The Detroit Lions are now one win from reaching the Super Bowl, which would be their first-ever appearance in the Big Game, after knocking out Tampa Bay, 31-23 .
Yes, the Lions are the only NFC team to never have reached the Super Bowl . Three other NFL teams have never played in the Super Bowl, all in the AFC: Cleveland Browns , Jacksonville Jaguars , and Houston Texans .
Both the Jaguars and Texans are expansion teams: The Jaguars joined the league in 1995, and the Texans joined in 2002. The Browns meanwhile did not exist for three years, from 1996-98, after the team moved to Baltimore to become the Ravens.
The Lions will have to upset the No. 1 seed San Francisco 49ers (13-5), which rallied to nip Green Bay 24-21 on Saturday night .
The Lions last played for an NFL title in 1957 , demolishing the Browns, 59-14 for the championship for the third time in the 1950s. The Lions also beat the Browns for the NFL title in 1952 and '53 , and took home the championship in 1935.
The Lions famously had only one playoff win since that 1957 title, that was until last week's 24-23 thriller over the Los Angeles Rams .
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Some say the team is cursed by Bobby Layne, who put a hex on the Lions in 1958 after he was traded to Pittsburgh . But that curse, when Layne purportedly said the team would not win a championship for another 50 years, was supposed to end in 2008. Instead, the Lions went 0-16 that season.
They have only made the NFC championship game one other time, in the 1991 season, where they were promptly discarded by Washington, the eventual champions, 41-10 .
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Have the Detroit Lions ever played in a Super Bowl?
