Nate Burleson is one of the only top NFL analysts who spent time with the Detroit Lions.
Playing out the tail end of his career as a wideout for the long-overlooked franchise, Burleson saw firsthand the chip on its shoulder that the team and its fanbase carry season to season. It’s a mentality best exemplified by Calvin Johnson’s memorable so-called “drop,” which rewrote the rules of catches in the modern NFL.
Burleson noticed a sense of inferiority and a pessimistic temperament as soon as he arrived in the Motor City, and it came rushing back to him this week as the Lions once again lost on a bizarre late-game officiating call.
“I went to Detroit, and I remember when I got there, guys were scorned,” Burleson said Monday on The Dan Patrick Show. “They were like, ‘The league doesn’t like us … playing here is rough.’ Not just because we’re trying to exorcise demons, but when a game is on the line, it tends to go the other way.”
A veteran at the time, Burleson tried to maintain a positive mentality and encourage his teammates to keep pushing for a breakthrough.
“They were like, ‘No, Nate, I don’t think you understand,” Burleson said. “When it comes to the Lions, there are certain games that just don’t go our way, even though everybody knows they should.’”
Detroit, infamously, has never made a Super Bowl. When they made the NFC title game in 2023, it was their second appearance ever. The franchise is perhaps best known for its two greatest players retiring early and its 0-16 season in 2008, rather than for its successes.
All that bad energy seemed to flow through Soldier Field during Burleson’s first Lions season in 2010, when Johnson infamously had a game-winning touchdown catch called off by referees. An incredibly meticulous reading of the catch rules punished Johnson for rolling the ball onto the ground after reeling in the TD. The call made national sports news, and we may never have truly settled on the definition of a catch since.
Asked by Patrick whether he genuinely felt Detroit was a target of the NFL, Burleson demurred, but acknowledged that the Johnson saga changed his mind.
“Players that played for the Lions said (the NFL had something against the Lions) to me,” Burleson said. “When they took that catch away from Calvin, a lot of Lions fans and Bears fans and people who just liked big plays from Calvin Johnson, they remember this play. He caught that damn ball.”
This week, facing the Pittsburgh Steelers at home, Detroit had another game-winner called off on a controversial penalty. In the official announcement of the play, the referee stated that the Lions did, in fact, score a touchdown before explaining why it did not count.
Across Detroit and potentially in that Lions locker room, it was just another Sunday.
