19-14. To some, that score might mean very little, its low total and unusual point juxtaposition—though close in proximity—primed to be overlooked and lost in a mixed bag of fifteen other games with likely more attractive scores.
But to the people of Detroit, it is a score that has shone long and bright through these late September nights, its radiance pervading into every corner of our nation's only peninsular state, its largest city who is finally home to a football team that is coming off of a win last week.
The Detroit Lions snapped their embarrassingly prolonged 19-game losing streak last Sunday at home against the Washington Redskins by the aforementioned tally, the skid that was the second longest in NFL history finally coming to a grinding halt.
The Lions, who had not won a game since they defeated Kansas City 25-20 on December 23, 2007 before boarding their hellish rollercoaster ride whose nadir saw the club become the first team in NFL history to go 0-16, withstood a last-minute push by the Redskins, led by quarterback Jason Campbell and highlighted by a double-lateral play at the last, and held on for the five point victory, their first since we in the senior class were sophomores.
Nineteen straight losses is something rarely accomplished in any sport, but is perhaps most unlikely to occur to an NFL team.
It is the second-longest losing streak in the history of the NFL after the Tampa Bay Bucaneers, who lost their first 26 games as a franchise back in 1976, back when the league still played a 14 games schedule.
With so much parity in the game, as evidenced by 26 of the league's 32 teams having made the playoffs at least once over the last five years (the Bills, Browns, Texans, Raiders, 49ers and Lions being the only ones who have not), the fact that any team could span three years without tasting victory's sweet nectar is inexcusable and downright pathetic, a term that had become a byword for the Lions prior to Sunday's long-awaited triumph.
Yet, the Lions had achieved just that: the seemingly impossible, and had etched their names into the football history books of infamy, measuring permanently the preciseness of their ineptitude with their win against Washington.
Back on April 25, Detroit's front office had a crucial decision to make. After securing the ignominious goose egg in the win column in their 2008 season, the Lions were automatically awarded the number one overall pick in the NFL Draft—perhaps the only perk to being the worst of 32 teams—and were now forced to mull over their options.
Shorn of the egregious genius of former shot-caller Matt Millen, whose annual bust-of-a-wide-receiver draft pick had plagued the club for much of the last decade, the Lions, despite some experts and analysts' recommendations to trade down, billed Matthew Stafford as their essential building block and selected the Georgia quarterback to kick-start the franchise, serving as their foundation for the future.
Five days prior to nabbing Stafford in the draft, the Lions also unveiled a new uniform and a fiercer logo, upgrading its previously mundane, blue lion silhouette found on the sides of the helmet by supplying it with a flowing mane and fangs.
These two elements, combined with the hiring of new head coach Jim Schwartz, was supposed to usher in a new era free from inadequacy and demise that had defined the previous one.
Yet after the first two weeks of the season, it looked liked more of the same from the men in blue, who fell to New Orleans and then Minnesota.
But after Sunday, that faint light at the end of the tunnel that had not appeared to be expanding these last nineteen games was finally reached, and for the first time in the last three years (and for many people, even longer than that), the Detroit Lions appear to be heading in the right direction.
Now surely, it is difficult to be completely confident in believing in that claim. It is, after all, one little win (and the Jets seem to notch one every weekend these days).
But that one little win has already guaranteed the Lions a more improved record from last season, and a much needed morale-booster that will take them into this weekend at Chicago.
And even though bringing a team like Washington to the sword might not be anything to write home about, and even though they play in a division stacked with Aaron Rodgers' Packers, Jay Cutler's Bears, and the starting quarterback for Minnesota's Vikings (who shall still remain unrecognized), and even though they may not be able to shake off their dismal recent history right away, the Lions finally have some hope going forward; they know they can win a game with the team that they have right now.
After the Jets game concluded relatively early on Sunday, I flipped over to FOX to see if I could catch the final minutes of the Patriots and Falcons game, but it, too, had ended.
On my screen instead was Campbell and the struggling Redskins, whose last-ditch effort in the closing minutes of the fourth quarter was cut short by none other than the beleaguered and battered Detroit Lions.
A sea of blue then proceeded to flood the field, led by Schwartz, who walked proudly across Ford Field in Motown to shake Washington head coach Jim Zorn's hand, his Lions victorious at last.
As the cameras then zoomed in on an array of Lions players, it was eminently clear just how meaningful the elusive victory was to the entire team, tears of not only joy, but relief, their horrific nightmare of the last 19 games finally put in the past, streaming down their faces.
I sat there watching for several moments, captured by the infectious outpouring of emotions that I was bearing witness to; I was so happy for them, but I was even happier for a city whose people are currently enduring some of the hardest of times in our nation's history. Sunday's victory was for them.
The Detroit Lions may not win the Super Bowl. They may not make the playoffs, win the division, or make it to third place. They may not even win a game the rest of the season, in which case Sunday's game would have been their Super Bowl.
But in defeating the Redskins last week, the Detroit Lions imparted a valuable lesson to each of us: that it is always darkest before dawn; that hard times will cease eventually; that even in the drabbest and darkest of places the sun will always shine again.
So in the words of Dutch disc jockey Fedde le Grand: Put your hands up 4 Detroit; I love these kitties.