Lions Playoff Heartbreaker Echoes Ravens Past

The Detroit Lions have dealt with plenty of heartbreak over the years, but nothing quite like this.
Dan Campbell's team put together the best regular season in franchise history, finishing with a 15-2 record, earning the NFC's No. 1 seed and being the presumptive favorite to represent the conference in the Super Bowl. The playoffs are an entirely different beast, though, as the Lions found out in Saturday night's 45-31 loss to the No. 6 seed Washington Commanders in the Divisional Round. An 8.5-point underdog entering the game, Washington pulled off one of the biggest playoff upsets in recent memory.
"They earned that win and we didn't," Lions head coach Dan Campbell told reporters after the game. "We just didn't play good enough. Really, we never complemented each other. I felt that way going into halftime and it really never got better."
If that sounds familiar to any Baltimore Ravens fans reading, then there's a reason why.
Think back to 2019, when the Ravens steamrolled almost everyone en route to a 14-2 record and the AFC's No. 1 seed. Like the Lions, they too were massive favorites heading into the Divisional Round, only to fall flat in a 28-12 loss to the No. 6 seed Tennessee Titans.
"Congratulations to the Titans, Coach [Mike] Vrabel and their team," Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said after the game. "They did a great job. I felt like they played winning football, and they did it in a tough environment, and they got the job done. So, they'll be moving forward. We wish them all the best moving forward.
"I'm disappointed that we didn't play the kind of football we needed to play to win the game. That will stick with us for a long time, but we'll move forward from here."
It goes beyond just the end result. The 2024 Lions and 2019 Ravens both finished the regular season first in scoring offense and second in total offense, only to badly lose the turnover battle (Detroit lost 5-0 against Washington, Baltimore lost 3-0 against Tennessee) in the playoffs. They both had over 500 yards of offense, but it hardly mattered when they kept giving the ball away.
Defensively, though, the story is a little different. The Lions' incredibly beat-up defense simply had no answers for Jayden Daniels and co., as the Commanders racked up 481 total yards scored on six of their nine possessions (not counting kneel downs at the end of each half). On the other hand, the Ravens were simply helpless to stop Derrick Henry (now a Raven himself, ironically), who rushed for 195 yards and threw for a touchdown, but he was essentially a one-man army that night.
No matter how it happened, though, it's an incredibly difficult pill to swallow, especially for a fanbase that's gone through as much as Detroit's has. What's done is done, though, and the Lions now must try and come back stronger next season.