INDIANAPOLIS — If there’s a look a three-win team typically has, you weren’t finding it in last year’s Lions. The losses brought encouragement. The wins brought celebration. Just about everything was seen as a step taken forward.
And those locker-room scenes when the team started to turn the corner?
If the team goes where Brad Holmes and Dan Campbell think it will, they’ll be remembered.
“It’s not easy to have fun when you only won two or three games,” Campbell said, in a quiet moment at this week’s combine. “That’s a credit to those guys. And I just bring it back to what you’re about. We were just not gonna be the same-old, same-old. I want these guys to understand that when the lights come on, there’s a certain way to play every game, but ultimately we’re not playing not to lose. We’re going to play to win.
“And they know going into a game in all three phases, we’re going to cut it loose. We are.”
So yes, the vibes coming out of Detroit after Year 1 with Campbell as coach and Holmes as general manager are good. Their first draft class showed promise, a core of veterans brought in to carry the new bosses’ message came through, and the team, without question, ascended as the season wore on, while consistently showing growth throughout.
And then, you come to the reality of where they are: The grace period is ending. Soon, those close losses that were almost seen as wins will need to become wins, and no one knows it better than the guys who took those 13 losses last year, and had to keep their heads up through a year that was earmarked all along as a sort of organizational reset.
Which sets the stage for a crucial stretch for the franchise. The Lions have two first-round picks in each of the next two years, the payoff for dealing Matthew Stafford to the Rams. Their cap is healthy this year and should be in even better shape in 2023.
So in one way, with Campbell and Holmes’s culture in place, the foundation has been set. In another, that blank slate they were given a year ago will soon have to start filling up, and it’s on the two guys entrusted with the place to make sure they use all those dollars and picks the right way.
