DETROIT — Erik Kramer is back in Detroit this weekend, in part to root for his old team, the Detroit Lions, to defeat the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday.
It would allow current starter Jared Goff to join what is, in its own odd and depressing way, a very exclusive club: a living human who quarterbacked the Lions to a playoff victory.
Right now there is just one member, Kramer, who on Jan. 5, 1992, completed 29 of 38 passes for 341 yards and three touchdowns to lead Detroit to a 38-6 victory over Dallas.
It stands as the franchise’s only postseason triumph for 34 years prior and 32 years since, an unfathomable level of futility. (Tobin Rote, the starter on the 1957 NFL championship team, passed away in 2000.)
“As sad as it sounds, it’s true,” Kramer, 59, said with a laugh. “So I want Jared to enter the club. ‘Welcome. I’m buying.’”
The trip from Kramer’s native Southern California is about more than that, however.
For Kramer, it is a celebration of life, of resilience, of second chances, of reputations reestablished and, perhaps most of all, of bright new days that neither he, nor at times almost anyone else, dreamed possible.
It was Aug. 18, 2015, when Kramer, deeply depressed following the untimely death of his older son, Griffen, checked into a Calabasas, California, motel room. He texted a few friends to let him know where he was, then took out a pistol, pressed it under his jaw and pulled the trigger.
“I tried to execute myself,” Kramer said.
The bullet caused a severe bi-frontal lobe injury but didn’t kill him. Although he doesn’t recall the aftermath, he was conscious when sheriff deputies, alerted by one of those friends Kramer texted, banged on the door. Police reports say he walked over and opened it for them and later walked under his own power to an ambulance.
He was beyond lucky.
“The worst decision of my life,” he says of the suicide attempt. “I doubt there are many people who tried it and got to live to tell about it.
What followed was a medically induced coma and then extensive neurological and psychological rehab. There were lengthy hospital and therapy stays, struggles to relearn basic motor skills and general awareness. There was also extensive therapy for the mental health struggles that led to the attempt in the first place.
Erik Kramer (12) is the only living person to quarterback the Detroit Lions to a playoff victory, which came way back in 1992. (Tom G. Lynn//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
To the outsider, Kramer may have appeared to be an unlikely candidate for depression. He’d risen from junior college to North Carolina State to a 10-year NFL career, mostly with Detroit and Chicago.
He was nicknamed “Brass” for his courageous play.