It’s not what anyone saw coming. You had this dominating force that did everything you thought they could do to win it all and then when it came time to do it, it ended in a heartbreaking loss.
We’re talking about Cody Rhodes. Yes, we’re going full WWE in this story that will somehow tie in Dan Campbell and the Detroit Lions and Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning.
Rhodes is a lot like the Lions. At one point, he was a joke that nobody took seriously. He lost all the time, and it was easy to forget him. The Lions were that team for a long time, too, and so were the Colts.
Rhodes returned to the WWE in 2022 with the ambition to get it right this time, just as the Colts did in the mid-2000s and the Lions are doing now. For Rhodes, the whole mantra was to “finish the story.” The Colts had a similar mantra.
After the Lions’ loss to the Commanders in the Divisional round of the playoffs, Manning texted Campbell with some key thoughts and advice.
“I said, ‘I know how you feel, I’ve been there, and it’s not a good feeling, Understand that, but we did win the whole thing the next year.’ You just kind of keep sawing wood.” Manning said. “We’d been knocking on the door, and we were coming close. We were obviously doing something right. Just needed to do a little bit more, and ‘Finish’ kind of became the theme of that season.”
There it is again, “finish.” It’s what the Lions need to do. It’s what Rhodes had to do and it’s what the Colts had to do. It’s not about being in the right place at the right time, it’s about going back out there with an even deeper edge than you had before and finishing the story.
For the Lions, they’ve always been that salty kind of team that just sticks around and obsesses about the goal at hand. That’s why the team drafted the guys they drafted and signed the guys they signed. The right head space in there with all of them. That’s what it’s going to take.
Maybe next February we’ll see the Lions potentially have the same outcome as Manning and the Colts and Rhodes. Maybe the Lions will finish the story.
P.S. This is what happens when you watch Monday Night Raw while reading a Peyton Manning article in Indianapolis.