The Detroit Lions have a special place in the heart of Jourdan Lewis, but that won’t keep him from doing all he can to shut down their high-flying passing attack on Saturday night.
The Cowboys cornerback is a Motown native who won back-to-back high school championships at Cass Technical and then starred for the Wolverines at Michigan. So of course, he dreamed about suiting up in Honolulu blue as the 2017 NFL draft approached. But the Lions had other plans, selecting Florida cornerback Teez Tabor in the second round and leaving Lewis for Dallas to grab in the third.
It still hurts, just a little bit.
“When you look at the team that drafted a corner when you were coming up, too, when you were in their backyard,” the seven-year veteran explained this week, “it kind of stings.”
Things have worked out for the 28-year-old as a Cowboy, but getting to face his childhood team always makes things interesting. Lewis says he’s arranged for tickets to this weekend’s game at AT&T Stadium for a rather large contingent of the Lewis family.
“All of them,” he joked. “In multiple sections.”
But surprisingly few of them will be pulling for his Dallas team to win.
“All of them are rooting for the Lions, pretty much. My mother-in law roots for me, my wife, and my mom. That’s probably about it. Everybody else is Detroit fans,” he said. “They were Detroit fans before I was born, so I can’t be mad.”
Having a personal career record of 3-0 against the Lions certainly helps Lewis maintain that attitude.
[affiliatewidget_smgtolocal]
But this week, he’ll have to contend with the strongest Detroit squad he’s faced yet. Quarterback Jared Goff leads an air attack that ranks fifth in the league in passing yards and boasts a top-5 receiver in Amon-Ra St. Brown. And fresh off securing their first divisional crown in three decades, the Lions would love nothing more than to prove themselves worthy of contender status by knocking off the Cowboys in Dallas in primetime.
“It’s good to see them doing well and one of the NFC challengers, but we’ve definitely got to get a win,” Lewis said. “It’d be sweet to beat those guys.”
It would be doubly sweet for Lewis. who had to overcome a very difficult Lisfranc foot injury just to make the active roster this season. (He suffered the injury making his first pick of 2022, in Week 7… against Detroit.) And although he hasn’t snagged an interception yet in 2023, he’s played in every game, to the tune of two-thirds of the defense’s snaps thus far, and he ranks top-10 in team tackles.
Jourdan Lewis has been pretty great since he's regained confidence in that foot –
Was balling before the injury last year that gave Bland his shine.
Glad to see it.
— KD Drummond (@KDDrummondNFL) December 24, 2023
And now that he’s set to become a free agent this offseason, every rep matters all the more.
Even if those reps require him to punish the hometown team that passed on him once upon a time, the team his family will still be cheering for Saturday night.
Maybe Lewis should have made his extended clan pay for their own game tickets?
“I’m not going to do them like that,” Lewis smiled. “Seeing them lose is good enough for me.”
[lawrence-auto-related count=3]
[mm-video type=video id=01hjs76ez7fzgbb54kv6 playlist_id=01eqbwens7sctqdrqg player_id=none image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01hjs76ez7fzgbb54kv6/01hjs76ez7fzgbb54kv6-54fb39aa7b0378e2762ecf695005a74f.jpg]
[lawrence-newsletter]