At the NFL combine in 2023, a coveted defensive back from Alabama sat in a room stuffed with coaches and executives from the worst professional football team this . Brian Branch had starred for a college football power that rarely lost. But as he listened to these men, he didn’t think what would have been obvious only two springs earlier. He didn’t see the franchise they were lifting as the team that rarely won.
Instead, he listened. And, as he listened, the overhaul in progress became clearer and inspiring. The Detroit Lions laid out their blueprint for football domination that afternoon. They started with an ethos: a roster shaped with talented underdogs. No fictional Rudys, to be clear, but talents, talents. All had been, for one reason or another, overlooked, underappreciated or unfairly appraised. Their head coach, Dan Campbell, promised to hold each to strict, inflexible standards. But within those firm parameters, he empowered them, his underdogs. They would toil endlessly but without ego, would hold each other accountable, would present toughness and discipline and will. All would own a piece of an NFL rebuild without precedent; if, that is, they could turn this plan into reality.
Still, no portion of their presentation enticed Branch more than the desired end point—the first Super Bowl appearance in franchise history and Detroit’s first professional football championship since 1957, or more than 43 years before his birth. Branch didn’t just hear the Lions espouse such improbable notions. They didn’t sound like employees of a franchise that had just finished a 9–8 season, which, even then, marked improvement from the 3-13-1 campaign two years before.
Branch heard the Lions say all of these things, none of which squared, in any way, with what their record said. But he them.
He couldn’t control which team selected him. But in regard to one team that rarely gave its steady, loyal, heroically patient fanbase reason to publicly showcase its football affiliation, he had reached two understandings: Detroit was on the upswing and he wanted in.
As Branch detailed the events of those months this past June, he sat atop a stool inside Mom’s Spaghetti. This downtown eatery serves pasta four ways—with sauce, with meatballs, with vegan meatballs or in glorious, caloric sandwich form. He’s here because Michigan is home now after Detroit traded up in Round 2 to select him at pick No. 45. He’s twirling a plate of spaghetti, while gazing across the street at Comerica Park, home to MLB’s Detroit Tigers, 11-time American League winners, four-time World Series champions. Branch seems lost in thought, at points, which makes sense. He’s considering everything in front of him, like the 2024 season and the grand, potentially historic, possibilities ahead.
These Lions—the—are poised to fashion the greatest season in the history of the NFL’s worst franchise. There’s no other way to frame it. Not in the Super Bowl era, at least, where no other team comes anywhere close to Detroit’s futility.
That’s changing, though, because of the plan Detroit’s brass detailed to Branch and a million other factors, such as, say, how well he played in his rookie season. “Destiny,” he calls the surge, “the kind that’s falling into place.”
