Lions beat Buccaneers, advance to NFC Championship Game

For just the second time, the Detroit Lions are in the NFC Championship Game.

The Lions beat the Buccaneers 31-23 today in front of a raucous crowd at Ford Field in Detroit, punching their ticket to San Francisco and a meeting with the 49ers in the NFC Championship.

Detroit has only been to the NFC Championship Game once before, after the 1991 season. They’ve been to the fewest NFC Championship Games; the 49ers have been to an NFL-record 19 of them.

Both quarterbacks in today’s game, Detroit’s Jared Goff and Tampa Bay’s Baker Mayfield, deserve plenty of credit for the way they played. They’re both former first overall draft picks who were given up on by their original teams and have seen their careers reborn in their current situations. Goff’s team came out on top, and he’s the one who moves on, but Mayfield has made himself a lot of money as he heads into free agency.

The Lions also got big games from a couple of rookies, Jahmyr Gibbs and Sam LaPorta, as well as from their No. 1 receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown. The players the Lions have counted on this season stepped up in the biggest game yet.

Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn had a good game scheming up his pass rush, with blitzers frequently coming unblocked, and Mayfield had pressure in his face when he threw the game-clinching interception to Detroit’s Derrick Barnes with 1:33 left.

That was the interception that let Detroit celebrate something it doesn’t see often: A trip to the NFC Championship Game.