The Detroit Lions have seen a fair amount of outside criticism regarding their practicing habits and how it may impact the team’s overall health. While some are just looking for rational explanations as to why the Lions have been one of the most injured teams under coach Dan Campbell, others—like 49ers linebacker Fred Warner—have more specific criticisms of the Lions, particularly when it comes to live tackling during practices.
“At some point, old Dan is going to come to his senses, man, and be like,
‘Listen, this ain’t making nobody better, brother,’” Warner said on the St. Brown Brothers podcast earlier this year. “We can still get our work in without bringing guys to the ground.”
On Wednesday, Campbell was asked if he was considering changing how the approach training camp in the face of all these injuries, and it’s fair to say that’s not going to happen.
“We’re going to push it. We’re going to push. That’s what we do, but we’ll do it smart,” Campbell said. “We have got to get these guys ready for a season.”
Campbell has had this philosophy since he took over the team. His best explanation for why they do high-intensity, live-tackling drills during camp was captured by HBO cameras when Detroit was on Hard Knocks. The Lions still have video of the speech up here.
“I had a couple of you look at me like ‘What the (expletive)? Why are we going live (tackling)?’ I got it. Here’s what I need, man. I need you to trust me. I swear to god I’m not a lunatic. I swear to you. If I absolutely knew we could get to where we need to get without ever putting pads on, I would do it. I swear to you. But also for us as a team to get better defensively, what is the essence of what we do? What are the two things? Pursuit and tackle. Pursuit and tackle. Man, if you don’t work on tackling, if we don’t work on run after the catch, making a move, man, what are we doing? Then we finally get to Week 8 and we come to life because we’ve got enough reps? That’s why I’m doing it. I swear, man, I don’t want to put anybody in jeopardy, but we have to do it, man. I believe it. […] I’ve got a plan, I swear to you. All I think about is you guys. That’s all I think about. That’s all I (expletive) think about is you guys, and how I set you up for the best possible advantage I can give you to have a season. I swear to you, man. I just need you to trust me. That’s all.”
The Lions have made some slight changes to their offseason program. They got rid of rookie minicamp earlier this spring in order to take some load off of a busy offseason for rookies. They have also intentionally passed on joint practices this season. Instead, Campbell reiterated that they may play more starters during the preseason games than they have in the past.
“There’s a chance we play some of these guys in the preseason without the joint practices, and so I’m going to do what I think is best to prepare these guys for 17 weeks,” Campbell said.
There is no perfect statistic to show how injured the Lions were compared to other teams, but FTN Fantasy’s “Adjusted Games Lost” is a pretty good measure of how much each team has been affected by injuries in each season. Here’s where the Lions have ranked every year under Campbell:
(1st = least injured, 32nd = most injured):
2025: 31st
2024: 25th
2023: 18th
2022: 27th
2021: 30th
Campbell also reiterated that they have to construct the right program to push the players hard while also knowing when to take the gas pedal off and let players recover. They won’t push players beyond their physical limits, but they aren’t going to hold back out of fear for injury, either.
“Understand that we have got to be smart about it and we can’t break them in training camp, and so the approach will stay the same,” Campbell said. “It will, and you have got to get ready, and you can’t let fear of injury scare you away from what you believe in.”
