The offseason passed its midway point last month, signaling it’s time to turn the page from last year. Talk to defensive tackle Alim McNeill, and it becomes apparent rather quickly he’d prefer to do just that.
In fact, he insists he’s not even “thinking” about what went down at the end of 2025. But he’s often reminded of it, like he was Friday, May 29, as the Lions wrapped up their first week of organized team activities.
“It kind of humbled us in a way,” McNeill said.
A team that had Super Bowl aspirations crumbled down the stretch, losing five of its final eight and failing to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2022. It was a stunning turn of events for a franchise that had enjoyed a thrilling ascent over the previous 2½ seasons. Just like that, the reigning Kings of the (NFC) North were sent back down to the division’s dungeon.
“In this league,” quarterback Jared Goff said, “you get what you deserve to some extent, whether that is good or bad.”
Still, it was a bitter pill to swallow for an organization that believed it freed itself from the shackles of mediocrity that had gripped this franchise for decades. Lions coach Dan Campbell gave himself a “freaking F” in the aftermath. General manager Brad Holmes also flunked himself, when asked to assess his performance. Both men were determined to avoid the same miserable fate again. Holmes said the disappointing outcome of the season created more “urgency” and forced leadership to take “that long, hard look in the mirror.”
“What can we do to do things better?” Holmes asked rhetorically.
Campbell had an idea. On the day after the regular season finale in early January, he told reporters he wanted to bring in new players to create more internal competition. The goal, he said, was to restore the edge that had become the Lions’ hallmark during their rise under him. By the time their postseason hopes were dashed in a listless Christmas Day defeat to the Minnesota Vikings, they seemed to have lost it entirely.
Campbell yearned for the motivational fire that once roared within the Lions to reignite.
Almost five months later, Lions quarterback Jared Goff said it is already raging.
“I think we are hungry,” Goff said. “We were a fourth-place team last year and we need to come out and play a lot better this year.”
As McNeill explained, “There is no sugar-coating it. There is no hiding behind that.”
The Lions, instead, are keeping it real by taking a sober-sided approach this offseason. Campbell, especially, has been all business. That was hammered home when an in-house video unveiling the 2026 schedule was posted to the team’s social media account in mid-May.
Campbell was recorded grabbing a printed copy of the Lions’ 17-game slate. He then walked out of the office and tacked it to the board. That was it. The bare-bones 33-second clip sent a message. It was heard loud and clear again when Campbell was asked Friday about oft-injured sixth-year defensive lineman Levi Onwuzurike. The initial response he gave – “He’s working, he feels good” – was intentionally brief.
“I’m not hyping anybody up, not in May,” he explained. “It’s not worth it.”
Campbell also has no desire to indulge in that kind of rhetoric right now. It’s OTAs, after all. “A pajama party,” he called it.
Besides, Campbell said, the goal is “just getting back to a little bit of the no nonsense.”
“It’s about football first and foremost,” he added a bit later.
With Campbell, it always is. He lives and breathes it. Many of the Lions’ most established stars do, too. But Campbell wanted to add a few more go-getters to the fold who could help spur team-wide growth. In recent months, the roster has been stocked with seven rookie draft picks and 16 veteran free agents. By design, many of these newcomers will battle with the Lions’ holdovers for spots on the 53-man roll and even jockey to become starters.
“This will be the most competition we’ve had, in my opinion. I think top-tier competition,” Campbell asserted. “This is going to be good across the board.”
It’s also what he knew the Lions needed if they were to recapture their identity as a team starving for success.
“Let’s get that hunger back,” he said on the first day of the offseason.
With summer approaching, that five-word clarion call from Campbell still reverberates.
As receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown said Friday, “Going into this year, we’re doing everything we can to kind of get back to where we are and what we were. I think everyone is just excited and motivated.”
Campbell made sure they were. The players may have wanted to put last season behind them, but their coach wasn’t going to let them forget it. It was fuel for the fire that the organization was eager to restart. And in late May, it seems to be burning hot again.
Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him @RainerSabin on X.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Last season’s bitter end has Detroit Lions ‘hungry’ again
Reporting by Rainer Sabin, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
