Every year at the NFL combine, there are lots of words. Some are real, some are smokescreens and some are real smokescreens.
It can be hard to figure out which is which. But that’s why you have me, a professional parser of pigskin parlance. I’ve been at it a really, really long time, which means I know almost nothing more than you do.
But the combine is wrapping up, giving us time to read the tea leaves and decipher what the Lions’ brass actually said about their early plans for the coming season.
That’s not a bad thing, since tea might help to settle everyone’s stomach as we try to digest what coach Dan Campbell and general manager Brad Holmes said in Indianapolis. There has been some turnover on Campbell’s staff and he addressed the decisions he has made — and the big one he hasn’t.
It’s normal and natural for things to change for a team that’s coming off a 3-13-1 season that launched a rebuild. Yes, there were lots of injuries and extenuating circumstances, but overall, it can’t be classified as anything less than a disappointment.
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What I question about changes coming off this kind of a season is whether they’re absolutely necessary or being made for the sake of helping the decision-makers look like they’re doing something. Are they making meaningful changes or just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?
But the big decision was the one Campbell didn’t make, choosing to kick the can down the road on whether he or newly promoted offensive coordinator Ben Johnson will call plays this year.
“I’m going to make that decision sometime between now and the first game of the season,” Campbell told reporters. “I’m just going to let this go as it goes and just get a feel of it. Let Ben go, let him fly, and I’ll be involved and we’ll be talking about it. Where we go from here. How we build it. Where do the little things that we need to get better at and what we want to improve and what we kind of want to make our own.
“And then I’ll decide. I mean, I’ll decide at some point. But I’m not in any hurry with that, either.”
I appreciate what Campbell is saying here: He wants to take his time and not rush to judgment, perhaps because he feels burned after overestimating Anthony Lynn’s play-calling abilities.
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But there are two problems with what Campbell is saying.
First, if you don’t know whether your offensive coordinator can handle play-calling, you probably shouldn’t promote him because that’s the main function of the job, unless the head coach happens to be an offensive genius like Sean McVay or Andy Reid.
Second, when Campbell says he’s “not in any hurry” to decide, someone needs to remind him that this is the NFL, a league that waits for no one. You think the new head coaches in Chicago and Minnesota aren’t in a hurry to decide who and what their teams will be? You know that old saying, “If you’re not early, you’re late?” In pro sports, you can also include, “If you’re not ahead, you’re behind.”
I appreciate the sentiment behind Campbell’s thinking. He wants to be careful, fair and judicious. There’s another word for all that: tentative. At the very least, there’s one thing you can say with certainty about Campbell’s non-decision decision: Johnson didn’t do or say enough to convince Campbell that he could be trusted to call plays.
And Campbell might not have as much time as he thinks, or he’s signaling that the Lions have no intention next month of drafting a quarterback, especially in the first round. Because if the Lions draft Liberty’s Malik Willis second overall, or they move up from No. 32 and draft Pitt’s Kenny Pickett or Ole Miss’ Matt Corral, just imagine what that initial text conversation would be like between Campbell and the QB.
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Campbell: Congrats, dude! Welcome to the Lions!
QB dude: Thanks, coach! Who’s calling plays?
Campbell: Shrug emoji.
The Lions can’t screw up this decision. The offense improved after Campbell took over play-calling midseason, with Johnson’s help designing plays for the passing game. But if Campbell makes Johnson the play-caller and it doesn’t work out, that could hobble any progress the offense makes, and, by extension, delay the overall progress of the rebuild.
So, you know, not much riding on this.
The other big decision Campbell announced was a return to a 4-3 defense after making the switch for one year (well, more like half a season) to a 3-4 base defense.
Remember when everyone was so excited about the switch to a 3-4? It was like the scene in the movie “Step Brothers” when the characters played by Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly get a little too excited and build a flimsy bunkbed that naturally crashes down on a shrieking Ferrell.
Yep, that was last year’s 3-4 defense, which was supposed to help the Lions rush the passer and give them so much extra space in their room to do activities. Injuries to outside linebacker Romeo Okwara and Trey Flowers didn’t help, and the Lions finished with one of the worst sack rates and rushing defense.
So now it’s back to the good, old 4-3, with the reconfiguring of some assistants’ roles. Campbell said the 4-3 fits the personnel better and would help younger interior linemen. You can read that as trying to keep second-round pick Levi Onwuzurike from becoming a bust.
I like his decisiveness on switching back. He saw an error and chose to correct it quickly.
But that’s partly why I don’t care much for Campbell taking his time on the play-calling decision. Like most people, I struggle with uncertainty. It tends to make me uneasy. I can admit that.
But that doesn’t mean my stomach won’t still get tied in knots. Maybe the tea leaves can help with that, too.
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.