Of course Dan Campbell feels pressure to get the Detroit Lions back to the playoffs. Why wouldn’t he?
But there is pressure, and there is pressure, and Campbell’s probably closer to feeling the former. The latter is what he no doubt felt after his team started 1-5 in his second season.
He didn’t know he could coach in the NFL yet. He may have believed it – felt it, even – but he didn’t have the proof, after finishing 3-13-1 his first season and losing five of six to start the second season.
Yeah, that’s pressure.
That kind of pressure needs reassurance, which is why owner Sheila Hamp met with reporters to say she believed in Campbell despite the 1-5 start. She was onto something, even as Campbell and his team lost their next game.
That was a 4-19-1 start to the Campbell era, and it’s not hard to remember the talk around the team back then, in the fall of 2022. Campbell sure remembers. He was fighting for his professional life.
As he enters his sixth training camp this week, he’s no longer fighting to prove he belongs. He’s fighting to get his team back to the trajectory it was on after that miserable start.
Surely you remember that, too, the way the Lions responded after starting 1-6. How they ripped off six wins in their next seven games. How they missed the playoffs by a game. How they beat the Packers in Green Bay in a prime-time finale to keep the dreadful green and yellow outfit out of the playoffs.
It was clear Campbell was building something, and by the time he hoarsely spoke with NBC’s on-field reporter after that feel-good win in Green Bay to finish the year 9-8, he was becoming something of a phenomenon.
The Lions were suddenly in vogue. It began with Campbell’s persona. That was always unfair, of course, as it negated his football mind. Though he didn’t mind. Which was the point, I suppose, to his way of running and thinking about a team: Never make it about you.
During those first few years, especially as the Lions started winning, Campbell couldn’t help it. His self-effacing and self-deprecating nature turned his media sessions into improv sessions. He took the game and the team seriously, but not himself – at least not publicly.
A change of attitude for Dan Campbell?
It was eternally endearing, his penchant to poke at himself, his inability to punt on a question, his willingness to say what he was thinking. Oh, he knew what he was saying, and there were obviously moments when he had to stay mum.
But if he could help it, he was going to empty that whirring brain of his, and he did. Of all the questions facing Campbell and his Lions as they embark on their sixth season together – training camp starts this week – none are as fascinating as this:
What kind of face will Campbell present?
Yes, yes, the secondary is an issue. The starting safeties are injured. The first-round cornerback is gone. How will the Lions defend the pass? A good question. Maybe the question, at least in some seasons.
But not this one. Not with A) the offensive line in flux (Campbell’s rebuild started here, and his rebuild of the rebuild ends here) and not with B) Campbell telling reporters after the season and then doubling down during minicamp that it’s time to get back to the basics.
His basics. Nothing else matters if Campbell can’t get his own formula right.
Here is what he said in late May about the changes he wants to make after the Lions missed the playoffs last season: “Man, just getting back to a little bit of the no nonsense.”
And there it is. Pressure. Not pressure.
Campbell knows he can coach. He knows what works. He may not have gotten this franchise to a Super Bowl, but he got it close – closer than anyone ever has.
Now he has to get his team back to where it was a couple years ago, hope he gets some injury luck, and figure out how to close that final distance. He knows it will be trickier this time, and that explains – in part – why he seemed more business-like when he met with reporters during May’s minicamp.
“It’s a lot easier when nobody knows who you are,” he said. “You kind of fly right under the radar, but then the better you do, the more you do, the more hype, the more you’re doing this, you’re doing this, this player gets paid, this coach, this whatever, this coach moves on now and it’s all this other stuff that has nothing to do with what got us to that point.”
Lesson learned, he insists.
“Let’s just get back to the business of … football first and foremost,” he said, “… about the guy next to you. That’s it.”
Campbell believes he has the right guys. He said this earlier this summer. He believes he has the right formula. He proved this when he raised this team up for the first time.
Now he has to prove to himself that he can do it once more. That won’t be as hard as it was the first time. It also won’t be easy.
There is pressure. And there is pressure.
Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dan Campbell sounds different. That’s no accident
Reporting by Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Shawn Windsor, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
