The 1957 season featured constant turmoil from start to finish for the Detroit Lions. The end result was the franchise’s final NFL championship to date.
With the amount of time that’s passed since the last time the Detroit Lions were able to call themselves NFL Champions, it’s easy to forget just how successful the club once was. The Super Bowl-era has wiped out anything prior to 1967 in the collective mind of most fans, so the common narrative is that the Lions have ‘never’ been good.
While it’s certainly been a long time and fans are desperate for a return to glory, to say that the Lions’ current drought is somehow preordained, or that it’s ‘always’ been like that, completely ignores the first thirty or so years of team history.
There was a time when the Lions were competitive year in and year out, and even dominant. The pride and success of the storied past culminated with a stretch where Detroit was the class of the NFL, nearing dynasty status in the 1950s.
With three NFL titles (and another championship game appearance) in six years, the Lions were one of the league’s premier teams, though few fans today can boast a memory of this period.
However, following a 59-14 Championship Game demolition of the Cleveland Browns just after Christmas of 1957, I imagine that even fewer of the 55,263 in attendance at Briggs Field would predict that another 60+ years would pass before another chance for that type of celebration.
1957 NFL Western Division Standings
Tm W-L PF PA Stk
xy-Detroit 8-4 251 231 W3
x-San Francisco 8-4 260 264 W3
Baltimore 7-5 303 235 L2
L.A. Rams 6-6 307 278 W2
Chicago 5-7 203 211 L1
Green Bay 3-9 218 311 L3
x- division champions
y- won divisional playoff game as tiebreaker
Sources: ShrpSports.com, Pro-football-reference.com