A few years ago, Jim Caldwell got a little upset with me. He didn’t like my question about protecting key players by keeping them out of meaningless preseason games.
It was August 2017 and the Detroit Lions had just lost defensive end Kerry Hyder and linebacker Brandon Copeland for the year in the first preseason game. Hyder was coming off an eight-sack season in 2016. Copeland was a young backup and important special-teams player who was working his way up the depth chart and would go on to post five sacks with the Jets in 2018.
“Are you asking me whether or not we’re going to play players less because we’re afraid they’re going to get hurt?” Caldwell said to me. “Is that what you’re asking me? No. Plain and simple.
“You can’t play this game that way. You can’t coach it that way. You can’t play it that way. If that’s all you think about is injuries — these are not pheasants under glass.”
Without the aid of Hyder and Copeland, the Lions were slapped around by the Saints, 52-38, and run over by the Ravens, 44-20, that season. The defense took a nose dive from No. 3 overall in 2016 to No. 17 and Caldwell was fired after his second straight 9-7 season.
I thought of Caldwell during Friday’s final preseason game, when Dan Campbell did the right thing and completed the trifecta by sitting all of his important starters for the entire preseason: Jared Goff, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Aidan Hutchinson and the entire offensive line, including Graham Glasgow and Halapoulivaati Vaitai, who are battling for the starting right guard job.
Even then, the Lions apparently lost third-string backup quarterback Nate Sudfeld, who suffered a torn ACL that will cause him to miss the season.
Throughout the preseason, there’s been a vocal section of fans who haven’t understood why Campbell hasn’t played his starters, even while receiver Jameson Williams was hurt in the first game. Even while Sudfeld was hurt in the finale.
So did Sudfeld’s injury felt like validation for his choice to protect his starters.
“You could go either way with it,” Campbell said Monday. “I mean you can talk yourself in or out of it. But for me it was always going to be about man, the nature of the way we practice, we were pretty physical I think relative to most teams in the league.
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“And we had two-joint practices, two teams that we had joint practices with that were going to be pretty physical and to me … those were going to serve as building blocks to get our core ready. And then, just knowing where we were at this game to playing K.C., which at that point, you’re under two weeks, I just didn’t feel like it was worth the risk.”
Campbell is right, because joint practices allow a much safer and much more controlled environment. To me, his decision to sit starters entirely signals the logical evolution of preseason preparation. Let’s not forget that back in the day it was normal for coaches to allow live hitting in camp — on their own quarterbacks! Even now you still have old-school coaches like Andy Reid and Mike Tomlin who prefer to play their starters in the preseason.
“I just think it’s difficult to box without sparring,” Tomlin said recently.
And then you get Patrick Mahomes sticking up for his coach’s borderline reckless decision.
“You go through a long offseason of working through the pocket and knowing that guys are rushing, but they can’t touch you,” Mahomes said. “So it’s just different when you get in the game and you’re able to get tackled and everything like that.”
Hey, Mahomes is just a two-time MVP and a future Hall of Famer, so if he gets hurt, no biggie. Next man up, right?I’ve heard this so-called desire to “get hit” countless times from players, who won’t want to appear soft. Frankly, sometimes you have to save players from themselves. Even MVPs.
But it feels good, doesn’t it? The bravado, the aggressive spirit. It feels very much like football. Even Campbell couldn’t help himself from smiling when I asked if any veterans had lobbied to play in the preseason.
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“Oh yeah, yeah,” he said. “We get some of those guys, and that’s hard. A guy wants to go play, but it’s kind of like, I get it, but you’re not going unless this player’s going.”
Campbell was talking about matchups. Because you don’t want St. Brown going against an overzealous scrub who’s trying to make a name for himself on his way out of football and into the driver’s seat of a Pontiac Aztek working for DoorDash.
If you want definitive proof of how little the preseason matters to starters, just think back to 2020, when COVID eliminated the entire exhibition slate. No one noticed any drop off in the caliber of play that season. Heck, even the Lions only had two presnap penalties in their opening loss to the Bears that year, when D’Andre Swift’s end-zone drop cost them the win. (OK, maybe one player needed the preseason.)
Caldwell was right about one thing. NFL players definitely aren’t pheasants under glass. They’re a lot more precious and valuable than that. Any coach who doesn’t understand that in today’s NFL might end up eating a little crow as he continues to look for a head coaching job years later.
Contact Carlos Monarrez: cmonarrez@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.