Detroit Lions president Rod Wood sat down with the Free Press on Monday to discuss the state of the team after its 9-8 season and heading into a big offseason.
Wood said the Lions are top candidates to play a game in Germany this fall and the team is waiting until 2024 to make uniform changes, and he addressed several other topics.
Here are some highlights of Wood’s interview. Some questions and answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.
What’s the latest with Calvin Johnson’s relationship with the team. From comments he’s made recently, it sounds like it’s trending in the right direction.
A “Yeah, and I’m not, and he acknowledged, directly involved. I kind of handed it off to Mike (Disner). Maybe new face, new person. But I think Brian (Facchini)’s talked to his folks a little bit. We’re working on a couple things hopefully to get him not only closer to the team but even involved as an ambassador, maybe even a sponsor if we can ever get the CBD thing approved by the league, so things are progressing in a very positive way. He’s in town. He’s responsive to meeting with Mike and he’s got a representative that Brian and Mike have been talking to on a regular basis so I think there’s some good things to come.
“I did text with him when he got in the Hall of Fame and he texted me back and so it’s not like we’re – we’re cordial.”
I know some people close to Calvin have encouraged him to mend fences with the team.
“I think it’s better for everybody, him and us. We kind of went through the same thing with Barry (Sanders) for a long time and I was at least partially responsible for helping get that mended and I think Calvin will see the same benefit if he comes back. He only wore one jersey his entire career.”
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How optimistic are you it can happen this fall, a retirement ceremony?
“Possibly. Possible. It’s coming. I don’t know if it’ll be this year, but it’s coming.”
In retrospect, what are your thoughts on being in “Hard Knocks” last season?
“I think it was good.”
One player at the Senior Bowl told me he was a big fan of Dan Campbell because of it.
“And Brian and Eamonn (Reynolds) did a really good job I think of maximizing it. I knew if we were on it we would come off positively, just because of the coaching staff that we had. And we were going to do it the right way and I did somewhat volunteer for that, too. I knew we were eligible. I knew we were one of like three or four teams and I called and said if we’re chosen I guarantee we’ll do a good job. And I thought coming off of a 3-13 year, get some shot of energy from it. And then I think it turned out even better than we thought. The crew from NFL Films was great. We had some great characters — and some of them they just lucked into. (Malcolm) Rodriguez, how do you know that’s going to work out? And how do you know that (Aidan) Hutchinson’s going to do ‘Billie Jean’? There’s some things you can’t script that just worked out great. And the viewership was (the highest since the original season).”
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Are you interested in doing the in-season “Hard Knocks”?
“Probably going to take a year off. … So the two teams that have done it the last two years (the Arizona Cardinals and Indianapolis Colts), it didn’t work out too well for them, either. Both those coaches are (gone).”
It sounds like season ticket prices are going up in 2023?
“Yeah, we did, with the early renewal — we had an early renewal during the season, it worked out to like a 4% on average (increase). Some were up a little more, some were flat, and then with the new season tickets that we’re selling now, people are just putting deposits down. We haven’t even decided what the price is going to be. It’s probably going to be even a little bit higher than 4%. We’re kind of waiting to see what the final demand comes in at.
“But really, across the whole stadium we lowered prices after ’18. I don’t know how much of that ever got out, but what we did was we took some areas that were tougher to sell and we lowered those prices, and so when you put the whole aggregate in, it was down about 4%. So that 4% increase just got us back to 2018 pricing. And then you had the COVID year and coming out of COVID, we had pretty light attendance. I think team performance and COVID (impacted attendance in) 2021. So 2022 I think is like the first year that you can kind of go back and compare to like 2018, so now ’23 we’re going back to the 2018 pricing, maybe a little bit higher for the new season tickets.”
Ford Field is getting new turf for 2023. What else is in store?
“We did a couple big things last year with the new store. It’s very cool. Much bigger. That helped. We took what was the store and we converted it to a grab-and-go for season ticket members. There’ll be a few concession things, but the turf was the big thing. And then we’ve got a full roster of events this year with the USFL playing, concerts, WWE ‘SummerSlam.’ Brian said like over 20 different events when you add in the USFL games … So it’ll be a busy season at the stadium.”
You’re entering your eighth full season as president, how much longer do want to do this?
“I got some years left.”
What else do you want to accomplish as president?
“What do I want to accomplish? I’d like to have that trophy.”
You’ve made a lot of updates to Ford Field over the years. Anything else in that regard?
A. “I guess the one, other than Ford Field, we’ll continue to keep it current I think is the most important thing, there’s a few things around the stadium that I’d like to improve maybe. It’s to get in and out, especially when we’re 65,000 people. … And yeah, we’re kind of stuck geographically where we are but there’s a few things that we’re looking at. Can we do more parking? Can we do some things to get people in and out faster?
“(The practice) facility is on my mind, too, cause it’s 20-plus years old. Do we keep putting money in here? Is there a new facility down the road that we might want to move? I like this area geographically because it’s easy to get to, it’s close to the airport, which is really important for player workouts and stuff. But we’re also short maybe a full field outside. You’d like to have three, not 2½ or whatever have. We’re limited by how many fans we can get at training camp. You’ve been to camp where we’ve done away and we have (10,000) to 15,000 people, not (3,000). And then coaching staffs are just so much bigger. This building was built when things were very different, so that’s in my mind to analyze that.”
A few years ago, there was a rumor you’d be building a new facility in the Ann Arbor area.
“Nothing imminent. What’s interesting, we’re always kind of staying abreast of what’s going on. But you’d like to have 50 to 60 acres if you were to start again from scratch and there aren’t that many 50-to-60-acre plots anywhere.”
How big is the current plot?
“I think we’re just around 22 or something. And so if you had that much space, you could have more fans and you could have the third field, the building could be bigger. Parking’s an issue when we have the 90 guys here for training camp.”
What role has owner Sheila Hamp played in the franchise’s rebound?
“She’s been great. She obviously worked closely with her mom for a few years but wanted to kind of do things her way without turning the apple cart completely upside down. She’s been here regularly. She comes here at least usually two days a week, meets with everybody. Certainly, she’s present, people know who she is and she knows who everybody else is and that’s a big thing. And then her work really to kind of tear apart the culture that she inherited with Matt (Patricia) and Bob (Quinn) and how do we get this right? And really kind of looking at, you never really know sometimes until people are gone how people really feel cause there is this power structure, and no matter how much people may trust me they’re probably not going to come here and tell me something if their boss is between me and them.
“I think we got a lot of direct feedback from people that they were probably hesitant to share and that informed us a lot on what we didn’t want and how we were going to go about taking this culture to a level where people are feeling like they’re all part of the team, and they matter and their voice matters. And Sheila was an important part of that.”
What was the most important thing you learned from that feedback?
“Setting aside the selection of the two of those guys, I think just making sure that you don’t take anything for granted, try and seek people out and make sure they’re comfortable to tell you if something’s not working. Cause things can kind of catch fire below you if you’re not paying attention to it. And I think Sheila being here, too, people are a lot more comfortable talking to her because she’s around. She’s at every game, she’s at most of the practices. She’s down on the sideline pregame, so the players all know who she is, which is, it’s a big deal for them. And she’s in town here. She’s not flying in for the games on the weekend.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.