoon, for the first two thirds of the game, it looked as if the Lions would not only continue that heat, but do the near impossible — shut down the mighty 49ers, on the road, decisively, en route to — dare they say it? — the Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs, a team they already beat once this season.

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And then, disaster. Some by the football gods, some by their own hand, and some by their own decision making. There’s no way to sugarcoat this, so we will lay it out as it they played it out.

The Lions had a 14-0 lead early and a 24-7 lead in the second half — and they still lost this game. They gave up five straight second-half scores. Twenty-seven unanswered points.

And they were unanswered partly because Campbell decided to forego field goals to keep drives alive. The Lions passed on two kicks of less than 50 yards that, had they been made, would have been six points.

They lost by three.

Do the math.

No regrets

“I just felt really good about us converting, getting our momentum and not letting them play long ball,” Campbell said, when asked why he never sent his kicker out for a 46- or a 48-yard field goal in the third and fourth quarters, and instead saw two Jared Goff passes fall incomplete.

“They were bleeding the clock out, that’s what they do, and I wanted to get the upper hand back….

“I don’t regret those decisions. It’s hard ... because we didn’t come through. It wasn’t able to work out. I understand the scrutiny I’ll get. That’s part of the gig, man. But we just …

He paused. “It just didn’t work out.”

Give credit to Campbell for standing up to his moves, which is characteristic of this coach and reason to believe in him. But he’s right, he’ll get scrutiny. And he merits it.

The first eschewed field goal would have given Detroit a three-score lead, which meant three drives that the 49ers would have to convert. When you’re already halfway through the third quarter, that’s a daunting task, and might have made San Francisco play differently.

Instead, Goff hurried a pass to Josh Reynolds. Incomplete. The 49ers took over. And their fan base inside Levi’s Stadium, tepid much of the game, began to roar.

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Just their luck

A few plays later, the home team gave them something to really roar about. A long bomb pass from Brock Purdy hit Detroit’s Kindle Vildor in the face mask, ricocheted into the air, and landed in the waiting fingers of a diving Brandon Aiyuk for a 51-yard completion that left the home team just a few yards from pay dirt.

You couldn’t make that play happen again in a thousand tries. It was the kind of thing that occurs only when diabolical forces want you to lose, right?

Moments later, the 49ers went into the end zone, and instead of 27-10, the score was 24-17. A knot began to form in Lions’ fans throats.

That knot became a choke when, on the ensuing drive, Jahmyr Gibbs fumbled on a messy handoff and the 49ers recovered on the Lions’ 24-yard line. It was the exact thing that couldn’t happen. It happened anyhow.

The 49ers wasted no time. Four plays later they were in the end zone, and the game, which once seemed like a Detroit coronation, was instead all tied up.

In eight minutes, the Lions had lost a 17-point lead.

Oh, boy.

The storm came crashing down too quickly

You kind of knew what was going to happen next. It was as if a sudden storm hit and the Lions' power went out. Every switch they tried, nothing turned on.

“Twenty-seven unanswered points,” Alex Anzalone lamented by his locker afterwards. Unlike many of his younger teammates, Anzalone had gone through a near miss like this once before, in New Orleans, when a terrible no-call by the referees on a late pass interference play deflated his team, the Saints, and they lost the NFC title to the Rams.

“It took me five years to get back here ... ” Anzalone said. “It's frustrating.”

What happened in the second half, he was asked?

“We stopped playing complementary football. Offense is struggling. Defense starts struggling a bit. It starts tumbling.”

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He sighed. “And that’s how it goes.”

What he was describing was a tsunami. Suddenly, Sam LaPorta couldn’t hang on to a pass. Reynolds couldn’t hang onto a pass. Goff wasn’t as sharp. Runs were stuffed. The defense, so good at getting the 49ers off the field, couldn’t stop critical third downs. Eventually, as if being cut and bled one slice at a time, San Francisco moved ahead of the Lions by 10 points with just over 3 minutes left to go, 34-24.

A late Detroit touchdown would be little more than chasing a departed plane. The Lions had been avalanched. And by the final whistle, they were buried.

Winter just got cold again.

So close, yet so far away

“Very uncharacteristic of us,” Campbell said of the second half crumble. “We’ve always been able to get our momentum back.  Honestly, right now, I can't put my finger (on it.) … We had plays to be made that we just didn’t make. …

“It stings.”

Yes. Like bleach in your eyes. The loss might have been more palatable if Detroit had been overwhelmed from the start. But the Lions looked so efficient in the first half, so disciplined. They were playing within themselves and dominating the game. Three rushing touchdowns and a field goal? The most yards ever run up on a Kyle Shanahan-coached 49ers team? The Lions nearly floated into the halftime locker room, up 24-7 and knowing they were shocking the world.

To see it all sputter and stall so close to the finish line is, well, heartbreaking. And those questions about the fourth down calls abound. Hey. If you mistrust your kicker so much, why is he on the team? Making 46- and 48-yard field goals should be part of your arsenal in the playoffs, right?

Instead, each missed fourth-down conversion sucked more life out of the Lions, until there was none left. And when the final gun sounded, and the 49ers began their celebration, the Lions were looking down the long and winding road of another season, which, as Campbell admitted, holds no guarantees.

“Sometimes you can only say so much,” he said. “You gotta live it. You gotta get your heart ripped out, which we did.

“And look, I told those guys, this may have been our only shot. Do I think that? No. Do I believe that? No. However I know how hard it is to get here. I’m well aware. And it's gonna be twice as hard to get back to this point next year as it was this year, and if we don’t have the same hunger and the same work … then we got no shot at getting back here. …

“You’re not hiding from anybody anymore. Everybody’s gonna want a piece of you.”

Well. That’s sobering.

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True. But sobering.

Souring ending to superb season

So let's try to find something to hang onto this morning. Look, this doesn’t ruin the Lions' great season, it just ends it. It doesn’t wipe out all the fun we had, it just stops it. It doesn’t kill the Lions' dream of winning a championship, it just delays it.

No, its not the end anyone wanted, and it will take a while to absorb the blow. But the Lions head into the offseason carrying significantly less baggage than when the year began. Remember that. The “perennial loser” label is on the floor now, stomped on like a dropped name tag at the end of a sales convention.

And that is no small feat.

Think about the journey it took to get here, the toll it extracted for more than half a century, with so many ineffectuals in Detroit’s front office and a parade of coaches entering and exiting the locker room, shaking their heads.

Until this year, the Lions were singular in their misery. When other franchises had a bad season here or there, the Lions had decades. They did not see a single playoff game in the 1960s. They saw one in the 1970s. They saw two in the 1980s. They moved between pathetic, laughable, and forgettable, with many head coaches coming and going without delivering a single season above .500.

It took 11 years into this century before the Lions saw a postseason event, and even when it happened, it was always, always, failure. So much so, that the three letter acronym S.O.L. (Same Old Lions) was more defining than their helmets. It was an amulet that hung heavy around the franchise’s neck.

Until this year. Until this coach, and this GM, and these players. They stacked their collective talents, their collective smarts — and most of all their collective belief in each other — and began to roll. And they rolled all the way to this NFC championship game, before watching that second half blow up in their faces.

It stings today. It will sting for a while. But they gave it their all. And they gave us a lot. They lost to a great team, but they deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence. This was no fluke, the Lions being here. Like Moses ascending the mountain, they got a glimpse of the promised land but could not go in.

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For now, that will have to suffice.

Winter just got colder. That can’t be changed. But it was a helluva run, and some day soon, we’ll take some solace in that. Once upon a time, dreamers came to California in search of gold. The Lions thought they had it Sunday, and then the river took the shiny object and stole their pan as well. Tears preceded this game. Tears will come after it. But I know this much. September football has never been as anticipated in Detroit as it is this morning. Hurry, springtime.

Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions one half short of Super Bowl, but that won't spoil season