DETROIT — Just one Saturday night changed everything for the Washington Commanders. Inside a downtown Detroit stadium that was emptying out but still filled with sadness, a formerly broken football franchise shed its past and ended the punch lines once and for all.

The old reputation doesn’t fit anymore. Leave the tears and disgust for Detroit, a city that bonds over automobiles, gyros and football melancholy. Fans in Washington have a new identity. Their team, following a decades-long bad patch, is now a feel-good story, the most dangerous giant slayer of the NFL playoffs. After the Commanders shocked the top-seeded Detroit Lions on Saturday night, 45-31, the NFC city crying “woe is me” is, at last, not Washington.

“It’s a great feeling, honestly,” running back Brian Robinson Jr. said. “After everything we went through, all the ups and downs, we’re blessed to be here.”

All the ups and downs? Robinson, after just three seasons with the franchise, can speak through only a limited prism, and somehow he still sounds convincing in the role of tormented Washingtonian. He didn’t even grow up here and survive the Heath Shuler years. In fact, hardly anyone inside the visiting locker room at Ford Field, where the music was blasting and captain Jeremy Reaves kept shouting, “Are you not entertained?!” has known the generational trauma that comes with being a Washington football fan. Be thankful for that.

Because instead of carrying the region’s burdens and playing as if they were haunted by the ghost of 1991, the Commanders played loose and, better yet, played like themselves. They went for it on fourth down and succeeded with trickery. They performed with a confidence and freedom that eluded Detroit. How can any team play loose when its fan base lives on the edge of emotional distress? Long-suffering Lions fans have never watched their team advance to the Super Bowl; Detroit is the last NFC team to hold that distinction. And with more than seven minutes to play and the Commanders in control, hundreds of them didn’t want to stick around to watch yet another heartbreak.

“These fans were locked in, and they knew the explosive power that [the Lions’] offense has, so they were really in it the whole time,” guard Nick Allegretti said. “They made a big play, and it was loud as hell. We go up 17, and you see a couple of fans leave. That’s my favorite part about road playoff games. Home playoff games are a blast: You get a chance to play in front of your fans, and we hope to do that next year. But when you play on the road in a tough environment and you hear that loud crowd quiet down, it’s draining for that home team.”

That unsettled quiet Saturday night invigorated the road warriors from Washington and their VIP fans. Confidence looked good on Commanders superfan and NBA superstar Kevin Durant.

Never a doubt, KD?

“Oh, never!” Durant responded.

Jeffrey Wright, D.C. native and childhood friend of the team’s majority owner, Josh Harris, draped himself in that same swagger.

Jeffrey, never a doubt?

“Never a doubt!” Wright boasted. “We stop the run. Run the ball. Control the ball. Win.”

An Academy Award nominee doing his best Joe Gibbs impersonation while celebrating a Commanders win in the divisional round?

These are some strange, new days in Washington.

For far too long, the status quo here was the shared hatred of former team owner Daniel Snyder. Misery feels better with friends, so ticket buyers would attend home games wearing those funny T-shirts that mocked the franchise — if they showed up at all. Then, at the first sign of trouble, the anger and frustration would boil over and resonate as boos or “sell the team” chants, an oldie but a goody at the former FedEx Field.

It was a dysfunctional kind of camaraderie, a football community that bonded over disdain for one individual more than affection for the actual team. The past two seasons under Harris and the new ownership group helped shift Washington back to normalcy, but as innovative as they have been, no new slogan or marketing campaign could accomplish what happened in Detroit. In one night, all the bad years washed away completely.

As an alum of the Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs, Allegretti never played under the pressure of a fan base’s angst. When he arrived last offseason in Washington as a free agent, though he noticed the pangs of the past, Allegretti said none of it existed inside the Commanders’ building. Fans might have cautiously embraced the new hope, but players fully trusted in one another.

“Obviously with the history of this franchise, there were some nerves from the fans, and I get that,” Allegretti said. “But I just think the way [coach Dan Quinn and general manager Adam Peters] instilled confidence in us, the first team meeting in there, we’re talking about how do we separate ourselves and become a top-12 team to get into the playoffs. Like immediately, we’re taking a four-win team, and they’re talking about how do we separate ourselves to become an elite team. And it’s like, ‘All right, that’s the plan.’ We’re not rebuilding here; we’re trying to win now. So when you have the guys at the top pushing that, you start to believe as players.”

He went on: “Believing is probably the number one thing I have seen throughout my career. Kansas City, they believe. Here, we believe.”

One of the last four teams in the NFL postseason plays in Washington. And when Commanders fans head into the new week, they also will need to make plans for the conference championship game. If any of that still seems too silly to say out loud, then try whispering it at first. It’s OK. All this prosperity might take some getting used to now that the militarized “W” on those helmets no longer stand for “Wretched.” And the truest fans no longer need to accessorize their burgundy and gold with angst. For the first time in a generation, being a football fan in Washington no longer requires being miserable. What a wonderful, new world.