Dan Campbell delivered a strong and impassioned message about the Lions maintaining their identity and avoiding complacency.
Just minutes after their loss to the San Francisco 49ers , Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell was hellbent on delivering a strong message for 2024: there will be no complacency. By now, you’ve likely heard the quote that went viral after the game.
“I told those guys, this may have been our only shot,” Campbell said. “Do I think that? No. Do I believe that? No. However, I know how hard it is to get here. I’m well aware. It’s going to be twice as hard to get back to this point next year than it was last year. That’s the reality.”
On Wednesday, as the Lions opened up training camp, Campbell was, again, preaching the importance of putting in the work and not falling back on comfortability. This time, he reached back to his own history as a player for a potent lesson and something he called “one of the best things that ever happened to me.”
Campbell proceeded to tell a story about a team that went 12-4 one year, but followed it up with just a 7-9 season. Despite them bringing back nearly the exact same team, Campbell said he had noticed the team take their collective foot off the gas in preparation for the season.
“I just remember there were a couple of things, ‘Hey guys, we’re not going to go pads today.’ Everybody goes, ‘Yeah, alright!’” Campbell said. “You know, those things, ‘Hey, this is great. Hey guys, get out of here a little bit early.’ And pretty soon, by the end of it, you just lost your identity and everything that made you what you are, you went away from it because, ‘You know what? We’ll be OK. We’ve got the same guys.’ And that was a lesson learned for me because we were, we were average.”
(Note: Campbell wouldn’t confirm it, but his story appears to be of the 2000 New York Giants who lost in the Super Bowl , then missed out on the playoffs the next year after going 7-9.)
The Lions have built an identity of hard work, grit, devotion to football, and relentless work. They’ve built the core of their team surrounding workaholics like Penei Sewell, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jared Goff, and Taylor Decker, and all of them are still bought in to the necessity of work.
“There’s no substitute for the work. The work is the work,” Decker said after Wednesday’s practice. “You have to come out here and build chemistry, continue to build chemistry. We have a lot of chemistry, (but) we also have new pieces. We can build on a foundation, but it’s not like we’re building on last season. It’s going to be a brand-new season.”
Ultimately, Campbell simply wants to make sure that identity is never compromised or lessened.
“We don’t live off reputation, we live off of work,” Campbell said. Later adding, “We’re not going to lose our identity. That is the most important thing to me, and I won’t sacrifice it for anyone or anything. I told the team know that and they know that.”