The battle cry of a reborn city: ‘JAR-ed Goff’

DETROIT — 16 years ago, Michelle Alessandri of Dearborn Heights, Michigan, gathered with family and friends on Thanksgiving, as they always do, outside Ford Field for a Detroit Lions tailgate.

The team was coming off an 0-16 season, the first in NFL history at the time. High up in a nearby prison sat the city’s former mayor, convicted of two counts of obstruction of justice (he would later serve federal time as well). A nearby casino had just filed for bankruptcy, and the city government would soon follow suit. General Motors, headquartered down the block, recently received a $13 billion emergency loan from the government to stay afloat.

As the tailgaters were wrapping up turkey, dressing and desserts to go inside, a downtrodden man came by who needed some food. They made a plate for him.

He took a few bites but didn’t seem too impressed before telling Alessandri, “It’s a little dry, isn’t it?”

The tailgaters could only laugh at the chutzpah.

Welcome to Thanksgiving in Detroit.

For years, America moaned that the early game on the national holiday was populated by the lowly lions. The franchise invented the concept in 1934 — in an effort to draw crowds of parade-goers downtown to check out the team. They stayed because TV networks determined it didn’t matter, ratings-wise, who played on Thanksgiving. A captive audience had to watch, so why waste a good game on the time window?

Still, the Lions — except for a few seasons of Barry Sanders’ brilliance — were the team no one wanted to see.

There was a 66-year stretch when they only won a single playoff game. Six or seven wins was often considered a good season. Former QB Joey Harrington was a former first-round draft pick who never played for a winning team in Detroit, but once called his time there the franchise’s “hey days.” He wasn’t entirely wrong.

Thanksgiving was often Detroit’s only national television appearance, going 37-45-2 all-time on the holiday. The Lions are just 4-16 over the past two decades and have a current seven-game losing streak.

However, it is a new day. The city and the area around Ford Field are far more developed than before – luxury high-rises and crowded restaurants and bars. And the Lions are much better, too — not just 10-1 and a Super Bowl betting favorite coming off an NFC championship game, but with a dynamic offense and one of the most exciting teams in the league.

No one, perhaps oddly or perhaps fittingly, represents the vibe around the team and the city quite like a blond-haired 30-year-old from Marin County, Calif., who came here against his will.

Jared Goff is his name and you will hear it chanted over not just Ford Field or Detroit itself or even the state of Michigan, but anywhere everyone who once lived in the places now lives.

“JAR-ed Goff! JAR-ed Goff!” is not just a salute to the starting quarterback, but a rallying cry for a trashed city and fan base, a can-you-believe-it bit of bravado.

You will of course hear it at Lions road games, where Honolulu-clad fans have begun to overwhelm the stands, but also Detroit Red Wings or Detroit Tigers games across the continent. Or at destination weddings full of Michiganders. Or among passing fans in a distant bar, airport or shop.

It’s not “Let’s go, lions.” It’s not, “Here we go, Detroit.”

It’s “JAR-ed Goff.”

It’s a chant that popped up last January when the Lions hosted (and won) their first playoff game since the 1991 season. The Ford Field crowd wanted to recognize their current QB over their previous one, Matthew Stafford of the Los Angeles Rams.

Stafford was a hero here, too, but he was shipped off for a number of draft picks in the Lions’ latest rebuilding effort. Goff, the former no. 1 overall draft pick, was instead thrown in as an almost worthless addition. He had his moments with the Rams, but had become an interception machine that the team didn’t believe could win a Super Bowl.

Then he became the catalyst for this wild, triumphant ride in Detroit, the perfect symbol of everything. The fans that day last January wanted Goff to know they believed in him.

“The people here are special, man,” Goff said after the playoff win that clinched a run to the NFC championship. “I’m grateful. It meant a lot. I love these guys.”

Once discarded and beaten down, Goff is now soaring and making the rest of the country believe in his team, which happens to represent a city that has long been discarded and beaten down, and which desperately wants the rest of the country also believe in it.

Instead of going back or giving up when he arrived in Detroit, Goff found a second life among kindred spirits. Rather than resign himself to leaving sunny, glamorous Los Angeles for the industrial Midwest, he found a home.

He’s better than ever, a legitimate MVP candidate this season. This, it bears repeating, is one of the great stories in the NFL.

“To see us come from where we were, to see us where we are, and the fans have experienced that,” Goff said. “This place is special to me. Like I said, these people are special.”

And then the Lions will be back on everyone’s TV this Thanksgiving — at 12:30 PM ET as usual – and host Chicago. Only this time they will be favorites with 9.5 points. Only this time, hope won’t focus on avoiding embarrassment. Only this time, America will happily tune in because everything has changed.

“JAR-ed Goff,” they’ll no doubt chant — the unlikely centerpiece of this unlikely renaissance, a far cry from the desperate and hungry critics of a free slice of turkey in a parking lot outside the home of a winless team in a slump and devastated city.