Detroit Lions own one of NFL's greatest playoff comebacks vs. San Francisco 49ers
Who do the Detroit Lions play next? They will meet the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC championship game next Sunday night. It's the second-ever conference title appearance for the Lions in the Super Bowl era. They have never played in the previous 57 Super Bowls.
The Lions will make only their second trip to Santa Clara, California and Levi's Stadium, which opened in 2014. They last visited in Week 2 of the 2018 season, losing 30-27 to the 49ers.
The Niners and Lions entering Sunday have met 68 times in NFL history, including two times in the playoffs. The 49ers lead the all-time series, 39-28-1, with the teams splitting their postseason affairs, each one a memorable game.
Here's a deeper look at the two previous playoff meetings:
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Detroit Lions-San Francisco 49ers playoff history
1983: 49ers 24, Lions 23
This was ranked as one of the five best divisional round playoff games of the 20th century. Unfortunately for the Lions, they came up one point short in a game best remembered for Eddie Murray's missed game-winning field goal.
It's one of the Lions' most painful losses in franchise history because of how inspired the Lions, a 7½-point underdog, played on New Year's Eve against the 1981 Super Bowl champion 49ers, a budding dynasty under coach Bill Walsh and quarterback Joe Montana.
Billy Sims scored rushing touchdowns from 11 and 3 yards away in the fourth quarter to put the Lions ahead 23-17 with five minutes remaining. But Montana, despite not having standout receiver Dwight Clark, went 6-for-6 on the ensuing drive, culminating in a 14-yard pass to Freddie Solomon over the middle with 1:23 left.
Lions quarterback Gary Danielson, starting for the injured Eric Hipple, had thrown five interceptions — four in the first half — but drove the Lions to the Niners' 25 with 11 seconds left to put the team in position for their first playoff win since 1957, 26 years prior. It was not to be.
Murray, who had made three of four attempts in the game including a then-postseason record 54-yarder in the first half, pushed the 42-yard kick wide right. "I lined myself up right, but I was trying to more or less finesse the ball through rather than just kick it like I normally do," Murray said postgame in the locker room. "It's like golf, you gotta hook the ball and you leave it out and it doesn't come in, it's the same principle."
"That game changed my approach to kicking, and from then on, I aimed everything inside the uprights and let the elements take care of itself," Murray told the Free Press in 2021. "It made me a better kicker and gave me the focus and the drive to really work at what I was doing."
1957: Lions 31, 49ers 27
This remains one of the NFL's top 10 greatest playoff comebacks, the Lions overcoming a 27-7 third-quarter deficit at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco. And they did it without star quarterback Bobby Layne, who had broken his ankle two weeks earlier on a sack vs. Cleveland.
No matter. The Lions had traded for Green Bay Packers quarterback Tobin Rote before the season, and had Rote and Layne rotate during the season. So Rote, in his eighth season, was more than ready to assume the entire workload when Layne went down in the second-to-last game of the regular season.
The Lions and Niners both went 8-4 during the regular season, setting up a one-game playoff for the NFC West Division crown and a trip to the 1957 NFL championship game. (The Lions clobbered the 49ers, 31-10 in Week 8 in Detroit, but no tiebreaker existed.)
49ers quarterback Y.A. Tittle, a future Hall of Famer and first-team All-Pro that season, threw three touchdown passes in the first half to put San Francisco ahead 24-7. But the Niners celebrated far too early, the overconfidence overheard by the Lions in the halftime locker room, which wasn't separated by much more than some drywall in those days.
“They’re beating on the wall and ‘(expletive) you,’ and all of this and everything,” Lions defensive end Gene Cronin told the Free Press in 2017. “And Coach (George) Wilson got up and said, ‘I was going to say something, but that’s what they think of you,’ and he sat down.”
The second half did not start well, when Hugh McElhenny ran 71 yards to the Lions' 9-yard line, but the defense held to a field goal. The Lions scored the game's final 24 points, with little-used backup halfback Tom Tracy scoring from 1-yard and 58 yards, and Gene Gedman scoring from 2 yards out in the fourth quarter. The defense created four turnovers in the fourth quarter alone in a wild comeback (the Lions won the turnover battle 5-4). Tittle threw three picks to Rote's one INT. The 20-point comeback is tied for seventh all-time in NFL postseason history.
The Lions went on to drub the Cleveland Browns, 59-14, the following week to secure their third title of the decade. They did not win a playoff game again until 1991, then didn't win another playoff game until 2023, breaking the streak Jan. 14 vs. the Los Angeles Rams in the wild-card round.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions-San Francisco 49ers playoff history has 2 epic games
