American football
Touchdown and celebration: St. Brown and Lions continue to dream
He wears number 14 and he is in top form: Amon-Ra St. Brown from the Detroit Lions. photo
© Jose Juarez/AP/dpa
Four teams are still there, one win short of a place in the Super Bowl. The NFL season is coming to a climax. The Detroit Lions also have hopes of winning the title – thanks to a strong German.
Last hurdle: the San Francisco 49ers. “This is a great team and it will be a great duel,” said quarterback Jared Goff after the 600th win in the history of the Detroit Lions, playoffs and main round combined. The Los Angeles Rams no longer needed him three years ago, but now the fans in Detroit were chanting his name before the game started. “They’re simply the best, look around. They’ll be here for a while, that was our last game at home this season,” he said in the TV interview immediately after the team’s greatest success in more than 30 years.
Kelce causes Swift to cheer in the stands
If the Lions win against the 49ers in the National Football Conference finals, they will face either the Baltimore Ravens or the defending champions, the Kansas City Chiefs, in Las Vegas on February 11th. They beat the Buffalo Bills 27:24 in a game that was just as exciting as the one in Detroit and are in the final of the American Football Conference for the sixth time in the six years in which quarterback Patrick Mahomes has been a regular player. Travis Kelce scored two touchdowns, causing his girlfriend Taylor Swift to cheer in the stands.
The Chiefs now have plenty of experience with playoffs at this point in the season, while the Lions have virtually none. The last time – and the only time so far – the team was in a conference final in 1992, which they lost to the Washington Redskins. They brought the four championships in their history to Detroit in the period before the Super Bowl era, the last one coming in 1957.
Goff, however, has already been to a Super Bowl with the Rams and is now the undisputed leader in Detroit. An unusual number of his throws towards St. Brown initially failed to reach their target. With eight passes caught, 77 yards and a touchdown, the 24-year-old son of a Leverkusen mother and a former US bodybuilder was once again a crucial factor for his team. A bad pass from Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield with 93 seconds left sealed the Lions’ victory.