Jack Campbell felt the pain of missing the playoffs long into the offseason.
He wrestled with the revenge tour concept and wanting to show the entire NFL the Detroit Lions weren’t the team that finished 9-8 last year. He beat himself up over the defense – his defense – not doing enough to keep the Lions out of last place in the NFC North. And even though he had the best season of his career with 176 tackles and a first-team All-Pro selection, he wondered what more he could have done on the field.
And then sometime this spring, he had an awakening.
“It’s a disappointment, but damn, we can’t go back and change it,” Campbell told the Free Press this week. “So it’s how we learn from it, grow from it and right now be where our feet are at. And our feet’s
here in 2026-2027 and the goal’s to go win a Super Bowl. But you can’t do that if you’re always just focusing on – in my opinion – things in the past.”
The Lions open the 2026 season Sunday, Sept. 13, against the New Orleans Saints (1 p.m. Fox) with Super Bowl aspirations that are alive and well no matter how many pundits put them behind the Los Angeles Rams, Seattle Seahawks, Philadelphia Eagles and whoever else in the NFC pecking order.
The Lions return most of the nucleus they’ve had the past three seasons, when they came a whisker away from making their first Super Bowl in the 2023 season before losing the NFC championship game to the San Francisco 49ers in heartbreaking fashion; won a franchise-record 15 regular season games in 2024 only to have defensive injuries and five turnovers derail their playoff run immediately; and slumped down the stretch last year with three straight losses in December.
[ WATCH: Make the new "Freep Sports Show" your go-to Detroit/Michigan sports podcast, available anywhere you listen to podcasts (Apple, Spotify). Join us live on our YouTube stream after every Lions game this season. ]
On defense, Campbell, Aidan Hutchinson, Alim McNeill, Derrick Barnes, Kerby Joseph and Brian Branch remain, and Jared Goff, Jahmyr Gibbs, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jameson Williams, Sam LaPorta and Penei Sewell remain on offense.
Twelve players who are among the best at their positions in the NFL, plus the general manager who put it all together (Brad Holmes) and the coach who lifted the franchise from the ashes five years ago (Dan Campbell).
“We have one hell of a team,” Jack Campbell said. “But it’s also the NFL, we’re going up against a lot of great players and a lot of great talent. So, it’s, what are we going to do about it?”
Outside of the Rams, who return an MVP quarterback in Matthew Stafford, acquired reigning Defensive Player of the Year Myles Garrett in an offseason trade and convinced future Hall of Famer Aaron Donald to come out of retirement, the Lions have as much star power as any team in the NFL.
Sewell is a three-time first-team All-Pro, St. Brown has earned the honor twice and Campbell was selected last year for the first time in his career. Gibbs is the NFL’s highest-paid running back, Joseph has more interceptions than anyone the past four seasons, Williams might be the NFL’s premier deep threat and Hutchinson finished fourth in the league with 14½ sacks last year in his return from a 2024 broken leg.
“I know there's been some really, really talented teams out there and they stacked them at all positions and it just didn't quite work the way that everybody hoped it was going to work,” Dan Campbell said. “And so it's about having the right guys out there on the field and I feel like we do.”
Beyond the Lions’ top-line talent, Campbell’s optimism is rooted in the back-to-the-basics approach he took to the offseason and training camp, and a back half of the roster he said is filled with players who fit the Lions’ mold.
The Lions eschewed joint practices this summer to spend training camp working on themselves. They held more intrasquad scrimmage periods than they have in recent years, did more good-on-good work with their best players on the field and walked away feeling ready for the regular season.
“When I was with Bruce Arians [with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers] we had a lot of older guys that played a lot of ball and he wanted to get them to the season and that was his mindset,” linebacker Devin White said. “But over here we got a lot of young, healthy, spring chickens is what I like to call it and we’re flying around, so I can’t [compare] nothing with another team and another coach and how they do it with this team. What this team do and what this coach do is going to make this team better, so I’m buying into what they do.”
White is emblematic of the type of player the Lions have put in place around their Dirty Dozen, savvy veterans and scrappy young players who were overlooked and have something to prove.
White was cast off after five years in Tampa, split one unproductive season between the Eagles and Houston Texans and rejuvenated his career with the Las Vegas Raiders in 2025. He’s in line to play as the Lions’ No. 3 linebacker this season and wrecked havoc this summer as a blitzer.
D.J. Wonnum, Tyler Lacy, Chuck Clark, Rock Ya-Sin and Avonte Maddox are other veterans on one-year deals expected to play starting-type roles to open the season, and Campbell mentioned backup tight end Brock Wright, practice squad (for now) receiver Tom Kennedy and special teams players Hogan Hatten and Khalil Dorsey as other examples of “things that I love about” the team.
“It’s those key role players,” Campbell said. “Those role players are big and they're the ones that kind of, they're a little bit of that glue that binds those premier players together.”
As good as their roster is, the Lions enter the season with big question marks on both sides of the ball.
Joseph and Branch will miss at least the first four weeks of the season rehabbing from injuries that cut short their seasons last year. There’s no guarantee they’ll regain their Pro Bowl form when they return. And their absence leaves the Lions without any proven playmakers in the secondary.
Maddox and Clark are expected to open Week 1 as the Lions’ starting safeties, with Thomas Harper also in the mix.
On the offensive line, the Lions will be without new starting center Cade Mays for a least a month while he recovers from a broken wrist. They have new starters at both tackle spots – Sewell is moving from right to left tackle this season and rookie Blake Miller will start on the right side. And they could rotate Christian Mahogany and Ben Bartch at left guard early in the season.
The sooner the Lions find continuity up front, the better equipped they’ll be to reach their potential, which if all goes according to plan could mean a long playoff run and no regrets in February 2027.
“I think we're pretty internally motivated and want to win a championship and want to be the last team standing,” Goff said. “Last year is a bad taste, but we got however many chances in front of us now to go make a right.”
Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Lions think 2026 mix of stars and stitches can finally equal Super Bowl
