Dan Campbell Makes Request to Lions Fans After Locker Room Disappoints HC

For Dan Campbell, this is déjà vu. When the Detroit Lions began their 2022 season, Week 1 greeted them with a loss, intensifying the heartbreak after the team’s 3-13-1 run the previous season. Unfortunately, things only plummeted from there. In the Lions’ first six games, they went 1-6, eliminating any hopes of things getting better. But Campbell held on in the face of public scrutiny and an even greater pressure to fire offensive coordinator Ben Johnson. The head coach remembered one word: Belief. The result?

In the next 10 games, the Lions won 8 times (complete with two 3-game winning streaks). They also ranked fourth in total yards per game (380.0) at one point in the season, and fourth on third-down conversions (42.98%). Why are we telling you all this? Well, this season, Campbell will need to remember that world once again. He’s even urging us to do the same with respect to new OC John Morton. On September 7, after a Week 1 27-13 loss to the Green Bay Packers, the head coach faced the media, ready to make things clear to the community. “In 2022, we started 1-6, and people were asking me to fire Ben. It took us a while to find our feet…But you learn every time you go through this and work together and find the right flow,” he said. Translation? Do not build narratives based on the first game of the season. Believe in the roster and the coaches.

Talking about the way forward, Campbell also alluded, “You do it collectively. You do it together. And like I said, man, the more those five play together—we got two young guards—the more they all play together, the better we’re going to get. These are real reps against other opponents, and you get a full game, and man, you go and you teach off of it. And you correct it, and you learn from it, and you move on.” Well, after the recent loss, Detroit will surely need to learn quickly if they want to turn things around. Because from what we saw in their latest performance, there’s a lot to work on.

In a game where Jared Goff went 31 of 39 for 225 yards with a TD and an interception, the Lions didn’t score a single touchdown until 55 seconds remained. The team was able to pull off just six points in their first three drives into the red zone, while their offense looked unsatisfactory. Running backs David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs were limited to a combined of just 44 yards on 20 carries. What’s more? The Lions’ offense couldn’t even surpass 200 yards of offense until the Packers were on a 21-point lead with three minutes to go.

In fact, Detroit had just 246 yards of offense and 46 yards rushing, which is evidently lower than their 409.5 total offense average and 146.4  rushing average from last year. “Not even close to good enough, right? There needs to be an urgency of improvement. There has to be. Today wasn’t even close to good enough offensively. I’m not worried about (the red zone). I am moreso just urgent about getting details fixed and making sure that everyone is on the same page and that our communication is better and getting lined up correctly and all that stuff. Ultimately, a lot of it falls on me. So, there are some things that I can do better,” Goff said after the game. Veteran linebacker Alex Anzalone didn’t sugarcoat his take.

“We got our ass beat,” he declared after the game.

Dan Campbell, on the other hand, was reeling from the ‘correctable mistakes’ they made.

Dan Campbell was disappointed with the locker room

Dan Campbell was rather disappointed with the locker room because every mistake they made was fixable. “I thought we’d be much cleaner than we were,” he said. Let’s talk about the small, fixable things that bugged Dan Campbell the most. The Lions went just 5-for-15 on third down, and that killed their drives while completely messing with any offensive rhythm. “They came out and played outstanding, and we didn’t play good enough. We didn’t coach good enough, including me, and we didn’t play good enough. Like I told the team, it’s tough to go in and not certainly play close to your best game. You hate starting the season off with a loss, and as bad as that is, it’s not what it appears to be,” he further said, before adding,

“We made some critical errors at the worst times possible. You take those out of the equation, and it looks different…They play deep coverage, man. They play a lot of Cover 2, they’ll play some three buzz and they keep everything in front of them. That’s how that defense is designed and so we knew that and the plan was to stay patient. Be patient and I thought Goff was. We took what was there and felt like eventually those shots would show. Just couldn’t quite get to them, you know? By the time you get a chance, or you hope you do, you’re down two scores. But that’s the nature of this defense and we weren’t able to generate seven when we got in the red zone.”

Think of how poor they were in the red zone. Detroit was just 1-for-4 in the red zone, leaving points on the board and making the defense stay out there longer than they should have. And they lacked explosive play. The Lions only managed one play over 20 yards. That’s a far cry from the explosive, big-play offense that drove last year’s wins. All of this is equal parts frustrating and fixable. But it doesn’t call for ringing the alarm bells. Hopefully, the future will be better.