The Detroit Lions returned from the bye and got some unexpected great news.
No, it wasn’t that safety Brian Branch will play 90 snaps against Green Bay on Sunday.
And it wasn’t that center Cade Mays will play 100 snaps against the Packers and make everyone forget Frank Ragnow.
The good news was that coach Dan Campbell was in a good mood. It was a fun mood, silly even, when he spoke with reporters for the first time in a week on Monday, Oct. 19.
Just as Campbell was wrapping up the answer to the second question he got, Free Press beat writer Dave Birkett quickly jumped in and posed the next question. If you’ve never attended a press conference, it’s a little like the panicky knife fight between contestants trying to buzz in at the end of “Jeopardy!”
Campbell cut off Birkett mid-question.
“I wasn't even done finished answering the question, Dave,” Campbell said, feigning indignation. “I was on a roll. I just finally got hot. I wasn't even going to answer it. I did.”
As reporters chuckled, Campbell ended his charade.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I'm done now. Sorry.”
Campbell’s demeanor reminded me of the old days, when he was looser and wore a race-car helmet to a press conference or went full meta by wearing a T-shirt with a picture of general manager Brad Holmes wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Campbell.
He even kicked off his press conference with a little dry wit after he was asked what he and his coaching staff accomplished during the bye.
“I got an extra hour of sleep at night,” he said. “I feel much better.”
There was no way Campbell was going to tell reporters what he and his staff actually learned or worked on that will give them an edge during the final 12-game stretch. But my guess is Campbell knows something that he believes will help the team.
Maybe it’s something as obvious as getting Branch, a former Pro Bowler, back from an Achilles injury. Or finally getting Mays, the big, free-agent addition at center, to make his debut after suffering a fractured wrist.
And maybe it’s that the much-maligned defense showed improvement at Arizona even without Branch. Or that the offensive line hit a high mark against the Cardinals, even without Mays, and earned Pro Football Focus’ weekly O-line award.
Or maybe, just maybe, Campbell knows the Packers aren’t all that great, aside from having a top-10 defense that excels at takeaways – though that advantage should be blunted by playing at Ford Field on Sunday, Oct. 25.
Oh, yeah, and don’t forget about the Packers having to face the Lions’ elite offense, which was tied with Buffalo as the NFL’s top-scoring offense before Monday. The Packers have a bottom-third offense that averages 21.2 points – a whopping 11.6 points fewer than the Lions.
There’s something else about Campbell. He’s a thinker and a tinkerer, even if everything else about the man belies his true nature. Even if he slept in an extra entire hour during the bye, you can bet he woke up main-lining coffee as he dove deep on the Lions’ deficiencies, then surfaced feeling better about his team.
He also brought up a good comparison between this year’s Week 6 bye and last year’s Week 8 bye. Even though the Lions had beaten Tampa Bay entering last year’s break, Campbell knew something was wrong.
“But there were some things that you could feel a little bit,” he said. “And that, in some regards, I feel better going into this bye than even I did last year because I know we're ascending and we're young and we're growing and that's exciting. Sometimes you feel like you're topped off and maybe you're beginning to deteriorate because of issues, [being] worn down, age, whatever it is.
“So that's exciting. I do feel like we're on the rise here a little bit. We've just got to keep getting better. We've got to keep testing ourselves.”
That test will come soon enough in the next two games, at home against Green Bay and Minnesota. Those games should tell us a lot about the Lions and their playoff chances. But for one day at least, Campbell’s demeanor told us plenty.
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on X @cmonarrez.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dan Campbell being in a fun, silly mood feels like good omen for Lions
