Detroit waves ... goodbye*

 (*A riff off the title of a Matt Nathanson song, "Detroit Waves")

So I guess the old saw still cuts true, even centuries on. A million people have said it a million times down the years, and yet the truth of it remains un-blunted.

How does it go again?

There are no guarantees.

Well, hell, no, there aren't.  Not in life, and certainly not in something as random as football.

Which brings us to Washington 45, Detroit 31, and, damn, it hurts to say that if you grew up in the Motor City waiting an eternity for the Lions not to be the Lions anymore. Has it only been a year since the  Honolulu Blue was thisclose to the Super Bowl, leading 24-7 at halftime of the NFC championship game before being overtaken by the 49ers? Has it only been a couple of weeks since they blew through this season 15-2 and secured the top seed in this year's NFC playoffs?

Everyone in town was saying this was the year, finally. Everyone was saying this time the Lions would get to the NFC title game -- come on, they're at home, everyone's got to come to them, no way they're not getting back. Everyone was wearing their Barry Sanders throwbacks and their Herman Moore throwbacks and, what the hell, maybe even their Eric Hipple throwbacks, and looking into flights to New Orleans for the Super Bowl.

And then ...

And then, Washington 45, Detroit 31.

And then, Jayden Daniels, the Commanders' mega-chill rookie, stepping into the Ford Field cauldron and throwing for 299 yards and two touchdowns with zero picks and zero sacks, and legging it 16 times for 51 more yards to boot.

Strapped 31 points on the Lions in the first half, Daniels and Terry McLaurin and Dyami Brown and the rest of the Commanders did. Sent the heavy favorites to the locker room down 10 and presumably in shock. Never looked back.

There are no guarantees.

No, there aren't. Who figures Jared Goff, the imperturbable veteran, would be the one to come apart at the seams -- throwing three picks (including a ruinous pick-six) and losing a fumble besides? Who figures the battered but gritty Lions down seven would fail to lay a finger on the rookie QB? 

Goff hadn't played this poorly since November 10, when the Texans intercepted him five times and somehow the Lions still won. He'd been picked just three times in the eight games since, including zero times in six of those games. In the same stretch, he'd thrown 21 touchdown passes, including one five-TD day and one four-TD day.

Saturday night, however ...

Four of the Lions five turnovers. That pick-six. And on the other side of the ball, an admittedly depleted defense that surrendered 481 yards, 6.6 yards per play and allowed the Commanders to go 4-for-4 in the red zone.

There are no guarantees.

Except, perhaps, for this: When you offload a book-cooking, sleazoid jackass of an owner  (Paging Daniel Snyder ... paging Daniel Snyder) and take a Jayden Daniels in the draft, good things will happen.

Like making it to the NFC championship 20 years after last winning a playoff game. Like matching, in two weeks, the number of playoff games Washington won during the entirety of Snyder's quarter-century reign of error. Like winning 12 games so far this season after finishing 56 games under .500 on Snyder's watch.

So there's that, I guess. Small comfort, though, to all those pumped Michiganders who were expecting so much from a team that, until Dan Campbell showed up, had given them so little.

There are no guarantees.

You'd think Detroit, of all places, should have known that. But that would discount something else a million people have said a million times down the years:

Hope springs eternal.