Rod Wood, by his own admission, was in a “pissy” mood Monday.
Wood’s flight from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, to Detroit was delayed by weather, and as the Detroit Lions president sat in the airport awaiting his plane, a Lions fan with three sons in tow came up to say hello.
The fan introduced himself, said he was from Bloomfield, and — as his boys snapped selfies trying discreetly to get Wood in the background — spoke passionately about how much he loves the Lions and how optimistic he is for the 2023 season.
When it was time to board the plane, another fan stopped Wood to talk Lions. The fan told Wood he buys a horse every year and names it after someone from the team. He called the first horse he bought, “Run Barry Run,” and has a 2-year-old colt named “Spielman.”
Wood has had mostly positive interactions with fans in his seven-plus years as Lions president. Even in down times, keyboard warriors tend to hide in the weeds.
But there has been something different about his encounters in recent months; the buy-in and belief everyone seems to share in what the Lions started building in last year’s 9-8 season.
“You can sense it in the stadium, you can sense it walking through the airport, you can sense it just going out to dinner and you run into people,” Wood told the Free Press in an interview Monday before this week’s NFL combine. “It feels good. You don’t want to get too over your skis and predicting things that haven’t happened yet, but you certainly feel like you’ve got the foundation in place and have a lot of confidence in all the people that are here.
“Winning breeds winning, and I think losing unfortunately breeds losing, and I think we kind of somewhere in the last year and a half, kind of figured out how to get from the losing breeding more losing to the winning breeding more winning. And I just hope you can just keep cranking that up next year.”
The Lions authored one of the most remarkable turnarounds in the NFL last season, winning eight of their final 10 games after a 1-6 start, to finish with their first winning record since 2017.
MORE ROD WOOD:Lions planning alternate helmet in 2023, ‘interesting overhaul’ for uniforms in 2024
They beat the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field in the final game of the regular season, but just missed the playoffs thanks to the Seattle Seahawks’ come-from-behind win over the Los Angeles Rams earlier in the day.
The Lions’ six-year postseason drought is entirely of their own doing. Last year, their defense was atrocious early in the season, and finished last in the NFL in yards allowed. They blew a September game to the Minnesota Vikings by mismanaging the game’s final minutes. And they no-showed in a costly December loss to the Carolina Panthers.
But coming off a 3-13-1 season the year before, with the youngest snap-adjusted roster in the NFL and a head coach in Dan Campbell and general manager in Brad Holmes who are drawing rave reviews for their jobs, the Lions are no longer considered loveable losers and have instead become a team to love and fear.
“It’s interesting finishing 9-8 but winning eight of the last 10 is different than finishing 9-8 but losing the last five and missing out on the playoffs,” Wood said. “It’s the same record, but the momentum going into the offseason is very different the way we finished, especially beating Green Bay on Sunday Night Football and preventing them from going to the playoffs, and then all the things that we already talked about with draft picks and free agency. I think the optimism is they’re ponying up money to buy tickets, too.”
The Lions had the biggest percentage increase in attendance last season, and Wood said they already have taken deposits on almost 10,000 new season ticket purchases for 2023.
With about $23 million in cap space heading into free agency and two first- and two second-round picks in this year’s draft, the Lions are better positioned for long-term success than they have been at any point during Wood’s tenure with the team.
DAVE BIRKETT:Drafting Texas RB Bijan Robinson in Round 1 would complete Lions offense
And as he looks back on the rocky road the franchise has traveled since he arrived an NFL neophyte in 2015 — he replaced Tom Lewand as president after Lewand and GM Martin Mayhew were fired midway through the season — he said Campbell, Holmes and Lions owner Sheila Hamp deserve a lot of credit for how far they’ve come.
“I give a lot of credit, first to Sheila for what she’s done and then Dan in particular changing the culture,” Wood said. “You know what it was like before (under the previous regime of Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia), and I’m partially responsible for that since we brought those guys in. But you could kind of tell, like I said when we hired (Campbell and Holmes), what you didn’t want, and then set about trying to find the people that would embrace the kind of culture we wanted.”
Wood, Hamp, Lions chief operating officer Mike Disner and special assistant Chris Spielman led parallel coach and GM searches after the team’s miserable 2020 season, and ended with the hiring of Campbell and Holmes. The two men did not know each other before teaming up with the Lions; Wood said he introduced them by phone in his office once it became clear they were the leading candidates for their jobs.
That unorthodox approach was initially met with skepticism by a league known for its buddy hiring system, but the synergy between Campbell and Holmes has worked so well that Wood has taken calls from other NFL teams interested in replicating the Lions’ model.
“I’d like to say that we were brilliant and knew something no one else did, but I think some of it … was I think we just stayed true to our process, which is what we were looking for were guys that were going to be collaborative, work together, didn’t have huge egos,” Wood said. “And I got turned off in the interview when you heard people talking about the structure I need, and I need to have final say on this, or I need to be in charge of that. And those were not the kind of people we were looking for. And both these guys came in with no ego, we’re going to figure this out, we’re going to do it the right way, we’re going to work together.”
MORE FROM ROD WOOD:He doesn’t want to give up home game to play overseas
That, Wood said, is at the heart of how the Lions have made the leap from losing breeding losing — the Lions have the longest drought without a playoff victory in the NFL at 31 seasons — to finally, maybe, being on a winning track.
“You never really know until people are here,” Wood said. “But I think Dan is beyond anything I could have ever hoped for I think in terms of setting the culture and being a leader. I think he’s deserving of a lot of credit for the way the season kind of didn’t go in the tank. And same with Sheila, stepping up and talking about the belief in the team. So yeah, I think things are good. Reason to be optimistic. We’ve got some money to hopefully acquire some players in free agency and high draft capital to keep building, and Brad’s proven that he can be a very effective drafter.”
Though the NFL offseason has barely begun, the Lions should enter the 2023 season as the favorite in the NFC North.
The Vikings won 13 games and the division last season, but have an aging roster with salary cap concerns. The Lions had a better division record, and trailed the Vikings for a total of 45 seconds in their two head-to-head games.
The Packers, after three straight decades of having a first ballot Hall of Famer at quarterback, are awaiting word on Aaron Rodgers’ future, and have myriad holes to fill even if he returns. And the Chicago Bears are entering Year 2 of their rebuild and had the worst record in the NFL last season.
CARLOS MONARREZ:Lions should trade for Jalen Ramsey, even if it costs the No. 6 overall pick
The Lions have work to do themselves. Their defense needs help at all levels, they lost three position coaches to lateral moves this offseason, and questions remain about Jared Goff’s long-term viability as a starter even after his Pro Bowl year.
But their young roster, their well-managed cap, their horde of draft capital, their high-octane offense and their coach and GM tandem are all reason to believe the strides they’ve made are for real.
Wood said the Lions “certainly have capital to be more active than we have been the last couple years” in free agency and the trade market, though he was coy about the team’s offseason plans.
“Does that mean that we’re bringing in players who are not currently on our team or we’re bringing back our own guys? It’ll be a combination of both, I think,” he said. “There’s a couple guys that we’re interested in that could get franchise tags. There’s things that could happen still, and trade-wise there’s always phones that ring and you never know whether that’ll happen.”
TRENDING:Florida QB Anthony Richardson’s ceiling ‘immensely higher’ than Jared Goff’s
The Washington Commanders used the franchise tag Tuesday on defensive tackle Daron Payne, who would have fit one of the Lions’ most pressing needs for an interior pass rusher.
Top defensive free agents Javon Hargrave, Dre’Mont Jones, Jamel Dean, James Bradberry and Chauncey Gardner-Johnson still could hit the market, but whether the Lions dip into that pool or not, big things will be expected this fall — things Wood and the Lions are comfortable talking about.
“I’m not going to give a record (prediction for next season), but certainly we expect improvement and I think the division’s right there for the taking,” Wood said. “Certainly, I would hope that we’re right there competing to win the division. Obviously, health of the players and a lot of things have to break your way, but we’ll see what happens with Green Bay and the Rodgers situation. Minnesota I feel had a great year, but we beat them once and had them the second time so, yeah, so I hope to be right there competing. I think the NFC is kind of almost wide open.”
And for the first time in a long time, the Lions have realistic designs on making it theirs for the taking.
Catch the “Free Press Sports with Carlos and Shawn” podcast every Thursday morning at 5 and on demand on freep.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. This week’s episode, below, counts Dave Birkett as the guest to talk all things Lions, the draft and more.
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.