Dan Campbell, Lions Trying to Avoid the Pitfalls of Last Year’s Success

Detroit is actively looking to counteract the dangers of expectations after a run to the NFC Championship game last season. Plus, how the Vikings positioned themselves to overcome J.J. McCarthy’s injury.

Campbell is aware of the danger of expectations after the Lions made a run to the NFC Championship game last season. / Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports

WASHINGTON-TO-BALTIMORE—Apologies for my Tuesday notes coming a bit late this week. So let’s not waste any more time …

• Few teams go into 2024 with the expectations that the Lions carry with them. Rightfully so. Detroit was in the NFC title game, has won 22 of its last 30 games (playoffs included), and is stocked with young, ascending players, sturdy lines and athletes everywhere.

So how does that change the dynamic for a team that spent the last three years climbing?

It was the first thing Dan Campbell thought of as he left the field last January in Santa Clara, having just sustained a devastating, season-ending 34–31 loss to the 49ers.

“I knew that the minute that clock went to zero in San Francisco, that was going to be the challenge. I already knew that,” he said. “As disappointed as you are, you’re already into next year. You’re in a black hole. The movie, everything’s flying by you. You’ve gone so fast into the future, and you already know it’s going to be hard. It’s going to be a lot harder. The challenge that comes with it is you believe you’re going to be better. You should be.

“You know you’ll be your own worst enemy. If it doesn’t work, you’re the reason why. It starts with me and the coaches. I’ve made that point from day one once we got back from San Francisco that our enemy is complacency and entitlement. The players know that. We hit that head on. We talk about it. It’s all about putting the work back in. Our work speaks for itself, not our reputation, not anything else.”

Campbell and I laughed about how Bill Parcells (who he played for) and Sean Payton (who he worked for) used the same device in situations like that one—they’d put mouse traps all over the facility, to remind players not to take the cheese. “When I say mouse traps,” he explained, “it feels like 100 of them in the locker room hanging down.”

The Lions coach decided not to repeat that particular gimmick. But he also didn’t waste any time addressing the elephant in the room, immediately telling his players when they arrived back in the spring, that they were “starting over, from Day 1.”

As he saw it, that would reinforce what it took to get near the mountaintop in the first place.

And the players would tell you that part, in Jared Goff’s words, “was real easy” anyway, just because of the types of people the Lions have in their locker room. Amon-Ra St. Brown and Penei Sewell were examples the quarterback then raised as examples—two guys who got monster second contracts this offseason, yet came back the same as they were before.

Goff and Campbell have been adamant about doling out appropriate praise to every player on the Lions' roster—not just to those already receiving attention. / Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK

That said, though, Goff did admit that there are little things the Lions have needed to keep an eye on, with one being the amount of attention guys are getting for all the success, relative to what some of their teammates may be receiving.

“Maybe St. Brown’s getting all the love,” Goff says. “That doesn’t mean this guy is less important to our success. And making sure guys know that, Dan is as good as I’ve been around at doing that. Whether he’s doing it consciously or unconsciously, he’s great at making everyone know when they’re living up to the standard, when they’re not, and then if they’re not getting the external credit they deserve, making sure internally they know we all know that they deserve that.”

Goff pointed to Kalif Raymond as an example of a guy who does a little bit of everything, and whom the coaches are consciously crediting both publicly and privately—because he deserves it, and also to make sure there’s appreciation within the organization for what everyone is doing for the greater good.

Then, there’s the other side of this, in how the hype can make opponents tougher too.

Simply put, no one is overlooking the Lions anymore. In fact, Detroit’s now a team circled on other teams’ schedules as a measuring-stick/prove-it sort of matchup. Campbell and Goff can remember being there pretty recently—where beating a playoff-bound Cardinals team late in 2021 provided a real turning point for the franchise. Others now would be justified in saying that beating Detroit could create the same sort of pivotal moment for a team.

As such, no one’s going to pull any punches when the Honolulu Blue is on the opposite sideline.

“I know what it was like two years ago, three years ago—you’re throwing the kitchen sink at everybody. You’re throwing it at everybody,” Campbell said. “Everything you’ve got in your arsenal, you’re going to throw. Anything you can possibly do, offense, defense, special teams, it doesn’t matter what it is. That’s what we’re going to get. You’re going to get a lot of unscouted looks, a lot of trickery. We’ve got to be able to overcome.”

And to drive the point home, Campbell said he’s been on a team that couldn’t—one that fell into the mousetraps of success. He wouldn’t say which team it was, but it stuck with him, and it was on his mind this offseason as he got the plan for the next set of Lions going.

“It was all encompassing—we didn’t quite do the things we did before,” he said. “We were an older team. We were a more veteran team than we are here, backed off a lot of things for some guys. You’re hoping that you’ll be O.K., and it just didn’t work out that way. Then, we had some injuries. You become average. You go from a top dog to average pretty quick.”

The memory was strong enough to be front of mind for Campbell back in January, and it’s still front of mind now. Which, as I see it, should give the Lions their best chance to avoid taking the cheese.

• J.J. McCarthy’s injury sucked to see, plain and simple.

We’ll know more when the Minnesota Vikings quarterback undergoes a procedure—with a meniscus tear, surgery is needed to see whether a trim or repair is required. The former would probably sideline McCarthy for a month. The latter could end his rookie season.

Either way, this is where the way in which Minnesota coach Kevin O’Connell built his quarterback room pays dividends. Sam Darnold was brought in to be a viable starting option, and Darnold has shown every sign in camp that he can be that. Nick Mullens is a competent veteran backup who doesn’t need the practice reps that McCarthy and Darnold did coming into camp, which allowed the coaches to load those two up with work.

And the rest of the offensive roster is, obviously, really good.

McCarthy's injury will mean that Sam Darnold is posed to taking the starting snaps behind center in Week 1. / Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports

Essentially, whether McCarthy is out for four weeks or four months, the Vikings will be fine. The rookie will get his knee issue resolved, one way or the other, and come back with the extra time in the classroom, and a different perspective on what’s happening on the field. Darnold will show what he can do. Minnesota should be plenty competitive.

Things aren’t ideal here, but they certainly could be worse.

• Haason Reddick turns 30 next month. He’s made over $50 million as a pro, and is scheduled to make another $14.25 million this year. No one’s crying for the Jets’ estranged pass-rusher.

That said, you can also see his position in asking for a trade. Those monetary figures are well short of what a guy with 58 career sacks and four straight seasons of double-digit sacks would expect in today’s game. He’s switched positions, played on prove-it deals and worked through a lot to get to a place where he finally has leverage.

So why shouldn’t he use it?

These guys have such a small window to get paid. Nick Bosa makes $34 million per year. Danielle Hunter’s APY is at $29 million. Reddick isn’t what those guys are, but the fact that he makes less than half of what either of them do paints a pretty good picture on why he’s upset. And why he’s willing to go to the lengths he has to get a correction to that.

• Brandon Aiyuk’s in a pretty interesting position. As we wrote in the Monday column, the Steelers’ offer comes with an APY around the $28 million that a few other receivers, like Jaylen Waddle, landed on earlier this offseason. The raw number isn’t far off from where the Niners are and San Francisco, I’ve heard, moved for the first time since May over the last few days.

So if the Niners match the Steelers’ number, is that enough for Aiyuk to go back? Or has this gotten personal enough to where he wants to go elsewhere?

I’ll be interested to find out.

• Ja’Marr Chase wasn’t spotted at Tuesday’s practice, which is a departure from how he’s handled the rest of his hold-in. Up until now, he’d been outside for all the Bengals’ on-field work and, by all accounts, has been engaged and helpful with his coaches and teammates.

Chase (right) has not been practicing with the Bengals as he negotiates a new deal with the franchise. / Kareem Elgazzar-USA TODAY Sports

What gives? Well, until now, Chase’s camp and the Bengals hadn’t engaged much in contract negotiations, presumably as Chase waited for Aiyuk or CeeDee Lamb to affirm that the market materially changed with Justin Jefferson’s blockbuster extension. So it’s certainly possible there was some new back-and-forth that didn’t go well, based on the gap that exists between Jefferson’s money and where the rest of the market sits.

Chase and Jefferson, teammates at LSU and close friends, were in touch on their contract situations all offseason. The belief had been that Chase was waiting for Jefferson to set the market, and having a pipeline to information on his buddy’s negotiation obviously didn’t hurt. But that we’re here, two months after Jefferson got paid, without a ton of progress, probably isn’t the best sign.

That said, there’s plenty of time for the Bengals and Chase to work something out. And it’s possible, as was the case with Joe Burrow last year, that the real deal-spurring deadline comes in Week 1.

• The Browns’ desire to move to a dome in the suburbs affirms two things. One, most teams going forward will want a roof on a new stadium, so they can jam as many money-making events as possible into venues that are increasingly costly. Two, teams will eye the suburbs so they can develop real estate around the new stadiums, and take their cut of the outside business that their games bring to a region.

• I’m excited to see both Patriots rookie quarterbacks—Drake Maye and Joe Milton—on Thursday night at Gillette. Milton’s six years in college featured flashes of potential that dwarfed his performance at both Tennessee and Michigan. How he builds off a tantalizing preseason debut last week is worth paying attention to, even if any optimism should be tempered by his previous track record.

• Per Sportico, the Cowboys are the first franchise in sports history to achieve an 11-figure valuation. That’s the power of the NFL. It’s the power of the Dallas brand. And it’s the power of Jerry Jones as the team’s Barnum Bailey. The Rams were second on the list, more than $2 billion shy of, yes, the aptly named America’s team.

• Ravens are up next for me, and I’m excited to see how some of the changes on the offensive line and in the front seven have taken hold.