Dan Campbell, Detroit Lions (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)
The Detroit Lions are 0-2 with no wins in sight. While their record isn’t important during this rebuilding season, it’s hard to win without balance.
This is a rebuilding season for the Lions. Anyone who tells you anything different isn’t paying attention to what’s happening on the field.
The Motor City has waited decades for the Lions to become champions again. Meanwhile, the Red Wings, Tigers, and Pistons have all won multiple championships since 1957 when Detroit last reigned supreme in the NFL.
As a matter of fact, the Tigers and Pistons have won titles, dropped to their respective divisional cellars, and rebuilt to become championships once again in that time. Then of course there was the amazing 25-year playoff run by the Red Wings who won the Stanley Cup four times over that period.
As for the Lions? Well, they’ve re-tooled over and over again with only a single solitary playoff win over the Dallas Cowboys back on January 5, 1992, to show for it. There is no question they have been the Motown underachievers.
Currently, the Lions are in the hands of new general manager Brad Holmes and head coach Dan Campbell. These are, in essence, the two men who will decide the fate of the Honolulu Blue and Silver. They are the architects of what is being built and it is their insight and intuition that will either mold a championship team or this franchise’s latest failure.
While the Lions’ streak of 60 plus seasons without a championship isn’t a record in professional sports, their inability to build a team that was actually capable of contending for a title just might be.
The cupboard was pretty bare when Holmes and Campbell were hired by principal owner Sheila Ford Hamp last January. During the course of one offseason, there is only so much that can be done. So the early struggles the Lions are having are not really a surprise.
With several holes on the current roster, it will be difficult for the Lions to achieve the balance they need to win games. A balance that is measured by more than the ability to run and pass the ball.