The Detroit Lions will be hitting the road for the next two weeks — but it won’t be a lonely road.
Head coach Dan Campbell’s team, flushed from a surging, confident and sometimes downright exhilarating start to the season that has more than lived up to the pre-campaign hype, has as much momentum behind it as any other group in the National Football League.
And, as the Lions embark upon back-to-back journeys to Tampa Bay (4:25 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app) and Baltimore, they do so in the knowledge that they’ll be followed by a growing army of supporters prepared to transport their vocal fandom far beyond the confines of the Motor City.
There is something European-soccer-esque about this traveling movement involving a team that was downtrodden for so long, and as he got ready to pack his bag for this weekend’s trip to Florida’s Gulf Coast, superfan Rob “Lion Eyes” Gonzales was happy to talk about it.
“Our band of travelers is growing and growing,” said Gonzales, a 62-year-old retired steel mill worker, whose colorful get-up includes a pair of oversized 1980s Lions glasses — hence the nickname.
“We get together, we support the team wherever they go, we meet up, we get loud, we are welcomed by fans from the other team. And then, especially if the Lions are winning, we might get beer thrown at us.”
Gonzales and a collection of other fans were highlighted recently in an eminently enjoyable documentary called “Roar in the D — A Fan Story,” by local director James Hakkany and produced by Yellow Flag Productions. Hakkany, who grew up in the city, didn’t need anyone to tell him how tough things have been for Lions fans since 1991, the last time the team won a postseason game.
“When things were at their worst, I fell off the bandwagon,” Hakkany said. “So it was fascinating for me to be able to tell the story of these people who stuck with it, all the way through, and how much it is part of their lives.”
Previewing Bucs vs. Lions
The doc title is apt. It is a fan story, but what those in the stands are doing, and how loud they’re doing it, is also becoming a genuine part of the modern tale of the team. So many Lions supporters ventured to Kansas City for the opening-night victory over the Chiefs that Campbell said they caused a delay-of-game penalty at a crucial moment.
“They (were) overpowering the stadium,” Campbell told reporters. “It is awesome. You feel there is a little piece of home no matter where you go.”
Most noticeable of all was at Green Bay in Week 4, when receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown was able to Lambeau Leap into one of many small seas of blue upon scoring a touchdown in a 34-20 victory.
Maybe the pockets weren’t so small. The Detroit presence in Wisconsin was such substantial enough that the Packers released a statement afterward imploring their own fans not to sell tickets to outsiders.
“When you think about where we’ve come (from), it’s a pretty great feeling,” QB Jared Goff said.
Do you really need reminding where the Lions have come from? They’ve come from windows of time like 2001-09, when the teams managed just 33 wins in nine years. From 0-16, which was part of that stretch, in 2008. From the true gloom of Matt Patricia’s reign and from 3-13-1 in Campbell’s first year, when the numbers looked bad but which was actually the start of a new era of positivity.
Gonzales, who has been to all but eight NFL cities to watch games, believes there will be more instances of the Lions taking over on road trips, especially if the current form holds. He is friends with Lions fanatics who routinely drive hours from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, or fly in from Phoenix, or London (yes really), to get to games, and he sees more and more fresh faces each journey.
He passed his love of the Lions on to his children and is now working on his eight grandkids, and laughs when the new generation ask about what it was like in years gone by.
“Of course, it makes it sweeter,” Gonzales said. “There were so many times over the years when you question you keep doing this when the team was so bad. These kids watching now, they don’t fully understand this winning thing, and how it wasn’t always like this.”
Don’t jinx it now, but if the Lions can continue their flawless road record over the next two weeks, things will be looking seriously good. Detroit is already two games clear at the top of the NFC North, with the Chicago Bears as bad as predicted, the Minnesota Vikings 1-4 after their one-score-game regression hit like a ton of bricks and the Packers in quarterback-transition mode.
Thoughts of a potential Super Bowl appearance are being whispered around the D, and few fan bases deserve some good times more wholeheartedly.
For Gonzales, it would be easy to say that it will have all been worth it if the Lions make it to the biggest game of all after so much disappointment, but that would be too simplistic, too much of a cliché to sum up a life’s passion and all that it encompasses.
“The places I’ve been, the people I’ve met, the way supporting the Lions has enriched my life,” Gonzales said. “It’s all been worth it already.”
