Allen Park — A win over the Green Bay Packers last November snapped a five-game losing streak, but did little to suggest better days were ahead for a Detroit Lions’ team that moved to 2-6 on the season with the victory.
Quarterback Jared Goff threw for a season-low 137 yards in the contest, while the ground game mustered just 3.8 yards per run with its 31 carries. Detroit’s defense, the NFL’s worst, had been the day’s saving grace. Led by rookie safety Kerby Joseph’s two interceptions, the unit forced reigning MVP Aaron Rodgers to cough the ball up three times, securing the 15-9 result.
The following week, seeking any semblance of momentum, Lions coach Dan Campbell called upon Kelvin Sheppard, the assistant in charge of the linebacker unit, to speak to the team. Known for his passion and intensity, traits that carried over from an eight-year playing career, this was the first time many in the building had a chance to see the second-year assistant in this setting. It proved to be a moment that would resonate.
“It wasn’t just good; it was special,” offensive coordinator Ben Johnson said. “Something my dad used to always say, ‘They’re not going to necessarily remember what you did, they won’t necessarily remember what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.’ That’s where I think Shep is special. Every person that was in that room came out of it feeling a certain type of way and we played really well the next day because of it.
“It wasn’t the only reason we played well, but it was powerful and made a lasting impact, not just on me, but everyone in the room. I think that’s his superpower, his ability to relate, his ability to command and lead in front of a room.”
Illustrating Johnson’s point about not remembering specifics, it was far from the prettiest performance. Still, it was significant. The Lions rallied from 14 points down in the fourth quarter in Chicago, coming up with a late defensive stop to snap a 13-game losing streak on the road, providing a true launching point for the team’s 8-2 finish to the season.
In many ways, it also sharpened the focus on Sheppard’s potential. Sure, it was Johnson and defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn appropriately racking up the head-coaching interviews in the offseason, and who figure to be in that mix again next year if the Lions are able to build on last season’s success, but it’s becoming increasingly clear Sheppard also has a bright future in a profession he never intended to enter.
The big picture
There’s nothing wrong with a football player who simply does their job. Heck, the New England Patriots built the identity of their dynasty around the mantra. But for Sheppard, it’s not enough.
It’s his opinion any competent linebacker should know their assignment on a given play call. Instead, the coach is obsessed with the bigger picture. He wants his players to understand, conceptually, the reasons why they’re being asked to perform a specific action in a specific situation.
You’ll never hear Sheppard utter, “Because I said so,” to his players. He despises the phrase, which he heard far too often during his playing days. That way of thinking is a one-way street, where rigid instruction offers no room for conversation. He refuses to view his profession through that old-school lens.
“I tell the players, ‘If a coach can’t tell you why, he’s not coaching,'” Sheppard said.
The way Sheppard understood football was turned on its head his junior season at LSU. Entering that year, he was expecting to be the team’s middle linebacker, but incoming defensive coordinator John Chavis had a different idea.
Chavis had what coaches call a good problem: Too much talent. The team had four linebackers worthy of starting and only three spots to utilize them. He called Sheppard, a budding team leader, into his office to present the plan. The linebackers would rotate between the three starting positions. Sheppard would open games at middle linebacker, move to the strongside spot the second series, then weak side for the third possession, before taking a seat for the opponent’s fourth drive. This process would be repeated through the course of each game.
With an admitted big-man-on-campus mentality, Sheppard was obstinate. But Chavis asked for trust. He wanted to expand Sheppard’s mind, and in turn, his abilities, through cross-training him at all three positions. More importantly, the coach wanted to introduce Sheppard to conceptual learning, showing him the complete picture of the defensive scheme for the first time.
“Looking back, it’s the best thing I ever did,” Sheppard said. “Going in and having to know all three linebacker spots opened my mind to learning everything, and I found it allowed me to play middle linebacker faster because I knew what the other guys were doing.”
The macro principle is understanding why the play is being called. Instead of a player knowing they need to get from point A to point B, they’re taught the purpose of their positioning and timing on the field. The graduate degree comes when the player not only comprehends why from a single perspective, but from all 11 positions on the field.
Life lessons in coaching
A cerebral player, Sheppard might never have been a star, but he was a quick study and he was reliable. By always approaching schemes conceptually, the way he learned under Chavis, Sheppard was able to start games for five different franchises. And when asked, he was always eager to help teammates see things through the same set of eyes. Amusingly, some of those guys he shared meeting rooms with as a player, such as Jarrad Davis and Jalen Reeves-Maybin, Sheppard has now coached.
It was others, including Campbell, who identified Sheppard’s knack for teaching well before the player realized it. And it wasn’t until a couple of years after he last laced up the cleats, while working with 8- and 9-year-old students for the Optimist Club of Cooper City in southeast Florida that Sheppard considered making coaching a career.
“You don’t understand the impact you have on a human being, on their livelihood,” he said. “I don’t care what level you’re coaching at. When you’re dealing with 9U kids, you’re not just teaching them the fundamentals of the game, you’re teaching them a lot of life lessons. Football teaches you a lot of life lessons. Seeing those young kids growing throughout the year, hearing their parents’ feedback to me, that was the impact for me.”
Exploring his options, Sheppard nearly took a job at Vanderbilt in 2020, before his alma mater offered him a role in player development. The hybrid position at LSU allowed him to work with student-athletes through academic and life issues, while also offering Sheppard the opportunity to grow his understanding of football, working with then-defensive coordinator Bo Pelini.
The following offseason, LSU had an opening for a linebacker coach, and had they offered it, Sheppard would have taken it. But when he was passed up, he opened himself to considering other opportunities.
“When I took the job at LSU, I really thought there was a good chance I’d be in Baton Rogue for 20, 25 years,” he said. “That’s how I go into things. (Now) I have no intention of leaving Detroit.”
Campbell, who had been hired by the Lions that same offseason, encouraged Glenn, a first-year coordinator, to interview Sheppard for a role on the defensive staff.
“I’ll always believe this, the work ethic will always be there with former players,” Glenn said. “The ability to learn and put the time in, that’s what you want to figure out. I figured that out my first time speaking with Shep. Dan said, ‘Listen, you might just want to talk to this guy. It’s your staff; hire who you want to hire,’ but once I talked to him and knew where he wanted to be, it was a no-brainer to hire this guy.”
Glenn challenged Sheppard to coach a different position than he played, outside linebacker. Sheppard had always played off the ball, but the outside linebackers were primarily edge rushers in Detroit’s scheme. To minimize the learning curve, Glenn surrounded Sheppard with two former defensive coordinators, Todd Wash, who was coaching the team’s defensive tackles, and senior defensive assistant Dom Capers.
The pairing with Wash proved particularly beneficial. Sheppard, who always prided himself on knowing the responsibility of every position, gained a far deeper understanding of defensive line play working with the former Jaguars defensive coordinator who departed Detroit for a new job with the Carolina Panthers this offseason.
And even when the Lions switched Sheppard to coach the off-ball linebackers last season, Wash’s lessons stuck. Breaking from the conventional approach of coaching linebackers, Sheppard now spends his first meeting hours each offseason making sure every player he coaches knows the ins and outs of defensive line play within Detroit’s scheme, including the fronts, the alignments, how they are attacking offensive linemen. If linebackers understand what’s happening in front of them, it clarifies the purpose of their own alignments and what they’re being asked to do once the ball is snapped.
Bringing out the best
If you want proof Sheppard’s approach is clicking, you don’t have to look far.
At first glance, the obvious example would be Malcolm Rodriguez. A sixth-round draft pick last season, he took this town by storm, thanks in large part to being featured on HBO’s documentary series “Hard Knocks.”
In most cases, late-round picks aren’t guaranteed a roster spot, let alone a game-day role. But Rodriguez defied the odds by claiming a starting job on opening day and holding it throughout his rookie season. He finished his debut campaign with 87 tackles, including a position-best eight for a loss.
But Sheppard has resisted taking credit for Rodriguez’s first-year success. He’s always directed all praise to the player for his work ethic and approach. In fact, the coach always credits his player, first and foremost. But Sheppard’s impact on a pair of veterans is a little more difficult to deny.
In Sheppard’s first year in Detroit, he got a career-best performance out of outside linebacker Charles Harris. Last year, it was middle linebacker Alex Anzalone who reached new peaks of production.
The talent was there for both players, but Harris, a former first-round pick, hadn’t been able to tap into his potential through his first four seasons. And Anzalone, a former third-round selection, was held back by durability issues and some out-of-character tackling woes from the previous season, which had been keeping him from earning a long-term contractual commitment after the expiration of his rookie deal in New Orleans.
By teaching conceptually, Sheppard is tapping into the power of the mind, but the other component of his coaching style is connecting on a personal level, plugging into the heart. Before he works with a player on the field, he wants to know what they’re about. He studies their film, their scouting reports and their press clippings. Then comes a one-to-one meeting that doubles as a heart-to-heart.
“I want them to open up to me because I need to know what they think, what they feel,” Sheppard said.
Sheppard has two goals coming out of those meetings. He wants the player to understand he believes in them, and, like Chavis asked of him all those years ago at LSU, Sheppard asks them to trust in the plan he has for them. For Harris, it was a change to his stance. With Anzalone, it was as simple as re-focusing on some fundamental techniques and footwork.
In his one season working with Sheppard, Harris recorded 7.5 sacks, which is all the more impressive when you consider he had a total of 6.5 the previous four seasons. Anzalone, meanwhile, bested his previous single-season tackle total by 47, while slashing his missed-tackle percentage by more than half, to a career-best 7.4%. The jump in production also resulted in a new, three-year, $18.75 million contract for the middle linebacker, providing him the long-term security he’d been seeking.
“I think once the players get in there and see how he is, they fall in love with him,” Glenn said. “His demanding mentality is not demeaning. They know he’s doing it out of love for the player and helping the player.”
That’s a delicate balance for a coach, something both Glenn and Johnson understand in coordinating roles, but a trait that seemingly comes naturally to Sheppard.
“It’s hard for young coaches to get the demand part down,” Johnson said. “It’s not hard for him. It’s special the words that he uses, how he speaks to players, the demeanor, the intensity, they respond to it.”
Sheppard ‘answers the call’
This season, Sheppard is being entrusted with one of the roster’s shiniest new toys, first-round draft pick Jack Campbell. All signs point to the pairing being a match made in heaven. The rookie has impressed Sheppard with both his intensity and understanding of concepts during pre-draft meetings, and Campbell is a player who loves being coached hard.
Sheppard acknowledged he’s looked forward to utilizing Campbell’s athleticism more than Iowa did. And if the player ends up being a quick study, similar to Rodriguez last year, it should help the Lions’ defense continue to chart the path to respectability that it began in the second half of last season.
And that would bode well for Sheppard’s resume, as well. With Rodriguez, Harris and Anzalone, he’s building up credentials to bigger opportunities professionally. At minimum, Campbell and Glenn see coordinator potential, and they’re continuing to expand Sheppard’s role to keep him on that track.
“The more we put on Shep, the more he answers the call,” Campbell said. “And he’s developing as a coach. We see growth. No different than the players, you want to see growth from your coaches. And so, AG and I talked and we felt like it was time to put more on him, especially this year. I think Shep is a young, promising coach. I think he can be a coordinator one day, and I think he can be a head coach one day. I think he’s got that type of potential, so the time is right.”
jdrogers@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @Justin_Rogers