Detroit Lions of the 1950's

[biggunsbob]

When the team played in three Championships in a row in 1952,53,54 and won the first two. Plus winning another in 1957... Not a bad decade to be a Lions fan..

1952 Detroit 17 Cleveland 7.
1953 Detroit 17 Cleveland 16.
1954 Cleveland 56 Detroit 10.
1957 Detroit 59 Cleveland 14.

Plus in 1951 the Lions finished second to the Rams 8-4 by a half a game in their division with a 7-4-1 record. (Ram's beat 11-1 Cleveland for the title).

In 1956 the Lions 9-3 finished in second again by a half a game to the Bears 9-2-1 losing to the bears at Wrigley field in the last game of the season by a score of 38-21. In this game the Bears Ed Meadows knocked out Bobby Layne in the first quarter as Layne was running out the fake of a sweep. Without Bobby the Lions had no chance.. (To bad because the Lions had beaten the bears 2 weeks earlier in Detroit 42-10. Fittingly the bears were crushed by the giants in the title game that year

The Detroit Lions from 1951 to 1957 played in four title games and won three of them. Only one losing season in the stretch was 1955. In 1951 and 1956 a win in the last game of the season would have put the Lions in the title game in each of those seasons.

Just follow the links bellow and you can get highlights of the 1952 and 1953 game. Plus the 1957 game..

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=1952+NFL+Championship&aq=f

 

[turok]

1957 obviously was a looong time ago, I was barely a few months old when the Lions last won an NFL championship. I remember when the biggest complaint about the team was their being so consistently mediocre or playoff pretenders, but NOTHING could have prepared me, ca. 80s-90s, for the debacle that was about to take place for nearly the entire first decade of the 21st century....

 

[biggunsbob]

Yeah T. I was born in 1961 but as i was watching the Lion's of the early 1970's lose game after game to the Vikings even in good years my father always said that Bobby Layne was the best player he had ever seen. Then Ford took over the team around 1963 after he took a franchise coming off the great run they had in the 1950's and turned a winning franchise into a franchise that is now THREE games short of being 100 games under .500...(496-593-32) .456...... I really do blame ford for this mess..