Lions

Bobby Layne was traded away in 1958, and Detroit fans still tell it as a curse: Doak Walker and Joe Schmidt built the same era from the other side of the ball, but Layne's exit is the hinge the whole story turns on — everything before it is titles, most of what came after is waiting.

The Lions started out as the Portsmouth Spartans in Ohio, joined the NFL in 1930, and only became Detroit's team in 1934, when radio executive George Richards bought the franchise for $8,000 and named it after the Tigers next door. The championships that mattered came fast after that: 1935, then a run in the 1950s under Buddy Parker that closed with a 59–14 demolition of the Cleveland Browns in 1957. No Lions team has won one since.

That gap is why the club is remembered as the only franchise to have played every Super Bowl era season without reaching one, and why 2008 sits where it does in the history — sixteen games, sixteen losses, the first winless season in the modern NFL. Dan Campbell inherited that record when he took over as head coach, and the division titles he delivered in 2023 and 2024 were the first of any kind for the club since 1993.

Detroit's oldest rivalry runs through Chicago, a series played every season since 1930 without a gap, while the twice-a-year meetings with Green Bay have gone uninterrupted even longer. Thanksgiving football has belonged to the Lions for just as long, a fixture few other teams can claim. Twenty-three men connected to the franchise are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Dwight Freeney the latest inducted, in 2024.