Dan Campbell: The Lions’ Transformation and Detroit’s Rebirth
Dan Campbell, with his imposing figure, gives the impression that he could still be a lineman capable of making his way to Canada. However, at a key moment, tears well up. His new bosses, Rod Wood and Sheila Ford Hamp, were about to introduce him to the world at a press conference. On the practice field, in the midst of the January 2021 pandemic, they expressed their confidence in his style and plan to turn the Lions into a winning team, as well as his impact on Detroit. What moved Campbell the most was knowing that they believed in him. The silence in that space evoked memories of his playing days, with the constant movement and sounds of the game. That silence confronted him with his deepest thoughts. As he contemplated the field with the Lions logo, he realized that this was the place where he would change the course of the team. He not only longed to be head coach; he desired this job, in this city, at this moment. He loved Detroit as a player, and although he was born in Texas, he always felt a special connection with the city. Now, he was the head coach, and the emotion overwhelmed him. Wood and Ford Hamp, witnesses to the scene, were surprised. They did not expect to see Campbell in a suit, much less in tears. Campbell, a man of 1.95 meters and 113 kilos, known for his sportswear, radiated a confidence that hid his sensitivity. His image defied the stereotypes of modern masculinity, a man who was not afraid to express his emotions and who, at the same time, appreciated the intensity of the game. After a moment of introspection, Campbell composed himself and went to the press conference. On January 21, 2021, amidst the pandemic restrictions, Ford Hamp appeared before the reporters through a screen, while Wood did the same in another room. Then, Campbell took the podium. In an empty environment, with Ford Hamp and Wood in the hallway, and the reporters on the screen, Campbell maintained his composure. Campbell, with a raspy voice full of passion, began to thank his former coaches, including R.C. Slocum, Bill Parcells, and Sean Payton. Then, he uttered one of the most memorable quotes in NFL history:The conference continued for another half hour, with Campbell detailing his vision for Detroit. However, his quote about knee pads went viral. He was mocked, with the world of American football questioning his approach. But, the Lions players loved him. The Lions management approved of him too. Wood revealed that he and Ford Hamp were laughing out loud in the hallway at Campbell’s intensity. And, above all, Detroit loved him. On the team’s official YouTube channel, the live chat was filled with comments, repeatedly highlighting “KNEECAP DAN”. While the world mocked, Detroit celebrated. They had found their man. And the NFL had a new force of nature. That 45-minute press conference marked the beginning of the Lions’ revolution.“This is what I know: this team will adopt the identity of this city. This city has been through tough times and has found a way to rise up. So this team will build on this: we’re going to kick them in the teeth, okay? And when they hit us, we’ll smile, and when they knock us down, we’ll get up. And when we get up, we’ll bite a kneepad.
Dan Campbell
Do you remember Vince Lombardi’s press conference? Or the day the Giants promoted Bill Parcells? And when the Steelers introduced Mike Tomlin? The answer to all three questions is no. Viral press conferences in the NFL are a recent phenomenon, driven by social media, which transform snippets into memes and lasting memories. The first truly viral moment was that of Jets coach Adam Gase in 2019.
Then, eight days later, Eagles fans panicked when new coach Nick Sirianni repeated the word “system” so many times it sounded like an AI chatbot. Both coaches were criticized for seeming unrefined. Proudly, both presented themselves as coaches who weren’t going to rehearse and wouldn’t be afraid to get emotional. For Lions and Eagles players and fans, that makes them authentic. It’s not a coincidence that they have been the two most successful coaches in the NFC since they were hired. Campbell thanks his parents, Larry and Betty, for their authenticity. Larry was a rancher and Betty a kind homemaker. He observed how they complemented each other, and that influenced him. They modeled a behavior that showed duality not only as acceptable, but as something worthy of celebration. He learned that he didn’t have to choose between one or the other, but that he could combine them in his own way.“I have the best of both,” says Campbell. “That’s truly who I am. I’m a hammer, like my father, but I’m also like my mother. I have emotions and I can feel people. I can feel when they’re hurting, or when they’re happy, or when they’re sad. And I don’t want them to feel that way. I want to help them.”
Dan Campbell
When Texas A&M recruited Campbell, Slocum wanted to visit Dan and his family. Campbell told him they would meet at his high school, Glen Rose, and then go to the family ranch. “You’ll never find it,” Campbell warned him. Upon arriving at the ranch, Betty and Larry welcomed Slocum at the kitchen table. Slocum remembers Larry wearing a hat, boots, and a large buckle. Slocum was impressed by Campbell’s passion, even at 18 years old. “That passion has been in him forever,” Slocum says.
Slocum uses the term “bell cow” to describe Campbell. He refers to a cow that leads and guides the herd, often with a bell for ranchers to locate it. Slocum says that Campbell always had a bell. He worked hard, and his teammates followed him. Campbell had a good NFL career (91 receptions, 934 yards, and 11 touchdowns in 102 games), playing for three teams over nine years, including the Lions from 2006 to 2008.
When Wood met Campbell, it was via video conference in early January 2021. Campbell was already connected when Wood’s audio was still connecting. Wood watched Campbell take a large sip of coffee and blurted out: “I want this job.” Wood laughed and said, “Hi, Dan, a pleasure.” The conversation that followed was a perfect prelude to Campbell’s legendary press conference. He spoke with contagious enthusiasm. At the time, the Lions considered Campbell and Titans offensive coordinator Arthur Smith as equals. Wood appreciated Campbell’s enthusiasm. “I thought he was going to jump through the phone,” Wood says now.
In the following weeks, Campbell became the favorite. The Lions offered him the job, and he accepted immediately. His first press conference was scheduled for January 21. However, that is not Dan Campbell’s style, and that’s why his press conference, now known as “the kneepad press conference”, has become one of the best presentations in NFL history. The quote about knee pads is what is most remembered from that day. But there’s much more to Campbell’s philosophy. For half an hour, he laid the groundwork for what he was about to do, something that had never been seen before. He talked a lot about toughness, but also about the importance of empathy and emotional intelligence. He showed a sense of humor early on, although he had to say several times: “It was a joke.” Campbell is a coffee man, and that day, in the live chat, someone wrote: “Caffeine doesn’t affect Dan. Dan affects caffeine.”Towards the end of his conference, Campbell said: “When we bring a winner to this city, it will be something we can all be proud of.” Then, he lit up the chat saying: “When you come to Detroit, you’ll get beat up.” He clarified that he was referring to football, and repeated: “It was a joke.” At the end of the question session for local reporters, Campbell hugged Wood and Ford Hamp. They told him they were proud to have him on the team, and Campbell changed into the Detroit Lions uniform and got to work.
The mockery was widespread, with social media and sports programs making fun of Campbell for the knee pad quote. “I heard people say he was an airhead,” says Wood. “Now, I think people see him as the most beloved coach in the league. There is no other Dan Campbell, but people are trying to find one.”
Immediately after the Lions fired Patricia in December 2020, Wood gathered a group of veteran players to address the situation. The players expressed concerns about the coaching staff’s accountability and the atmosphere in the building. When it was Stafford’s turn, he told Wood: “I’d like to meet with you alone.” In Wood’s office, Stafford requested a trade. Wood and the Lions kept the initial request out of the media. Then, the Lions began negotiating. Wood reached an agreement, but Stafford called from Cabo: “I want to be traded to the Rams,” he said.
Campbell made a specific pitch to get Jared Goff and draft picks from the Rams. Goff seemed like a broken quarterback. The negotiation was a success. Campbell began a difficult rebuild with Goff, which had little to do with football. Campbell believed Goff could harness the fighting spirit Detroit needed. Goff has a 28-8 record since 2023. In the 2021 preseason, Campbell combined rejuvenated veteran players with a draft class led by Penei Sewell and Amon-Ra St. Brown. The 2021 team didn’t win a game until December 5, but they fought to a 3-13-1 record. The Colts players and coaches were astonished by the level of aggression and toughness. “Passion, fire… the team was different,” says Lions assistant Scottie Montgomery. “We knew things were going to change.” A key part of Campbell’s magic was his openness and availability. Players praised his honesty. He doesn’t delegate individual meetings to position coaches, he does them himself. Taylor Decker asked Wood for a five-minute conversation to advocate for his line coach, Hank Fraley, but received a 20-minute call from Campbell. Fraley stayed and now coaches one of the best football lines.Several players highlighted the way Campbell delivers bad news. In 2023, when lineman Graham Glasgow was benched, Campbell explained the situation to him. “You have to look them in the eye and tell them those things,” says Campbell. Glasgow hated what he heard but focused on what the Lions wanted from him. He has been a starter in every game since then. “It broke my heart,” says Glasgow. “But he met with me personally and was direct. He answered all my questions. It wasn’t ‘Because I said so’.”
Multiple players also pointed to last year’s midseason trade for Browns pass rusher Za’Darius Smith as an example of how Campbell’s initial personality had been misinterpreted. Smith was preparing for a break, so Campbell sat down with him and told him he had earned it and, if he needed it, he should take it. Smith did, and the players took notice. Several Lions mentioned Smith’s situation as an example of how their supposed coach doesn’t treat them like mere pieces of meat.This new era was forged in the dark days of 2021. After their press conference, the Lions started with a 0-10-1 start. To those outside of Detroit, the results looked like the same old Lions, with a coach who wasn’t serious. The Lions were winless from December 6, 2020, to December 5, 2021. But Campbell avoided the recent wave of one-season coaches due to the atmosphere within the facility. The team’s executives, coaches, and players appreciated the team’s fight, and the atmosphere in the locker room often seemed like that of a team that was 10-0-1. In team meetings, Campbell was a master of pep talks, giving three- and four-minute speeches. That year, he emphasized that effort was present, even if the results were not. Keep fighting, he told them. This was how he led the entire franchise out of the darkness.“He understands people,” says lineman Dan Skipper. “As a former player, Dan knows there’s life outside the facility. That matters in the football locker room.”
Dan Skipper
It mentions that the “Hard Knocks” team in 2022 asked: “Did Dan do that for us? That was the most incredible team meeting we’ve ever seen!”. Team meetings are so exciting that some players watch them repeatedly. Wide receiver Tim Patrick signed with the Lions in 2024, in part because he liked Campbell’s clips. “Let me show you the last thing I watch before I go out on the field before every game,” Patrick says as he pulls out his phone last December. Near the top, he clicked on a video of Campbell.
“You have to get in the water to compete,” Campbell says in the video. “There are several teams that are on the shore. They come in a hurry and are on you. They are dangerous, man. But you have to grab them. If you can grab them, you can start dragging them into the dark abyss… and you can drown them.” Patrick, who was traded to the Jaguars in August, stares at the screen for a long time. “It sets the tone for what he wants from us,” Patrick says. “I missed a lot of this in person, so it helps me feel like I’m part of this culture.” Think about that for a second. The Lions’ culture is something that NFL teams are trying to replicate and that players want to be a part of. That culture spread in the offseason, with the Jets hiring former defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn and the Bears hiring offensive coordinator Ben Johnson as their new head coaches. Both coordinators even adopted their former mentor’s approach when it came time for their press conferences. “Buckle up and get ready for the ride,” Glenn told reporters. “We’re the damn New York Jets, and we’re built for this.” Meanwhile, Johnson went out of his way to say how good the NFC North is, with compliments for Campbell, as well as Kevin O’Connell in Minnesota. Then he gave Bears fans a dopamine overload by criticizing the Packers: “To be honest, I enjoyed beating Matt LaFleur twice a year.” When asked about Glenn and Johnson, Campbell smiled. “I’m proud of those two guys. I love them both,” says Campbell. “Without those two guys, would we be where we are? It would be hard to say yes. They were my teammates. We grew up together. It was something pretty special.” At the end of May, the Lions had their second spring OTAs session. Detroit is hot right now, literally and figuratively. The practice field is under the 80-degree sun, and the whole city has a new perspective. Just 12 years before, Detroit had become the largest city in the history of the United States to declare bankruptcy. Now, it is the fastest-growing part of Michigan, with economic growth at positive levels for the first time since bankruptcy. Detroit is back, and it would be foolish to trace all of that back to Campbell. But it would also be foolish to dismiss the rise of the city’s most popular thing, the Lions.There were rumors in the offseason about how Campbell would fare without Glenn and Johnson. But the early returns are that the Lions will be fine. The roster is loaded with talent across the board, especially on offense, and it’s impossible to discount the value of Campbell himself. He has a 28-8 record since 2023, with two playoff wins for a franchise that had one Super Bowl-era victory before his tenure. His aggressiveness on fourth down (an NFL-high 156 attempts and 88 conversions since he took over) has been relentless and will continue to be. And his ability to rally teams is remarkable: since Week 9 of the 2022 season, the Lions are undefeated after a loss. Perhaps the best question is, how will Glenn and Johnson fare without Campbell?
On this hot May day, Campbell is all over the practice field. His entire staff is boisterous, and he’s not afraid to come flying in when he needs to. At one point, he rushes in, blowing the whistle around his neck after Goff & Co. cook the Lions’ DBs for the fifth time in a row. His words are impossible to make out from a distance, but his feelings are quite obvious. Something wasn’t good enough there.
On one side, defensive star Aidan Hutchison makes his first appearance at OTAs, and local reporters rush to get a look at him as he recovers from a fractured tibia and fibula in December. He does light exercises for an hour or so, and practice ends. Campbell begins to leave the field when he meets Wood, the man who hired him in January 2021. They have become very close, so Wood comes out to watch practice quite often, even if he only ends up being there to greet Campbell. They talk for a few minutes before Campbell puts his big right hand on Wood’s shoulder to say goodbye.
He walks off the practice field and stops next to a blocking sled. Campbell is wearing a black Lions t-shirt and a white Lions hat, but the hat’s visor is at about a 45-degree angle above his head. He really likes to take his hat off and put it back on, often only putting it back on halfway. So he often sits at a vertical angle, as if the hat were doing a wheelie.This spot on the practice field is just outside the wall of the indoor facility where he was four years ago, preparing for his introductory press conference. There will be no tears this afternoon. But Campbell is a refreshing figure in the NFL: he actually seems like a real human being. That might seem like a micro-compliment in the grand scheme of humanity, but it’s the best compliment for an NFL coach. He could easily be programmed to say the safest, most boring jargon for eight minutes before walking away from the microphone. But he isn’t. Campbell is a live wire, and the league could use a few more of those.
