Lions ready to ‘dominate’ Eagles … ‘or whoever the [bleep] wants to come in here!’
Lions #Lions
If the stumbling Eagles can somehow get past the Tampa Bay Bucs in the NFL’s final wild-card matchup on Monday night, they’ll face the Lions — and 60,000 screaming fans in Detroit who will just be getting their voices back — on Sunday.
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And the Lions, who on Sunday night beat the Los Angeles Rams, 24-23, to win their first playoff game in more than three decades, are ready.
“We got three more of these, at home, against whoever the [bleep] wants to come in here!” quarterback Jared Goff told his teammates after earning a game ball.
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Goff had his teammates chanting and jumping around the locker room with his fiery postgame speech, but the Eagles will recognize the guy who is the voice of reason in the locker room — safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, who left Philadelphia for Detroit after the Eagles’ Super Bowl loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Johnson played only three regular-season games because of a torn pec muscle suffered in Week 2. He’s insisting another Super Bowl appearance for him is not a crazy idea.
“I think it’s surprisingly y’all, but it’s not surprising me,” Gardner-Johnson told reporters. “I’ve been on winning football teams before. I’m a six-year vet. I’ve seen a lot of ball. This team has what it takes to be dominant for the next couple of years, with the players we have, with the guys we got in front office that’s helping us build it.”
He added: “We got to finish the drill. You can’t get content with getting out of the first round.”
Dan Campbell, the former Giants and Cowboys tight end who promised to turn his players into flesh-eaters when he was hired three years ago, is firing up the NFL’s sentimental underdogs — and making believers of one of the NFL’s most persecuted fan bases.
“Hats off to the coaching staff for just finding guys who fit a mold,” Campbell said. “We might not be the flashiest, we might not be just that first pick in the litter. But we’re damn mutts. And we just go out there and play and I’m just so proud to be a part of an organization like this.”
The mutts — part pitbull — await the Eagles (or the Bucs), along with fans who released 30-plus-years of heartache and frustration in a joint therapy session on Sunday night.
“Man, that was – that is arguably the best environment I’ve ever been in,” Campbell said. “That was absolutely electric, and I think what’s crazy is I was coming down for pre-game warmup and you could just feel it. It was humming. The building was humming, and I swear you could feel the electricity down the tunnel from where I was coming down, and it only just grew from there.
“So, our fans showed up in a big way. That was clearly — and I thought for two years now that building’s been rocking. It was different today. That was a whole other level. It’s what the playoffs are all about. So, our fans showed up in a big way. They helped us win this game.
“It’s not the money, it’s about the competition, it’s about the comradery, and to be the best of the best collectively. So, I know this, we were fighting for the No. 2 seed to get another home game, and we got another home game. So it’s awesome and we had to earn that and we earned that with a win today.”