Detroit Lions' Biggest Game in 50 Years Is This Sunday

In the last 50 years, the Detroit Lions have never been to a Super Bowl.

They have won only one playoff game, making them 1-9 in the playoffs in the Super Bowl era.

They have not finished a season at .500 or better since 2000.

They are a game away from national recognition as the worst team in NFL history.

That makes December 28 at Lambeau Field the single most important football game for the Detroit Lions since their 1957 NFL Championship.

That's right, this is more important than the last game of the 2000 season, a 20-23 loss to the Chicago Bears delivered on the foot of Paul Edinger that could have put the Lions in the playoffs and possibly even eliminated the Matt Millen era before it began.

This is bigger than the NFC Championship game in 1991, a 10-41 rout at the hands of the Washington Redskins which would have put the Lions in their first-ever Super Bowl.

Did you know about either of those games before I mentioned them just now? If you did, you probably don't remember them as very prominent games in Lions history, and non-Lions fans, I assure you, don't remember them at all.

This game, however, will live forever throughout the annals of the NFL.

Win or lose, the Lions are going down in history on December 28.

It could, and in all likelihood will, be the kind of history none of those players, coaches or fans want to be involved with.

A historic 0-16 season.

Think about that for a minute.

Don't tell me the Lions deserve it for being the NFL's whipping boy for eight years. Don't say you want it to happen to spite Matt Millen or the team for squandering draft picks.

Really give it a minute to simmer.

The Lions have already wrapped up the top draft pick and made history by becoming the first 0-15 team in the NFL. There is no more discernible "benefit" to losing games.

While certainly there are some people on the team whose level of talent is worthy of a winless record, this is something that will stick with every one of these players and coaches for the rest of their lives.

This is not just another poor Lions season. We're talking about nationwide, worst-team-in-sports-history recognition.

This is the stuff HBO Sports does an hour-long special on. Try to imagine Calvin Johnson or Kevin Smith, maybe Ernie Sims or Leigh Bodden, talking to Bob Costas with visible disdain and distress, about how they played hard every game and would have given anything to just get one.

Anything to not be associated with 0-16.

Just one win.

It breaks your heart, doesn't it?

There is still time.

The Lions have not won at Lambeau Field since 1991, part of a 12-win season which is incidentally the same year as their only playoff win since 1957.

They also have not won a game this year. The smart money is on the Packers, for sure.

That is exactly why this game is so big.

Lose, and December 28 is a day that lives in infamy in Detroit. Jay Leno will make a crack about them Monday night, as will everybody else, and the laughing stock of the NFL will become the laughing stock of the sports world for years.

Win, however, and that all changes.

Win, and the Lions make themselves a different kind of story. They become the team that pulled it together. The team that beat the odds.

The team that wasn't any good, but put all their heart into one game, their final game, and won when nobody expected them to, in the place where they couldn't.

The team that made history by denying history.

The team that didn't go 0-16.

I cannot stress how monumental this is.

Just as the New England Patriots posted the most disastrous 18-1 season in NFL history last year, the Lions have an opportunity to post the most inspiring 1-15 season in NFL history.

It is not the Detroit Lions' offense, defense, special teams or coaching on display Sunday.

It is their heart.

Nobody on that team wants to go an entire football season without knowing what it feels like to win, but their skills are not there. The overall level of Lions' talent is not high enough to beat the Packers on the road. Only heart will do it.

So this is it. This is the game. For the 2008 Detroit Lions, the Super Bowl is in December against a sub-.500 team.

Don't believe me? Watch the body language of the Lions players on Sunday. This is all they have left. This is their last chance, and they know it.

Either the celebration with a win or the agony with a loss will reflect that of a playoff game, even if the teams in it are out of place.

This is the Lions' last game, and the result is either a complete season of futility or one shining, inspirational win against all odds.

Will they be the worst team ever?

Or the team that didn't go 0-16?