Detroit Lions prove they're really good by winning game they had no business winning

It looked finished. Then it didn’t. Then it wasn’t.

And on a day when the Detroit Lions played their worst football of the season — at Baltimore was bad, yes, but the Ravens are title contenders; the Bears are not — they pulled off something stunning, and beat Chicago, 31-26, at Ford Field.

Is this how it is with good football teams?

Is this what it feels like to pull out a game you had no business winning?

To go from booing to roaring in a matter of minutes? To watching your quarterback throw three interceptions and your team turn the ball over four times and fall behind two scores with 4 minutes left and put together consecutive touchdown drives?

Not just touchdown drives but dominant, identity drives. Short-memory drives. Drives that change the direction of a season or, in this case, confirm it.

What happened at Ford Field doesn’t happen at Ford Field … unless it happens to the other team. Think Buffalo last Thanksgiving. Or the cursed Bears with their last-minute field goal. Or think the Ravens and their record-setting field goal.

Think Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers and heck, Kirk Cousins, who pulled a miracle here two seasons ago. It’s happened so often that it blurs together, a string of last-minute agony that feels decades long.

Well, not today. Not with these Lions. Not with this coach. Not this season.

CARLOS MONARREZ: Lions won't survive another effort like this one vs. Bears in the NFL playoffs

Oh, heartbreak may be out there. But the good kind of heartbreak. Heartbreak that is earned because your team is winning and playing for something.

The Lions are now 8-2. Let me repeat that: The Lions are 8-2.

Not since 1962 have they started like this. Though to call this a “start” is not so accurate anymore. We are more than halfway through the season. This isn’t a start. It’s a middle, and it’s looking more and more like this team has something … special? Mystical? Magical?

OK, that may be going too far. But then NFL teams don’t just win games like the Lions just won. I mean, they do, technically, but not often, and not here.

Heck, they didn’t merely pull out a late comeback after a relatively well-played game, a close game, they upended whatever was ailing them, they exorcised the Chicago juju and flat out stole victory. No wait, they didn’t steal it.

They took it. This is who the Lions are, too.

For a while, you were beginning to wonder. Shoot, so was everyone else in Ford Field, who actually showered this team with boos. First the fans booed Jared Goff, then the play calling, then everything.

They were frustrated and surprised and couldn’t believe that Chicago and come in and dissected their team. I’m not sure the Lions could believe it.

JEFF SEIDEL: It was ugly. Jared Goff was erratic. But when it mattered most, Detroit Lions delivered

Still, despite the turnovers and the sloppy and uneven play, the Lions had managed a 14-10 halftime lead and were moving the ball to start the third quarter. Around midfield, they faced the third and 2.

Inexplicably, Ben Johnson called a deep drop for Goff. Worse, he didn’t give him a blocker in the backfield to help protect him.

Linebacker Jack Sanborn blitzed. Goff had nowhere to go — or to throw. He got sacked. The Lions punted.

That was the last of their good tidings against the 3-7 Bears for the day.

Until it wasn’t.

Improbably. Shockingly.

Now, the last two touchdown drives shouldn’t obscure what came before it. They played poorly for most of the game. They missed tackles. Drew penalties. Threw picks. Fumbled kickoff returns.

They did all of that and more. Heck, on one play, Justin Fields, who toyed with the Lions for much of the afternoon, picked up almost 30 yards on a scramble while the Lions got called for illegal contact downfield, so it was a first down either way.

Two other series Chicago converted third downs, one a third-and-long, because of illegal contact downfield. Both times in an area of the field that was nowhere near the play. And both times committed by rookie defensive back Brian Branch, who otherwise played well.

In fact, he had three tackles for a loss, and almost single-handedly kept the Chicago from running away with the game in the first half. It had been a while since Branch’s name kept getting called by the public address announcer. It had been a while since he’d looked like this.

He was the silver lining until the finish, when Goff settled into his groove and Johnson settled into his and started the comeback with a 32-yard touchdown pass to Jameson Williams.

That’s when you knew. Or had a flicker that something different might be coming.

Well, it did. And it has been all season.

Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions prove they're really good by winning from out of nowhere