I was at the Lions’ last NFC title game in 1992. It did not end well

Detroit are one win away from their first ever Super Bowl appearance. There are signs it could go better than the last time they were here

My assignment on that unseasonably warm January afternoon was to write about the losing team, which is why I found myself in a windowless room in the bowels at RFK Stadium in Washington DC, watching a portly football coach clamber atop a platform for a news conference.

Writing about losing teams is never much fun, let alone about a team that had just been routed in their first (and, until this Sunday, only) appearance in an NFC championship game. But Wayne Fontes was that portly coach. He was fun, ebullient, always with something interesting to say.