Mitch Albom: For Detroit Lions fans, it's the morning after the morning after — and it still hurts

The blue porch lights have been shut off. The Detroit Lions jerseys have been thrown in the wash. We are sitting in the living room with the TV off, our cheeks in our hands, our bodies slumped.

“Now what?” we ask.

“Now you suffer,” fate answers.

Well, duh. Tell us something we didn’t know. We have been suffering for decades. And we started suffering again Sunday night, the moment the Lions saw their last chance to salvage an NFC Championship drop through their fingers like a greased watermelon. The Super Bowl was this close. I mean, this close!

Then the air came out. And the whole day Monday was a sigh and a drag. Every tire on our cars felt deflated. Every elevator was rising slower. Every bite of food was tougher to chew.

Suffer? We know how to suffer. Right now we are suffering a major case of the “Why didn’t he’s?”

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As in: “Why didn’t Dan Campbell try a field goal in the third quarter that would have made it a three-possession game? Isn’t that what you do? Force the opponent to have to score three times? Why didn’t he?”

Or this: “Why didn’t Campbell go for a field goal in the fourth quarter that would have tied the game? Isn’t that the most important thing when you are trailing? To even the score?”

Or this: “Why didn’t Josh Reynolds catch that perfectly catchable fourth-down pass?”

Or this: “Why didn’t the defense bottle up Brock Purdy? How could they let him escape again and again?”

Suffer? We know how to suffer. You start by replaying a game that your beleaguered yet beloved team led BY 17 POINTS!

And as you watch the second half in your mind’s eye, you see the way the legs fell off the table, one little screw at a time.

Just think back (farther than Sunday)

“Now what?” we ask.

“Now you reflect,” fate says.

Reflect? How much more reflection can we take? We keep seeing how the 49ers came out in that second half and started marching down the field, thanks to several bad coverages by Cam Sutton, who seemed to be on the bad end of a lot of plays Sunday.

We keep seeing how Kindle Vildor had that long bomb from Purdy in his hands, but lost it, how the ball hit his helmet and his face mask and bounced in the air and Brandon Aiyuk jumped for it like a hungry dog leaping for a bone. It was a fluke. A freak. A penny that lands on its side.

Who wants to reflect on that?

We keep seeing Jahmyr Gibbs fumble, something he never does. We keep seeing a perfect punt by Jack Fox that bounced near the goal line, and all Chase Lucas had to do was swipe it back into the field of play but instead he touched it with a foot in the end zone for a touchback.

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We keep seeing Sam LaPorta lose a first down when a defender knocked the ball out with his helmet. We keep seeing another Reynolds pass that he should have caught to move the chains.

We keep seeing Iffy Melifonwu miss a sure tackle of Purdy, flying off him as if the quarterback were covered in Vaseline. We keep seeing the other times Purdy shredded the Lions’ defense with bursts through the wide-open middle, running as gleefully as a barefoot farm kid runs through the high grass.

What was it Alex Anzalone said Monday? “We just kept losing momentum and more momentum and more momentum until it just snowballed into a loss that we couldn't come back from.”

That’s what reflection feels like. A series of bad memories on a recycle mode, over and over and over again.

And you want us to do that all day?

Yes, there is a bright side

We get up, go to the freezer, grab an ice bag, and slap it against our head. We find some Pepto Bismol and swig it down.

Did we know it was going to affect us this way? Did we know the heartbreaking loss would momentarily drop the city to its knees, as if we all took a collective wallop to the solar plexus?

On Sunday afternoon, the San Francisco 49ers stadium parking lot was jammed with Detroit tailgaters, shouting “It’s our time! Today, we do it!”

But come Sunday night, the San Francisco airport was dotted with those same fans, slumped in chairs, staring at the walls and mumbling “Twenty-seven unanswered points ...”

The loss made us realize how much we had bought into the idea of the Lions going to a Super Bowl. Detroiters? The most hardened football fans? The folks who couldn’t be swayed anymore? Us? We bought the dream, hook, line and sinker?

“What do we do now?” we ask.

“You appreciate,” fate says.

Appreciate? Well. We could do that. We could remind ourselves that the playoff curse is over. That the 32-year drought between NFC Championship games is no more.

We could note that the core of this team will all be here next year, that players like Gibbs and LaPorta and Brian Branch and Jack Campbell are just rookies, that Aidan Hutchinson and Jameson Williams are only in their second year, that the offensive line isn’t going anywhere, and that the quarterback, Jared Goff, is only 29.

We could chart the course of this team once Campbell and Brad Holmes took over, from three wins to nine wins to 12 wins, from no playoffs to just-missed the playoffs, to the NFC Championship game, and see that there is still room to grow.

We could remind ourselves that the Pistons had to get through the Celtics and the Red Wings had to get through the Avalanche, and both did and both won it all and both had parades that rocked the city, but only after they methodically improved, year by year.

We could do all that. It has to be better than sitting cross legged on the floor, palms on our foreheads, whispering “Just kick the field goal. Please kick the field goal ...”

The blue porch lights are off. The Lions jerseys are in the dryer.

“What do we do now?” we ask one last time.

Fate gets up, crosses the room, hands us a calendar, and flips it to September.

“Start counting,” it says.

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: The morning after the morning after for Detroit Lions fans, who still hurt