The Detroit Lions aren’t traditionally a team that sees many primetime games. After the franchise’s game against the Packers was slotted for Sunday Night Football, players took the opportunity to get creative with their introductions, which subsequently went viral on Twitter. Mike Tirico shared the story behind the introductions Monday.
“So most teams do those in August, and guys come in, it’s early in the year, and guys play it — mostly — straight up,” Tirico told 97.1 The Ticket’s Doug Karsch and Gator Anderson. “But because the Lions were not ticketed for a Sunday Night or Thursday Night game, the Lions were the rare team where you shot the lineup intros the week of the game. That rarely happens for us. So the guys all had to do them after practice on Thursday, I think it was. So when you watch the season full of introductions, you get very creative. And when you are a team in a good mood, you get very creative.”
Lions running back Jamaal Williams called himself “Swaggg Kazekage, leader of the hidden village in the den,” a reference to Japanese anime show Naruto. Meanwhile, linebacker Malcolm Rodriguez said he attended “Barry Sanders University”. The introductions were well received by fans, and Tirico added players were transparent with one another about what they would introduce themselves as, which only led to more and more outlandish submissions.
The Sunday Night Football voice also added that the game wasn’t high on his radar as one of the season’s best, but it certainly delivered.
“It was a funny part of what was a wildly, unexpectedly terrific night of football. One of the things you do when you get the schedule is look to see what is going to be game 272, the last game of the year. And if you looked at the 16 of them in September, that may have been 12th on the list. It turned out to be just fabulous.”
