The playoffs only matter because everybody dies. On an infinite timeline, with a finite number of teams, everybody eventually wins the big one. The trick—unless Super Bowl parties also happen beyond the material world—is in the timing. Once you leave, your shot at learning how it feels to win one of these stupid little games is gone for good.
I was completely hysterical for a little over three hours on Sunday night. It was the first-ever playoff game I had witnessed take place in Detroit. It was a chance to see the Lions win in the postseason for the first time in my life. And it was the first time, after three prior failures, that I could turn on the playoffs with a legitimate belief that the team had a real shot at winning the whole dang thing. After a 24-23 triumph against Los Angeles, they still do.
I cried just looking at the stadium at 8:00 p.m. ET, feeling familial bonds with everybody wearing Honolulu blue. Throughout the grand journey that began with my first game at the Silverdome in 2001 (a loss, duh), both the Lions' own shortcomings and the culture around that constant disappointment imparted lessons that have guided me far beyond football. This team taught me how to take a knockout punch to the chin and tune in next week anyway, how to laugh when life screws you over, and what it means to look a historical rock-bottom in the eye and not give up. But to articulate why I had tears in my eyes before the ball was even kicked, all I could manage at the moment was, I'm so happy I didn't die before I could see this.
I'll never stop being grateful for that first quarter. Jared Goff set the tone on the Lions' first two drives, where they established a 14-3 lead by both spreading the ball and clearing space up front for David Montgomery. Even though our old buddy Matt Stafford seemed to get stronger every time he was hit, and even though the secondary kept losing its grip on Puka Nacua, the early touchdowns and Detroit's red-zone defense still combined to ensure that the Rams never held a lead through the entire game. A gift within a gift for those of us hanging by a thread.
It was still kind of miserable, at least objectively. My pregame tears gave way to a marathon headache and an endless panic attack. I made one single drink last three quarters, but nevertheless I stayed disoriented and then nauseated as the grind of a second half chewed up my guts. Every time I thought to take a deep breath, I felt like a diver coming up for air. I willed the clock to move faster, and cursed the back-to-back commercial breaks taken when the Rams cut it to one. My muttered "come on" mantra devolved into a more pathetic prayer of "Please, guys."
Then Amon-Ra St. Brown caught a pass for a first down with under two minutes remaining, and the Rams could only rue their wasted timeouts.
The kneel-downs brought back more tears, mixed with some unstoppable deranged laughter—the kind that would come for you if your dog started reciting Shakespeare, or your car sprouted wings and flew. I told outsiders in the buildup to Sunday that the Lions winning the Super Bowl would be like the first moon landing, localized to the fans of one state. In retrospect, I was looking too far ahead. Sunday night was the giant leap I'd been waiting for. With just this one night, the most fundamental truth about the most universal experience from all my time spent growing up in Michigan changed forever.
But it's not over. They actually play more games after the first round of the playoffs. But the Lions, now, will be playing them on equal footing with every other franchise whose fans know what it's like to win these games. We're no longer thirsting for one measly drop of glory. We're no longer thrilled at the privilege of hosting a playoff game in Detroit. Getting one on Sunday night was an unforgettable moment of beautiful unity. Now we want three more.
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![The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured the sharpest infrared images to date of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies, the Horsehead Nebula. These observations show a part of the iconic nebula in a whole new light, capturing its complexity with unprecedented spatial resolution. Webb’s new images show part of the sky in the constellation Orion (The Hunter), in the western side of the Orion B molecular cloud. Rising from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33, which resides roughly 1300 light-years away. The nebula formed from a collapsing interstellar cloud of material, and glows because it is illuminated by a nearby hot star. The gas clouds surrounding the Horsehead have already dissipated, but the jutting pillar is made of thick clumps of material that is harder to erode. Astronomers estimate that the Horsehead has about five million years left before it too disintegrates. Webb’s new view focuses on the illuminated edge of the top of the nebula’s distinctive dust and gas structure. The Horsehead Nebula is a well-known photon-dominated region, or PDR. In such a region ultraviolet light from young, massive stars creates a mostly neutral, warm area of gas and dust between the fully ionised gas surrounding the massive stars and the clouds in which they are born. This ultraviolet radiation strongly influences the gas chemistry of these regions and acts as the most important source of heat. These regions occur where interstellar gas is dense enough to remain neutral, but not dense enough to prevent the penetration of far-ultraviolet light from massive stars. The light emitted from such PDRs provides a unique tool to study the physical and chemical processes that drive the evolution of interstellar matter in our galaxy, and throughout the Universe from the early era of vigorous star formation to the present day. Owing to its proximity and its nearly edge-on geometry, the Horsehead Nebula is an ideal target for astronomers to study the physical structures of PDRs and the evolution of the chemical characteristics of the gas and dust within their respective environments, and the transition regions between them. It is considered one of the best objects in the sky to study how radiation interacts with interstellar matter. This image was captured with Webb’s NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) instrument. [Image description: At the bottom of the image a small portion of the Horsehead Nebula is seen close-in, as a curved wall of thick, smoky gas and dust. Above the nebula various distant stars and galaxies can be seen up to the top of the image. One star is very bright and large, with six long diffraction spikes that cross the image. The background fades from a dark red colour above the nebula to black.]](https://lede-admin.defector.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2024/04/STScI-01HV4CG0EACM1MC07E10X19KNX.jpg?resize=2880%2C1920)
