Detroit Lions appear to be creating grievance culture
O, for a muse of fire!
A couple of months after Brad Holmes’ airing of grievances with Detroit reporters over draft choices, Jared Goff followed his general manager’s example by charging into battle full of flimsy pretext like an NFL version of Henry V.
In a recent podcast, the Detroit Lions quarterback fired the first salvo in a war with reporters they didn’t even know they were part of by revisiting his own grievances over a perceived slight that happened nearly three months ago.
The crux of Goff’s beef during a 11⁄ 2- hour podcast? Detroit media needs to stop being so negative and – wait for it – let go of the past.
Of course, the Lions quarterback prefers that reporters and, presumably anyone else in Detroit, let the SELECTIVE past go. As in, the bad past. As in, I can only assume, he means that little blip in the Lions’ timeline known as 1958-2022.
“I probably need to drop it pretty soon here,” he said recently on Willbo’s “Trading Cards” podcast, “because I’m hopefully going to be in Detroit for a long time. But I have this thing with our local media where like they almost like relish in negativity at times. And maybe that’s what gets clicks and that’s what sells, but it’s no longer what they need to live in.”
Goff specifically mentioned a funny viral exchange he had with a Detroit columnist the week of the NFC title game in late January. No, it wasn’t me. But I was there and the innocuous question concerned the Lions’ opportunity to showcase their own stars, compared to the well-known stars for an established Super Bowl contender like the 49ers.
“Like, hey guys, we have a good team,” Goff said on the pod. “We’ve had success. We can be happy about that, we can celebrate that and not have to write about how we’re constantly the underdog.
“No, teams are gonna be gunning for us now. We won the division and all that. I’m probably overthinking it in my head, and it’s the chip on my shoulder and the competitor in me.”
Goff is entirely correct on both points. The Lions are legit, and he’s definitely overthinking a guileless question.
But I also don’t fault him, or Holmes, for finding fuel for their fire wherever they can. Even if it means putting the convenient, cliched target of “the media” in their crosshairs and not caring if a few people catch some strays. I don’t know the pressures of being a QB or GM, so maybe some people in those positions feel a need to conjure adversaries they can push back against and prove wrong. Hey, it certainly worked for Michael Jordan.
For the record, I’ve had a good relationship with Goff – though maybe not so much after this. I’ve written plenty about my appreciation for his difficult path as a Rams castoff, especially compared to the way Matthew Stafford was coddled during his 12 years playing on a Ford family scholarship.
It’s clear the hardship Goff experienced and his treatment by the Rams and coach Sean McVay still bothers him. He touched on it several times during the podcast and still seems flummoxed by why he fell into disfavor and was jettisoned.
“Being shipped off and being sent to a place to die, essentially, is what a lot of people think it was,” he said, “and I was never going to allow that to happen.”
Give Goff credit for resurrecting his career. Few people thought he could do that in, of all places, Detroit, where the Lions this year will celebrate the 100th anniversary of their relocation from Portsmouth, Ohio. With the exception of a six-year window in the 1950s, most of the past century has been miserable.
Goff probably has little knowledge about this. As I’ve learned over 30 years in sportswriting, most athletes have a poor understanding of their adoptive city’s sports history and culture. Goff was with the Rams for five years and he wasn’t sure if the Dodgers and Lakers had been in L.A. for 80 or 100 years. The Dodgers arrived in 1958 and the Lakers in 1960.
The dates don’t matter, but understanding the context in which a team competes does.
There’s a much different standard in L.A. for the Dodgers and Lakers than there is for the Rams, Clippers and Angels. Just as there’s a different standard in Detroit for the Lions than there is for the Red Wings.
Of course, the Lions are trying to change that. But it’s not going to happen in one year or five or maybe even 10 for a team that’s been around for a century in a city that’s been around for more than 300 years.
And time is what matters here because, as Goff said, he expects to spend a lot more of it with the Lions. I’m sure Holmes does too, especially after receiving his recent contract extension that keeps him here through 2027.
So Goff is right. It probably is time for him to “drop” the grievance culture he and Holmes seem to be cultivating. Because clapping back publicly might work for them, but it could lead other players, coaches and executives down a path with unforeseeable consequences.
Henry V could tell you that. Because even though he made fiery speeches and won some big battles, he didn’t win the Hundred Years’ War. It was a turbulent period that scarred and devastated generations, much like the Lions’ first near-100 years in Detroit. Let’s not start off the second hundred on the wrong foot.