The

Detroit Lions The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) North Division. The team play their home games at Ford ...

season was their 29th in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL). The defending NFL champions failed to improve on their previous season and finished at 4–7–1, fifth in the six-team Western Conference.

Hall of Fame A hall, wall, or walk of fame is a list of individuals, achievements, or other entities, usually chosen by a group of electors, to mark their excellence or Wiktionary:fame, fame in their field. In some cases, these halls of fame consist of actu ...

quarterback

Bobby Layne Robert Lawrence Layne (December 19, 1926 – December 1, 1986) was an American football quarterback who played for 15 seasons in the National Football League. He played for the Chicago Bears in 1948, the New York Bulldogs in 1949, the Detroit ...

, age 31, was traded after the second game to the

Pittsburgh Steelers The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. Founded in , the Steel ...

for

Earl Morrall Earl Edwin Morrall (May 17, 1934 – April 25, 2014) was an American football player who was a quarterback (and occasional punter) in the National Football League (NFL) for 21 seasons, both a starter and reserve. In the latter capacity, he beca ...

and two draft choices. This supposedly led to Layne "

cursing Profanity, also known as cursing, cussing, swearing, bad language, foul language, obscenities, expletives or vulgarism, is a socially offensive use of language. Accordingly, profanity is language use that is sometimes deemed impolite, ru ...

" the Lions, allegedly saying that Detroit "would not win for fifty years." The story is considered a hoax, as no contemporaneous account exists and Layne himself denied saying it. (Real or not, the "curse" bedeviled the Lions franchise for the next half-century, and beyond: as of 2021, 63 years after the trade, Detroit has not won another championship, and indeed has won only a single playoff contest in that time.) Meanwhile, after losing their first two games without Layne, the Steelers finished at 7–4–1, their best record in over a decade. The Lions won only one game in the first half of the season (1–4–1), then spilt the final six games; one of the poorest performances by a defending league champion in NFL history. The preseason began on a sour note in mid-August as they lost 35–19 to the 14-point underdog

College All-Stars The Chicago Charities College All-Star Game was a preseason American football game played from 1934 to 1976 between the National Football League (NFL) champions and a team of star college seniors from the previous year. It was also known as the C ...

Soldier Field Soldier Field is a multi-purpose stadium on the Near South Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Opened in 1924 and reconstructed in 2003, the stadium has served as the home of the Chicago Bears of the National Football League (NFL) since 1 ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, closing the margin with a late touchdown.

Schedule

* Thursday (November 27:

Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden and ...

)

Game summaries

Week 10

Pro-Football-Reference.com
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Standings

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:1958 Detroit Lions Season Detroit Lions seasons