Allen Park — It’s not unfathomable what the Lions are trying to do. But it is unusual.
Only one team in NFL history has started a season 1-6 and still managed to make the playoffs: the 1970 Cincinnati Bengals. And if the Lions can repeat that feat — they’ve won six of their last seven games to give themselves a real shot at the postseason — it’ll be hard to deny this: Dan Campbell should be the NFL Coach of the Year.
You could make that argument even now, though it’d be a losing one. Philadelphia’s Nick Sirianni is the odds-on favorite to win the award, with the 13-1 Eagles poised to clinch the No. 1 overall seed in the NFC, a year after squeaking into the postseason with a 9-8 record.
But, if the Lions managed to rattle off a few more wins to lock up a postseason berth for the first time in six years, Campbell would have a strong case. From a 3-13-1 finish in his first year to a 10-win season and the playoffs in Year 2 of an organizational rebuild in downtrodden Detroit? Especially after the “Hard Knocks” darlings took their lumps early on and were saddled with the league’s worst record in early November? If that’s how this plays out, I think you’d find quite a few constituents among the 50-voter panel that cast ballots for the Associated Press’ annual NFL awards.
None of those ballots belong to Detroit-based writers, by the way, which is an oversight that’s long overdue for a correction. But that won’t stop Campbell’s candidacy from picking up steam if the Lions keep winning. In fact, you could hear the national pundits starting to weigh in after Sunday’s gritty win over the New York Jets.
“What normally happens with bad football teams is they find ways to lose games, and we’ve seen that from the Detroit Lions, especially in recent history,” said ESPN’s Ryan Clark, a former NFL safety who won a Super Bowl with the Pittsburgh Steelers. “But when you watch this team down the stretch of this season, they’re finding ways to win games. …
“They are a team now that has come together and learned how to play complementary football. And for all the times that you laugh at Dan Campbell and you think he’s quirky, this team has taken on his personality of fighting every week, of being a tough, physical-minded football team, and a team that now, when they get in those late-game moments, they believe that they can win. And that belief is the start.”
But the job’s far from finished here, as Campbell keeps reminding his players. They needed a late touchdown to salvage Sunday’s win at MetLife Stadium, overcoming some untimely penalties and a few too many coverage breakdowns on defense. And with two of their final three games on the road, starting Saturday at Carolina, where the Panthers remain in the playoff hunt as well, Campbell knows this is uncharted territory for what is one of the league’s youngest rosters.
That’s why he scolded them at halftime Sunday, calling them out for playing “not to lose” in a game they had to win.
“I kind of felt like there were some mistakes that we were making because we were afraid to fail,” Campbell said. “More than anything, to me, that, is what’s gonna be critical. I don’t think it’s about taking the cheese, all that. Because we can play. We’ve got a good enough team to play. (But) we can’t become so tense and start doing things that we weren’t doing. There’s a reason why we got to this point. And if we start becoming so tense and uptight … you’re not gonna win that way. So, I think that’s what we have to guard against.”
Campbell says he’ll lean on some of his veteran players who have been here before to help with that. Guys like Jared Goff and Jamaal Williams and Alex Anzalone, among others. And Campbell, whose greatest strengths as a head coach have more to do with empowering others than asserting his own will, is quick to credit everyone else involved in this late-season charge.
“Listen, that’s a credit to our coaches and to our guys,” he says. “I’ve got some great coordinators and some great assistant coaches. And the players, man, they’re fueling it. They’re starting to feel it; they’re taking ownership of this team and we’re getting better because of it.”
A worthy candidate
Still, it’d be foolish to overlook Campbell’s role in this just the same. A team that was left for dead less than two months ago now is being talked about as one of the most dangerous teams in the NFC playoff chase.
“Man, nobody wants to play ’em, I’m tellin’ you that right now,” said ESPN’s Rex Ryan, the former Jets and Bills head coach. “How many teams 1-6, they end up folding: ‘Ah, we’re punting on the season,’ and they fire the coach. Not one time did that team flinch. Why? Because they’re locked in it together: head coach, general manager, all that. They have a direction for this football team. And I’ll be, a year before they expected to.”
It probably didn’t hurt that owner Sheila Hamp stepped in to remind everyone of that back in late October. She held an impromptu media session to acknowledge the fans’ frustration but also to urge them not “to push the panic button and give up the ship.”
It hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing ever since. Campbell actually fired his secondary coach, Aubrey Pleasant, a week later following another calamitous loss to Miami at Ford Field. But, things have come together in ways few outside of Allen Park would’ve predicted.
The Lions have pulled out of tailspins before. They started 1-7 in 2015 and finished 7-9 that year under Jim Caldwell. They rebounded from a 1-5 start in 1983 to make the playoffs under Monte Clark, and they won seven straight after a 3-6 start to make it in 1995 under Wayne Fontes.
But seven weeks ago, Campbell had the third-lowest odds on an offshore betting site to be the next NFL coach to lose his job. Just behind Frank Reich, who was canned by the Indianapolis Colts five days later. And now he’s the No. 2 horse chasing down Sirianni down the backstretch for Coach of the Year, according to Vegas oddsmakers.
The Lions, as we all know, have only one playoff win since their 1957 NFL championship season. Not coincidentally, since George Wilson was honored that year with the first AP NFL Coach of the Year award, Detroit has seen just one other head coach win it. That would be Wayne Fontes in 1991, the year the Lions went 12-4 and routed Dallas in a divisional playoff game at the Silverdome. Fontes narrowly beat out Washington’s Joe Gibbs for the award that year — 26 votes to 24.5 — after leading the Lions to a six-game improvement over their 1990 regular-season finish.
Beyond that, the only other Lions head coach to even merit a mention in the year-end balloting in the Super Bowl era was Jim Caldwell, who garnered a single vote in 2014. The Lions went 11-5 that year in Caldwell’s debut in Detroit, but Arizona’s Bruce Arians ran away with the award.
But, recent history suggests Campbell has a legitimate shot at it, because the award doesn’t always go to the coach of the team with the NFL’s best record. Matt Nagy won the award in 2018 after a seven-win turnaround in his first season in Chicago ended with the Bears (12-4) atop the NFC North. Another first-year head coach, Kevin Stefanski, won it in 2020 after a five-win turnaround in Cleveland snapped the Browns’ 18-year postseason drought. Also of note: The Bengals’ Paul Brown won for guiding that second-half rally in 1970, the first year of the AFL/NFL merger.
The Lions have faced the NFL’s toughest schedule through Week 15, and all seven of their losses have come to teams that currently are .500 or better. (Those opponents’ combined record is 67-31.) Five of those losses were by four points or less, and yes, Campbell gets credit for that, too, thanks to some of his coaching blunders. Yet, after rattling off six wins in seven weeks — with a lone loss to the AFC-leading Buffalo Bills in a Thanksgiving Day thriller — Detroit currently sits just a half-game out of the final wild-card playoff spot in the NFC.
And, if voters were looking for a campaign speech, this one from Campbell to his players in the postgame locker room Sunday will have to do.
“We’re figuring out a way to win,” he told them. “That’s what winners do!”
2022-23 NFL Coach of the Year odds
▶ Nick Sirianni, Eagles: -225▶ Dan Campbell, Lions: +250▶ Kyle Shanahan, 49ers: +2000▶ Brian Daboll, Giants: +2500▶ Kevin O’Connell, Vikings: +2800▶ Doug Pederson, Jaguars: +2800▶ Robert Saleh, Jets: +5000
Source: BetMGM