Dan Campbell, Detroit Lions (Photo by DetroitFreePress Syndication)
The Detroit Lions are ready to open the season with Jared Goff as their new field general. How Goff performs will decide what the Lions do next April.
It’s a new season with a new regime and a new quarterback. It couldn’t possibly smell more like a rebuild if the Lions just cut everyone and started signing players off the street. Actually, I guess they did a little of that already, didn’t they?
New general manager Brad Holmes and head coach Dan Campbell have taken the town by storm. Unlike their predecessors, Holmes isn’t afraid to speak to the press and doesn’t hide away from the media until his own personally designated groundhog day when he pops out of his office and gives little to no answers about his team.
As for Campbell, well, if the previous regime thought that everything is a covert operation and giving out information was taboo, Motor City Dan is as diametrically the opposite as he can be. Campbell is more than willing to beguile the press by telling them the plain simple truth and then watch them stare in disbelief when they find out he wasn’t spinning any coach-speak.
There is literally nothing that Dan Campbell has done that he didn’t tell the media he was going to do. In his honesty, he has built a bridge to Lions fans that we have not seen in decades. The Honolulu Blue and Silver faithful have appreciated his candor and if for no other reason hope he succeeds.
If Holmes and Campbell don’t succeed it won’t be from a lack of effort in their talent searches, assembling an outstanding coaching staff, or galvanizing a locker room that had completely rebelled against the previous regime.
This season is about laying the foundation, but that doesn’t mean Dan Campbell doesn’t want to win. He’s willing to go through growing pains, but if he can lead the Lions to victory on Sundays he will do so.
Probably the biggest key to the success or failure of these Lions will be the play of quarterback Jared Goff. Holmes and Campbell have said he is ‘the man’ and Goff himself expects to be Detroit’s new franchise passer. However, what these Motor City cats do in next April’s draft will be a direct result of how Goff performs.