Eric Hipple was bracing for a butt-chewing.
The Detroit Lions lost their fourth straight game early in the 1983 season to fall to 1-4, and when Hipple and his Lions teammates showed up for work the next morning they figured head coach Monte Clark would be in a foul mood.
But when Clark walked into the team meeting that morning, the stoic coach had a surprise for his team.
Clark pulled out a few thousand dollars in $100 bills and told his players they needed to get their mind off football.
They were better than their record, he said, and with a big game coming up the next Sunday against the Green Bay Packers, he wanted everyone relaxed and ready to play.
Clark gave the money to his team captains with instructions to “get the hell away from here, go do whatever you’re going to do with this money as a team, and you come back here Wednesday ready to play with a different attitude.”
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No one recalls exactly how much money Clark handed out that day, but players estimate it was $3,000 to $5,000.
“I think it was very pivotal,” Hipple recalled in a phone interview with the Free Press this week. “Because all of a sudden instead of being chewed out again, a little bit of that was contrary to Monte, but here’s a guy all of a sudden that believes in you, he says, ‘Hey, we’re better than this, go out,’ and instead of ripping you up a new one, ‘Go out and come back and be the person that you really are.’ Not this, ‘What are you doing?’ So it’s kind of a belief. Not quite like Dan Campbell, but to the point where, ‘You guys, I believe in you.’ And I think that was a pivotal, pivotal moment.”
With their coach’s money covering (some of) their expenses, a large group of Lions players spent the night at a local drinking establishment, no different, offensive lineman Keith Dorney said, than the way “corporate executives … go for the 5 o’clock martini.”
Players bonded and blew off steam, and when they took the field a few days later, they started a run that made them the most unlikely playoff team in Lions history — a mantle they may cede to this year’s team in the coming weeks.
The 1983 Lions won two straight, and four of their next five games, after their Clark-funded club hop and closed the season with four more wins in their final five games after a loss to the Houston Oilers to finish 9-7 and win the NFC Central.
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They were the first team to make the NFL playoffs after a 1-4 start in the league’s 10-team playoff format, which began in 1978. Just 11 teams have accomplished that feat in the 39 years since.
This year’s Lions (7-7) have won six of their past seven games and need two or three wins in the final three weeks to become the second team in league history (along with the 1970 Cincinnati Bengals) to make the postseason after starting 1-6.
They visit the Carolina Panthers (5-9) this week, and close the season with games against the Chicago Bears (3-11) at Ford Field and at the Packers (6-8). If they win out, they have a 97% chance to make the playoffs, according to FiveThirtyEight.com.
“We knew we were a better team than what our record was and I think we, even Monte, even the coaches were all kind of uptight, too,” said Larry Lee, an offensive lineman on the 1983 team. “And that’s when they kind of changed their attitude, too. They went from trying to browbeat us or be on top like that, to loosening up, too. … We all just started loosening up and having fun, and then we had a little success. And it wasn’t like we just became world-beaters like these guys and won six straight or something, but we did win probably four out of six if I remember. I think these guys are doing a better job than we did, but we did dig ourselves out of a hole and start having fun.”
Lee and others from the 1983 Lions see parallels between that team and the one that’s become the feel-good story of this NFL season.
The 1983 Lions featured a strong defensive line and a young nucleus of recent defensive draft picks that helped spur their turnaround. Veteran William Gay had 13½ sacks that season and Doug English added 13, but Bruce McNorton, a fourth-round pick in 1982, had a team-high seven interceptions and Bobby Watkins and William Graham, two more 1982 draft picks, had three fumble recoveries each.
After some early-season struggles offensively — the 1983 Lions averaged 15.6 points in their first five games — the Lions erupted for games of 31, 38, 38 and 45 points in their wins.
And most significantly, the 1983 Lions gained a waxing belief in themselves week by week and win by win, something players from that team see this team doing now.
“Forever, it seems like we got stuck in that (rut of) not believing you can win so you’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it seems like it’s been like that for a long time,” Hipple said. “I think watching ‘Hard Knocks’ helped a lot, I think, from an outside point of view watching what was going on with the coach. And I think he turned a lot of heads and a lot of belief by the fans by watching him.
“So of course when we started off not winning (this year), then of course there’s that piece, ‘All right, here we go, we got sold a bill of goods again.’ But I think his sincerity and people’s sincerity as far as this could be different, that’s the feeling we had, and then watching it actually stick and over time actually have it come true now, and actually that cultural change to where now you believe in them, you believe they can win, they believe they can win, and I think that more than anything is what I walked away with from not only being a player and seeing that happen and going, ‘Yes, it can happen,’ to even going back to like the ’83 season, but from an outside point of view of being a fan as well. Now just knowing it can happen, but having the right person to give the culture change, and I think that’s what Dan Campbell has done.”
Players from the 1983 team said they feel a kinship with this year’s Lions, and have enjoyed watching the team more than most others since the end of their playing days.
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Rob Rubick, a tight end on the 1983 Lions, said he stopped living and dying with each Lions game a few years ago, but has been sucked back in by this team’s blue-collar approach.
“It’s like ‘The Godfather 3,’ ” Rubick said. “Right when you think you’re out, they suck you back in. But I do enjoy them, I’m not going to lie.”
Dorney, who lives in northern California, said friends who normally don’t care about the Lions have stopped him to talk about the team in recent weeks.
“They see me on the street, ‘Hey, Keith, how about them Lions?’” Dorney said. “People I think felt so bad for the Lions for especially these last few years and it’s like people always love that underdog.”
If the underdog keeps winning, there could be one more parallel between this year’s Lions and the 1983 team. Thirty-nine years ago, the Lions beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 23-20, in their final regular season game to win the division. Two weeks later, they played the San Francisco 49ers in their first playoff game.
Hipple got hurt in the regular season finale, Gary Danielson started in his place and threw five interceptions against the 49ers, and Eddie Murray missed two field goals, including the game-winning 43-yarder as Clark prayed on the sideline while time expired.
This year’s Lions, if they reach postseason, will play a road game against either the Minnesota Vikings or 49ers in the wild card round.
“I just hope when it comes down to it in a playoff game that (Jared) Goff doesn’t get hurt, and then they go on and win the playoffs like I would have done if I wouldn’t have got hurt,” Hipple said. “It would be really nice to see them go to Frisco and see them win. That’d be awesome, really cool. You want to erase some ghosts, that would completely do it.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.