Detroit Lions Head Coach Dan Campbell has done a tremendous job impressing his personal flair onto his players. Campbell, formerly an NFL tight end, preaches the old-school ‘kick them in the teeth’ mentality to his players and he even builds his team around aggressive principles. Detroit sports a big offensive line with an accompanied running game and an aggressive defensive line. As a former coach, its always nice to see when one of your players truly ‘buys in’ to the philosophy as well.
Lions QB asks for more intensity from his teammates
It is the common conception that quarterback is the leader of a team and therefore can be seen as the head coaches mouthpiece into what he wants his locker room culture to be. Detroit quarterback Jared Goff appears to have truly bought in after his comments to the press on Thursday morning:
“Know that everyone is kind of in that mode that you have to win these games, and everyone has things that they’re going for. No one’s out of it,” Goff said. “And everyone’s trying to win a game, so knowing that you have [to] turn your urgency up a little bit and stay process oriented and trust what you’re doing daily in practice. But, yeah, your intensity turns up a little bit this late in the year.”
Even looking at Goff’s backstory, you can see exactly the persona that Dan Campbell wants leading a tough squad. Goff was the first overall pick in 2016 for the Los Angeles Rams and led the team to a Super Bowl appearance to the New England Patriots in 2019. Following the championship loss, Goff fell out of favor in Los Angeles and was traded to the brutal chill of southern Michigan.
Goff is someone who has had a brutal taste of failure over the past few years and has still risen to the challenge of leading his teammates and playing the best way he possibly can. Goff has been exceptional for Detroit following the arrival of offensive coordinator Ben Johnson in 2022.
Following the leadership exemplified by his quarterback, star defensive end Aidan Hutchinson had a similar address to his teammates on his side of the ball:
“Just executing and being all on the same page. It’s the inconsistency,” Hutchinson said. “Sometimes it feels like we’re three-and-out and just playing at such a high level and sometimes those drives are just 15-play, touchdowns that we let up, and right now it feels like it’s one or the other so we’ve just gotta be overall more consistent.”
His players showing absolute class and enthusiasm for his prime mantra has to bring some job to Dan Campbell as his team is currently sitting at the three seed with a 9-3 record. In similar fashion to Goff, many people wrote off Campbell due to his inexperience after he was hired as head coach in Detroit after serving as the special teams coordinator of the New Orleans Saints. It has become apparent that no one should underestimate this squad because if I know anything about how those intensity-driven mentality coaches are, Coach Campbell is certainly on the lookout for bulletin board material.