I don’t know how you feel about this distinction, but I love it! This regime is very clear about who they are and what they want. Athletic, gritty, football players who “like to f–ing people up.”
Has there ever been another Lion’s coach whose drafting and personality so matched the identity of the city. THAT’s the new wrinkle to me. These knee-biters we’ll watch next year just feel like “Detroit kinda guys” to me already. I’m going to cheer for them on every play.
I love it, but I can’t help listening to the voice in my head–the voice of a Lions fan since the 80s–going whoah, whoah, hold on there bub, let’s see what things look like on the field.
I want to be clear, I absolutely love the culture change that the current staff is looking to implement, and despite MAJOR skepticism about the front office, I love the mix of young fresh minds and experienced hands they’ve assembled. Assuming people can put their egos aside–and all signs point to yes–I think they can do great things. And I’m certainly rooting for that to happen.
HOWEVER. I can’t help thinking that a lot of this talk is eerily similar to the things people were saying here when we hired… Rod Marinelli.
I think DC is a much more credible HC candidate than Marinelli for a million reasons, not least because he has a real GM and front office behind him. But it’s hard not to see similarities.
Also a weird thing I noticed: the Lions coaches of the past who’ve come in here hot to trot on building a culture of toughness (going back to Bobby Ross, Rod Marinelli, Jim Schwartz) were a mixed bag at best. For whatever reason, we’ve seemed to have the most success under “players coaches” like Caldwell and Fontes.
I think Campbell is really more like Sean Payton than Parcells.
I say that because a lot of attention comes from both Payton and MCDC having a history with Parcells, but I think Campbell has maybe been influenced more by Payton.
In an interview with Pat McAfee… he was talking about what he learned from Payton, and he mentioned how well Payton relates to his players. Seems like quite a few people have said how well Campbell relates to his players as well.
One big distinction I would like to make between Rod and what we have right now is this. Rod believed that all you needed was effort and heart. He lived in a fantasy land where the guy with the biggest heart won, regardless of size, speed and overall talent. Just give him guys who were all in, and he’d give you a good football team. I believe this was something Rod truly believed in and had success with…but he also had his success as a position coach so having his one unit underpowered with high effort didn’t spoil the entire bunch. And of course Rod helped one of the worst GMs in history create the ultimate terrible defense. We had undersized DTs playing next to undersized DEs playing in front of undersized LBs. It was the worst scenario imaginable and its why we gave up nearly 3,000 yards rushing and 31 TDs.
The new regime gets a “wait and see” from me…just like you. I want to see their words turn into action. But so far I have noticed they actually care about talent and measurables. Talent is at the top of their list next to football character. For Rod it was football character far and above everything else. With this group they don’t prioritize measurables as long as the guy looks good on tape. However, they have said they have some minimums they don’t really want to go below. Rod didn’t care…just give him small, slow “football guys” and he would give us a winner. (sarcasm detected) Quinn was okay with slower players, but he really broke the mold with Teez Tabor. Campbell mentioned his positional minumums as far as measurables because its hard to compete if you are below X measurement at Y position. He specifically gave CB as an example and said a 40 time that was close to Teez Tabor’s 40 time. Which leads me to believe he is far from Rod but he also would not repeat Quinn’s biggest “mistake.”
I hope you are right and I think the reason would be twofold. First, I’ve pointed out that the “genius” of Parcells kind of left the building whenever he didn’t have Belichick on his staff. Dan Campbell had the Parcells without Bill Belichick experience. What’s interesting to me is Aaron Glenn had Bill Parcells with Belichick…and later had Parcells without Belichick. I’d love to hear his perspective on it (in a real setting, not out in the media).
The second part is that Campbell experienced Parcells when DC was a player and BP was a coach. He didn’t get to observe on the same level as being a coach on BP’s staff. DC was able to observe Payton as a coach on his staff, which is a different view.
Campbell has come out and said he believes that’s his biggest strength. Not only the ability to relate to players on a general level. But the ability to read players and understand what it takes to individually motivate each of them. He said he recognizes that players are not one size fits all…and while you need to challenge one guy and tell him he can’t do it to motivate him…you can’t turn around and do that to the next guy. You need to read each guy and see what makes him tick. Bringing it full circle back to Fatty Matty, he didn’t read the room nor did he get to know individual players. He just came in with tricks from New England and expected them to work. They didn’t.
Truer words were never spoken my friend. I honestly think the difference between the Marinellis and Bobby Rosses of old is that Campbell is a football player. He comes across as a “players coach” to me that doesn’t assume he’s superior to the guys he’s leading. He IS football tough for real, not as talk.
I was unaware of that but I’m not taking anything away from Parcels whose philosophy and system produced a coaching tree FULL of winners (incl. Payton & Belichick).
Hear me out. Parcels turned TWO garbage heap teams into SB contenders and winners within 4 years Both times (Giants & Patriots - I’m not even counting the total turnaround of the Jets because he only turned them from a 4-28 team the two years before him into the best team in the AFC in the 2 years after he took over). Belichick has never done anything close to that, not once. Never.
In fact, Belichick’s career average wins w/o Tom Brady, The GOAT as his field general, is 7 wins a season - just like last season. And his coaching tree produces a bunch of Patricias.
Parcels W/L should be worse than Bilichecks because Parcels repeatedly took garbage and made it the best. Belichick left his 5-11 squad in Cleveland to take over the team that Parcel’s left him in New England (that included Tedy Bruschi, Ty Law, Willie McGinest, and Adam Vinatieri not to mention Drew Bledsoe and Troy Brown) then lucked onto Tom Brady to drive his system and dominated…until Brady left last season. But Brady continued to dominate and without him - even with a 20 year head start - Belichick went back to his old 7-9…
I’m surprised I wrote all that cuz I don’t really care about either coach. I’m a Lions guy my whole life. I just respect excellence and I think I’ve made a good case that Parcels just plain is.
Bobby Ross and Nellie were “grandfatherly” energies. Ross was like my grandpa - cantankerous, grumpy, rarely happy. Nellie was softer. Coach Dan’ll rip your GD head off. He’s an alpha and coaches like one. He has the force required to stand in font of all the scattered bullshit that comes toward a Lions HC. He has the faith backed by strength. He doesn’t think he can…he knows he can. He will not ask himself the question “why can’t we do it.” His personality is more likely to seek different ways to succeed…“I WILL get this done…How?”
Caldwell was a different energy. He was stoic and unaffected by his surroundings. I think he was better than he got credit for, but he was surrounded by a cesspool of negativity and people committed to unhealthy ways of being.
Dan is in position to grow…and grow…and grow…and hopefully win a SB.
Our biggest challenge has been ourselves. That will become more a strength. Soon, our biggest challenge will be the officials.
Its weird to think that we are talking about 2 coaches, but Dan actually played 3 seasons under Rod in Detroit. It would be hard to find a coach who knows more about what happened with Rod and why it did or didn’t work than Dan Campbell.
It’s funny to me that MCDC has been christened “good” by the majority of Lions fans and has become somewhat of an empty vessel that fans fill with what they think “good” should look like.
Guys like Natty fill up that vessel with stuff about “energy” and mental positioning stuff. Some posters focus on his deep football acumen and strategy, while others extol Dan’s excellent ability to balance motivation, challenge, and support.
The reality is that all of that stuff is wishful thinking. Don’t get me wrong, I hope all of it ends up being true, but I see a ton of projecting going on regarding our head coach.
Scoreboard doesn’t lie, hard to deny Belichick is the most successful coach in history, at least by counting titles. But Scheme makes a great case for Bill Parcells–and I’d add to it that Parcells’ impact on the game is far greater than Belichick’s. Parcells’ coaching tree is at least as successful as Bill Walsh’s, arguably more so. He had more effect on more people and more teams than Belichick likely ever will.
I take nothing away from Belichick, he’s a genius. But his impact doesn’t really extend beyond his own teams–as we’ve seen from almost every other coach and executive to come from his system.
To expound further on that, Dan’s got a prototypical middle-aged white guy approach to football and its mentality. That resonates with a good many fans and posters here because, well, the overwhelming majority of us are at least two of those three things (and I’d bet a solid majority are all three).
My concern has always been:
how the tough-guy-turn-the-intensity-up-to-eleven-eat-drink-sleep-football approach will resonate with today’s player and
what other tricks he has up his sleeve when biting kneecaps doesn’t produce any more wins than sharp-shoveled pad level
I’ll admit that much of the talk thus far has been good, so that’s encouraging. But talk is super cheap this time of year. I always go back to Chip Kelly saying that he’ll run the system that’s best for the players on the roster, and then that best system always ending up being the up-tempo college offense he ran everywhere else.
I think Dan is going to be able to extend his coaching reach a little bit further than just middle aged white guys. Let me make the distinction by comparing the Eagles and Lions.
