The Detroit Lions will be aware by the time Sunday Night Football kicks off what their playoff fate entails.
If the Seattle Seahawks wind up victorious against the Los Angeles Rams, the Lions playoff hopes will have been dashed, even before the first official snap of their nationally televised game.
Even though the team is saying all the right things about how they would react receiving bad news, there are a lot of reasons to believe the 2022 Lions will play a good game in the regular season finale.
"Whether Seattle wins or not, we want to, well for me personally, I want to have a winning season. I've never -- last year, we only won three games," said Amon-Ra St. Brown. "So, to have a winning season, I think is huge for this organization as a whole and for this team moving forward. But like you said, whether we're winning to go to the playoffs or winning to not let the Packers make the playoffs, either one is huge for us. We want a winning record at the end of the season."
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For a long period of time, the Lions have viewed as a perennial last place team, while the Packers have been the class of the division for seemingly as long as Aaron Rodgers has laced up his boots.
At one point, the Lions had lost 24 straight road games to the Packers, a streak that was officially ended back in 2015, when Jim Caldwell led the team to a 18-16 victory in November.
Speaking with reporters after practice Wednesday, cornerback Amani Oruwariye expressed his belief the Lions next opponent does not have respect for the team, based on past results.
"There's other things on the line as far as having a winning season, beating a division opponent that I feel like really doesn't respect us as much as, respect us that much at all," Oruwariye expressed. "So there's a lot of other motivating factors other than just, obviously, the playoff implications."
Earlier this season, the Lions were able to force Aaron Rodgers into tossing three interceptions, on their way to a 15-9 home victory.
Following the game, the future Pro Football Hame quarterback took what many have perceived as a dig against Detroit.
Rodgers said, “We can’t lose a game like that against that team, no. So that’s going to hurt for a while.”
In other interviews, Rodgers has continued his passive-aggressive tone when referencing the remaining games on the Packers schedule.
"It's been maybe one sided for a long time, but I think this year we flipped the script and I think everyone can kind of see that," Oruwariye said. "They might still feel like this is the old lions and that they could take advantage of this or that. But, I think that we flipped the script. We've shown a lot of improvement over this year, so they can think that all they want. We'll see how it goes."
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