Leelanau was well represented at the NFC Championship game Sunday between the Detroit Lions and San Francisco 49ers as multiple peninsula people made the trip out to San Francisco.
Even though the Lions lost 34-31 in heartbreaking fashion, the experience will always be unforgettable for Matt Soltysiak of Glen Lake, and Nic and Casey Cross of Suttons Bay.
Soltysiak, a Glen Lake High School Spanish teacher and podcast host of “Not The Same Old Lions” met one of his best friends from Seattle to take in the first Lions NFC Championship game since the 1991-92 season.
“Every element of the Lions offense was working,” Soltysiak said in his most recent podcast episode that was released on Monday. “There were so many fans out there … Saturday night you would have thought you were at an establishment in Michigan.”
The Lions went up 17 points in the first half (24-7) with all of the momentum in the world. It was a tale of two halves, as the Lions gave up 27 unanswered points to completely flip the game in stunning fashion.
“The San Francisco crowd was out of it,” Soltysiak said.
The middle of the third quarter is when the environment changed when all things turned against Detroit.
The Lions couldn’t recover and the 49ers will now be playing in Super Bowl 58 against the Kansas City Chiefs.
Although it wasn’t the Cinderella ending most Lions fans were dreaming of, Soltysiak is happy to experience it all.
“There’s optimism in Detroit that we haven’t felt since the early 1990s … I believe the optimism today outweighs the optimism back then,” he said. “You wish the opportunity could have seized itself … This is probably the best Detroit Lions season that I have seen in my lifetime. It has been so exciting and so much fun season and I’m sad to see it end.”
Suttons Bay brothers, Nic and Casey Cross, made the trip out west to watch their Lions compete for a chance to go to the Super Bowl.
Nic, 30, drove 17 hours from Bozeman, Montana to the game where he met Casey, 27, who was coming from Leelanau.
“We were on top of the world. We thought we were going to the Super Bowl,” Nic said. “The first morning I was upset and thought about it … I can’t get mad at (coach Dan) Campbell. That’s how we won all year and we just didn’t make the plays when we needed to. It was an awesome experience going to that game.”
