You could hear the passion in Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell’s voice on Tuesday morning as he faced another barrage of questions about the team’s lackluster start to the season—this time courtesy of John Jansen and Jim Costa, the hosts of 97.1 The Ticket’s morning show. As the interview progressed, Campbell got more and more passionate with his answers, even admitting at the end of the interview that, “I am fired up, man. I am. I’m going forward, not backward.”
Here’s a breakdown of the biggest
takeaways from Campbell radio appearance.
He’s not accepting mediocrity from the offense
Campbell has received a bit of criticism for continuing to point to the offense needing to be better, when the Lions defense is arguably the worst in the league. On Tuesday, Campbell set the record straight, noting that the offense is too talented to accept what has been a relatively mediocre performance. When asked if the defense is putting too much pressure on the offense to be perfect, here was Campbell’s emphatic response
“If you want to be great, they should want to score 35 points a game at a minimum. That’s what greatness is. That’s what they’re charged with. We’ve got plenty of weapons on offense, and if we’re going to accept mediocrity, then no. Then yeah, we can make all of the excuses in the world. But if we want to spit and sputter and be average, that’s one thing.
“We’re not going to be average. We’re going to raise the floor on these guys. Man, we’re going to push them.
“We’ve got too much offensively right now. Our quarterback’s too good. Our playmakers are too good. And we’ve got a young, hungry offensive line that’s got a ton of room to grow.”
While the offense ranks in the top-10 or top-five in many stats, there are some significant areas to improve that could be described as average. In the running game, they’re just 16th in yards per rush (4.2) and 17th in rush EPA. They are also just 14th in third down conversion rate (39.1%), and they’ve gone three-and-out t-17th most.
Where the defense needs to improve most
Jansen led off the interview asking Campbell if he could pick one thing for the defense to improve upon this week, what would it be? Campbell’s answer was a familiar one:
“I want our guys to be where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there. We need to be on point. Our discipline has got to clean up,” Campbell said.
This matches almost verbatim what Campbell said after Detroit’s loss against the Bills in Week 2.
“Be where you’re supposed to be when you’re supposed to be there and do it with urgency across the board,” Campbell said after the Bills game.
As to what is causing players to be out of place, Campbell listed a few things. For one, players are compensating for other players’ mistakes. Then, he believes the Lions are getting undisciplined with their eyes.
“Probably boot(legs), dirty eyes on some stuff,” Campbell said. “The slam boots, the overs. That’s where we’re getting in trouble a little bit. It’s not really man or match coverage.”
Ultimately, Campbell believes that despite the coverage issues, they have capable players in the building.
“Inevitably, somebody’s going to be locked up one-on-one with no help, and you’ve got to win. And we have the guys that can win,” Campbell saids.
Looking for someone on defense to step up vs. tight ends
We talked last week about the Lions’ struggles against tight ends. With one of the best tight ends in Trey McBride on deck for Cardinals week, the radio hosts asked Campbell how they plan to prepare. He gave a pretty unique answer:
“You know what I want? I want somebody to come in tomorrow and say, ‘I want McBride.’ That’s what I want,” Campbell said. “I want to know who that’s going to be on our defense.”
When asked who he’d prefer that player to be, he answered, “Anybody.”
On defending Kelvin Sheppard
Campbell noted that he certainly understands all the criticism of Lions defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard given the results and the statistics. But he backed Sheppard full-throatedly.
“I believe in Kelvin Sheppard, and I believe we’ve got a lot of meat on the bone with this defense right now. Like I said, we’re going to continue to tweak. We’ve got more things that we can do with what we have here. There’s different calls, we’ve got to be more disciplined, and then we’re going to get some guys more opportunities to play here. We’re going to find the right recipe.
“Here’s what I do know: At crunch time in that game the other day, at the end of the game with our defense on the field, we got two critical stops. That’s what I do know. So at the end of the day, after all of that, we had a chance to win that game and we couldn’t close it out. So I’ll take that.“
You can watch the entire interview below:
