It’s a place that the Detroit Lions have never really been before. For the longest time, this team was the laughingstock of the NFL and things turned on a dime. Now they’re the team that everyone expects to be good. Nobody is laughing anymore.
With the expectations comes, well, the expectations. Everyone thinks you’re going to be good and they’ll keep thinking that as long as you are. But we know they’ll turn on you as fast as they can to say they always had bigger expectations for another team. We’ve seen if for the last few weeks when everyone and their mother tried to make the Lions injury problem a bigger story than it was. This is a good team and that’s that.
For Campbell the media attention on the Lions is nothing new.
“We’ve had attention for four years here. I mean, there’s been more stuff that’s been made out, that’s been built one way. We’ve been so good, we’ve been so bad, we’re a laughing stock now, we’re great, and it’s just been this roller coaster of ups and downs, and it’s just the next week of it, you know what I mean? And so this is nothing new that we’re in right now. This is nothing new for me, for the coaches, for the players. We’re in the middle of the circus, man, and it’s about time to perform. That’s the world we’re in.”
He’s right. Since the day Campbell took the podium for his opening presser, there have been a ton of eyeballs on this team and the narrative has changed so many times and so fast that you might get whiplash if you weren’t safely secured in.
Right now the expectations are that the Lions go to the Super Bowl and win it. Campbell says he’s not thinking about that right now, he’s thinking about Washington and the game they have ahead of them. In terms of what ifs, he’s not thinking about those either.
“I don’t think about, man, we’re the one seed. So if we, you know, if you guys don’t succeed, then you know, like I never think like that. I look at it as like, I know who we are. I know what we’re about. I know how we have to prepare. I respect the opponent, and now it’s time to go to work. That’s how I look at it. I don’t look at anything else. I don’t think of what if it doesn’t, what if? what if? The what ifs like expletive, man, I couldn’t sleep at night if I lived that way. There’s no freaking way. So no, I don’t think of that.”