The 1963

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 thirtieth in Detroit and 34th overall. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle indefinitely suspended Lions defensive tackle

Alex Karras Alexander George Karras (July 15, 1935 – October 10, 2012) was an American football player, professional wrestler, sportscaster, and actor. He was a four-time Pro Bowl player with the Detroit Lions of the National Football League (NFL), ...

and Packers' halfback Paul Hornung for placing bets on NFL teams. Five other Lions players were fined $2,000 each for betting on games that they did not play in. The Lions franchise was fined $2,000 each on two counts for failure to report information promptly and for lack of sideline supervision. The gambling controversy proved to be a big distraction on the field as well, as the Lions could not build on the success of the previous season, finishing 5–8–1. On Thanksgiving Day in Detroit, the Lions met the Packers for the thirteenth consecutive season. The game ended in a tie, the first for the Packers in five years, and it was the end of the holiday series for Green Bay. Their visit to Tiger Stadium the following year was on a Monday night in late September, and the visiting opponent for Thanksgiving was rotated, starting with the

Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine NF ...

Offseason

NFL Draft

Preseason

Paper Lion

''Paper Lion'', published in 1966, is a non-fiction book by prominent

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

writer George Plimpton. Plimpton pitched to a lineup of baseball stars in an All-Star exhibition, presumably to answer the question, "How would the average man off of the street fare in an attempt to compete with the stars of professional sports?" He chronicled this experience in his book, ''Out of My League''. In ''Paper Lion'', Plimpton joins the training camp of the 1963 Detroit Lions on the premise of trying out to be the team's third-string quarterback. (The coaches were aware of the deception; the players were not until it became apparent that Plimpton did not really know how to receive the snap from center.) Plimpton, then thirty-six, showed how unlikely it would be for an "average" person to succeed as a professional athlete. When finally inserted at quarterback for a series in a scrimmage conducted in

Pontiac, Michigan Pontiac ( ') is a city in and the county seat of Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 61,606. A northern suburb of Metro Detroit, Pontiac is about northwest of Detroit. Founde ...

, Plimpton managed to lose yardage on each play, convincing many in the crowd that he was a professional sports

clown A clown is a person who performs comedy and arts in a state of open-mindedness using physical comedy, typically while wearing distinct makeup or costuming and reversing folkway-norms. History The most ancient clowns have been found in ...

inserted for amusement purposes, not someone who was genuinely giving his best effort.

Regular season

Schedule

* Saturday night (September 14), Thursday (November 28: Thanksgiving)

Game summaries

Week 1

Pro-Football-Reference.com
Retrieved 2015-May-22.

Week 3 vs Bears

Standings

Roster

Awards and honors

Notes and references

Detroit Lions on jt-sw.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:1963 Detroit Lions Season Detroit Detroit Lions seasons