Grit is more than just a Detroit Lions buzzword. It's how they're making this playoff run.
Dan Campbell walked through the Detroit Lions facility in Allen Park on Wednesday afternoon, wearing a black hat with silver letters that read: “Grit.”
The word has been so prevalent around this team for so long — you see it everywhere from sweatshirts to hats to posters in the stadium — you almost don’t even notice it anymore.
But it is more than a slogan.
It is the DNA of this team.
Grit, it turns out, is the antidote to Same Old Lions. It is what is different about this team. It’s what this organization has been missing lo these many years.
Grit is having a one-point lead in the fourth quarter of a playoff game against the Los Angeles Rams and having enough mental strength and fortitude to deal with the pressure. It is making just enough plays on defense and just enough crucial plays on offense to run out the clock in a 24-23 playoff win.
In years past, this team would have found a way to lose on Sunday against the Rams.
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Not this team.
“It’s what we’re about, and it’s what we’ll always be about above everything else,” Campbell said. “If you don’t have that and you don’t have intestinal fortitude or mental toughness, resiliency about you, then it’s — you’re not going to be able to play here.”
What is grit? Let me show you
“That dude’s a stud,” quarterback Jared Goff said on Sunday. “And I told him that all week. And he battled. I don’t know if people quite know how badly he was hurting throughout the week to get himself ready to go for that game, takes a lot of guts, takes a lot of strength and courage. And he helped us today. He really did. And he’s a hell of a player.”
Guts. Strength. Courage.
t’s all grit.
“That's a hard-nosed, tough-nosed player right there who wants to win,” Alim McNeill said of LaPorta. “That's his mindset. That's everybody here.”
McNeill, it should be pointed out, was playing with a knee brace. Because he, too, is coming back from an injury.
“That's just who we are,” McNeill said. “Mentally, we just want to win. We want to be that team. We want to make the Lions one of those perennial teams.”
LaPorta caught just three passes for 14 yards, but his presence was immeasurable.
“I was impressed,” Campbell said. “He helped us. He was not 100 percent, but he helped us win that game. He did exactly what we needed him to do for that game. ... For a young player that doesn’t know what this is … he knew he could get this done and he could help us. I think that goes a long way. That’s not an easy thing for a young player.”
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Maybe, you have heard “Lions Grit” so much you don’t even hear it anymore. Like an advertising slogan burned in your brain:
Just do it.
Betcha can’t eat just one.
Have it your way.
But it is so much more than a clever advertising motto.
Grit is resilience — it is a player like Goff. Someone facing his old team, with so much to prove, wanting to shove it in Sean McVay’s face (that’s my interpretation, Goff has too much class to actually say it), wanting to prove them wrong for trading him, wanting to show the entire NFL what he’s really about, and Goff didn’t fold. He handled the pressure. He met the moment. And he delivered.
That’s grit.
It is putting team above self.
It is why Frank Ragnow plays through so many injuries. On the Lions practice report on Wednesday, they ran out of space trying to list all his aliments: “Knee/Back/Toe/Rest.”
And it would be funny, if it weren’t so dang painful for him. But he keeps playing. Of course he does.
It is why C.J. Gardner-Johnson worked so hard to come back early from his injury.
“We want to win and we will do anything to win,” Gardner-Johnson told me Wednesday. “And nothing is going to stop us.”
Lots of guys in the NFL are hurting at this point in the season.
If you make it through a 17-game season and a playoff game, nobody is completely healthy.
But some are really, really banged up. They live in the training room, trying to get healthy enough to play, getting electric stim and ice baths and massages and shots and taking needles to get the fluid drained and more electric stim, hoping for the inflammation to go down. Hoping for a slight bit of flexibility to return. For the pain to subside just enough to be able to get on the field.
“About 20 percent,” Graham Glasgow said.
Get enough of that 20 percent to will themselves back on the field, get enough of them to want to win so badly they will do anything, and you got yourself a playoff win.
This is all by design
None of this is happenstance.
“It’s the bedrock of what we are about,” Campbell said.
After the 2022 draft, I wrote a column about the Lions draft class and grit. Because the front office talked about it nonstop.
“These guys are gritty football players,” Lions general manager Brad Holmes said.
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Here is what I wrote back then:
The grit factor is hard to quantify. Hard to pinpoint. But it’s part of the secret sauce the Lions are looking for. When you are trying to change the culture of losing, the best way is to infuse some grit. That’s the blueprint the Lions are following. They want talent, versatility and impact. But something more. They want grit. ... Does grit win football games? You know what? When you get enough of it, it just might.
Well, it turns out, my question has been answered. Grit does win football games, and it is why they will play their second home playoff game this weekend in Detroit.
The antidote is working.
MORE FROM SEIDEL: Lions not satisfied with one cathartic playoff win: 'This is just the start'
Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @seideljeff.
Next up: Buccaneers
Matchup: Lions (13-5) vs. Tampa Bay (10-8), NFL divisional-round playoffs.
Kickoff: 3 p.m. Sunday; Ford Field, Detroit.
TV/radio: NBC; WXYT-FM (97.1).
Line: Lions by 6½.
At stake: Sunday’s winner will face the winner of Saturday’s game between the 49ers and Packers in the NFC championship game on Jan. 28.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Grit isn't just Detroit Lions slogan. It's pacing this playoff run.
