What the Lions pulled off in Green Bay Sunday night was pretty impressive. They won for just the fourth time in the last 31 tries at Lambeau Field.
Head coach Dan Campbell was asked during the game about the team's motivation since they had no shot at making the playoffs. His answer was simple. He basically said since we can't go to the playoffs, we want to keep them from going, too.
I know of only one national analyst who picked the Lions to beat the Packers straight-up. And very few took the Lions and the 4.5 points they were getting from oddsmakers.
So now as we enter the opening round of the NFL playoffs, will anyone have the courage to take the Seahawks straight up against the 49ers? After all, the Niners are 10-point favorites and are steamrolling into the playoffs on a 10-game winning streak.
In fact, will anyone take the Hawks plus the 10 points?
Some, but I'm guessing not many.
Pete Carroll has been here before and so have the 12's, 12 years ago. That's when the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints came to Seattle, and like the 49ers, were tied for the second-best record in the NFC and like the 49ers this week, the Saints were 10-point favorites.
The Seahawks won the NFC West with a 7-9 record. They joined an exclusive club that season of teams who reached the NFL playoffs, despite their losing records - a club that welcomed Tom Brady and the Bucs Sunday as its newest member of lovable losers, which now includes six teams since the league expanded the schedule in 1978.
Just to complete our trip down memory lane, the Seahawks were the first team with a losing record to make the playoffs in a non-strike shortened season.
They overcame all that shade to rally from a 10-point deficit and beat the Saints 41-36 in a game that famously featured Marshawn Lynch's "Beast Quake" run; a 67-yard romp littered with Saints defenders after Lynch broke nine tackles on his way to the end zone.
I remember hosting The Pete Carroll show after that game, only to have Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck saunter on to the set and shoot me a well-deserved smirk knowing I gave his team virtually no chance of beating the Saints. He heard me broadcast that prediction earlier in the week.
Busted.
He threw for 272 yards and four touchdowns. Four touchdowns against a Saints defense that allowed just 13 passing touchdowns all season.
So, I ate my crow and did the show.
That Seahawks' victory was proof anything can happen when you get to the playoffs.
But you gotta get there.
It's like the lottery. You can't win if you don't play.
But unlike the lottery, the Seahawks are nowhere near the long shots you and I are when we purchase those tickets at the party store.
They're 10-point underdogs Saturday.
For two weeks now I've had to listen to Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" after each win at Lumen Field.
Corny, yes.
I mean, I get it. But there has to be a better theme song than this top 10 favorite in the world of karaoke.
Then again, it "was" the song played at the diner in the final scene of The Sopranos.
And just as no one knew what happened when the credits rolled that night back in 2007, no one knows what will happen when the final credits roll on this Seahawks season.
I have an idea, but unlike 12 years ago, I'll keep that to myself.