First of all, let me offer my congratulations to the Detroit Lions for advancing to the NFC championship game.

Now if you’ll bear with me for just a sec, let me look out my window. Um … nope. Pigs aren’t flying and I believe hell is still hot.

Forgive me, but please understand I covered this team a long time, including every second of every week of the 0-16 season. So I’m still scarred and a little incredulous that this is even happening.

OK, back to the Lions’ achievement. They deserve every accolade for coming this far this fast. It’s technically this regime’s third year, but in reality it was only a 1½-year struggle before everything took off in the middle of last season. So huzzah!

But now, it’s a different challenge. The Lions won’t have their considerable advantage at Ford Field when the take on mighty San Francisco at Levi’s Stadium, where the 49ers have a passionate and committed fan base.

The Niners are also the NFC’s top seed for good reason. They’re elite on offense AND defense and boast extensive playoff experience. This is their third straight NFC championship game and they’re 5-0 in home playoff games under head coach Kyle Shanahan.

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That’s not to say the Lions can’t win, even as about 6½-point underdogs. After all, the seventh-seeded Green Bay Packers got hot and came within 1 minute, 7 seconds of beating the Niners on Saturday.

Hey, anything can happen. And maybe during this magical year the Lions still have some pixie dust left in their bag of tricks. It just isn’t likely that they’ll win and advance to the Super Bowl.

That’s OK. Because the Lions aren’t supposed to win. They have overachieved by a lot, which means they’re playing with house money here.

Honestly, anything after winning their first NFC North title and beating Matthew Stafford’s Los Angeles Rams in their first home playoff game was going to be gravy, because they were supposed to go to Dallas for the divisional round. When the Cowboys faceplanted and the Lions got a second home game, that also felt a little like gravy, though they were favored to beat the Buccaneers.

So if the Lions take the right approach this Sunday and play like they were just comped a stack of chips at the casino, maybe they’ll play looser and be better off for it.

Unfortunately, that’s not how coaches and players think. They have to be talked down from ramping themselves up for the competition a little too much, especially when they feel they’re so close to a monumental achievement. So they try to convince themselves otherwise.

“There’s a little bit of nerves and the environment, the setting,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said Sunday of handling the matchup with the Niners. “There’s a little bit of pressure, but I’ve felt like we’ve handled pressure really well all year.

“And so you get through that one, you get this one and we’ve been able to just stay focused on the one in front of us. And so it’s not as big of a deal I think, as people may place on it. We’ve got enough veterans here that know what it looks like, coaches and our young guys have adapted. And really, we’ve kept a one-game mindset. Like, ‘Here we go, this is the one right in front of us.’ ”

The Lions have, for the most part. But they also lost two of their final three road games. Jared Goff has never faced the 49ers in the playoffs and he’s just 3-6 against them, though two of those wins have come at Levi’s Stadium.

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It’s also Goff’s hometown. He grew up in Marin County, an extremely affluent location. Marin is kind of like if you rolled Ann Arbor, Birmingham, Grosse Pointe and Northville into one super county — and that super county is where the butlers would live who worked in Marin. According to a recent study, it’s the country’s fourth-wealthiest county and has a median home value of about $1.5 million.

So Goff will be asked A LOT about returning home. A LOT. He not only grew up in the Bay Area but also to college at nearby Cal. Some players like the extra attention, but Goff doesn’t. It won’t help de-emphasize the magnitude of the game, even if that’s what Campbell wants.

“If you start really (homing) in on everything you’ve accomplished,” Campbell said Sunday, “or what you’ve done or the magnitude of the game, well, that’s where issues begin to arise. So we’ve been good.”

Goff has at least been through this week before with the Rams. But Campbell hasn’t as a head coach. On Monday, he wasn’t quite sure what awaited him this week, when media requirements change and teams need to be more accessible to interviews.

“Yeah, I don’t know if I entirely know what all is yet to come,” he said. “I know there’ll be some extra obligations and I’ve got to start looking out a little bit, scheduling, things of that nature, but I think it should be good.

“And, if anything, I’ll just turn my back on those other things and get ready for this game. So it’ll be good. So I’m not worried about that.”

Yes, CLEARLY he’s not worried about something he doesn’t have a full grasp of. Look, Campbell’s an excellent coach and leader, but there’s no substitute for experience. You can’t call on grit to make up for experience.

Whenever I’ve spoken with players about their first Super Bowl experience, they mention how the game is unlike any other they’ve played. There’s a two-week break, plus the week of white-hot attention at the site, plus the numerous interruptions during the game from extra commercials and a much longer halftime.

If Campbell and the Lions win this game, I have to pick them in the Super Bowl on a neutral site, even against a great team like the Baltimore Ravens or the Kansas City Chiefs. And don’t forget that the site of this year’s Super Bowl is just outside of Las Vegas, where the whole idea of house money truly applies.

Contact Carlos Monarrez: cmonarrez@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Overachieving Detroit Lions playing with house money in NFC title game