The Lions’ Nightmare Before Christmas

Published Nov. 29, 2021

Once again, the Lions got the wool pulled over their eyes. Once again, when faced with a fork in the road, the team took the wrong turn.

I can’t imagine what Sheila Ford Hamp must be thinking. A year ago at this time, the Lions owner gave a partial enema to the team, cashiering GM Bob Quinn and HC Matt Patricia in one fell swoop.

That was followed, of course, by an exhaustive (we presume) search to find the leaders of the next regime. The Lions even coaxed legendary LB Chris Spielman from the Fox Sports broadcast booth and slapped him with, among other things, the responsibility of giving input as to who the next GM and coach should be.

And after all that, and all the interviews and the due diligence, the Lions landed on (drumroll please) Dan Campbell, a meathead if there ever was one.

Worse, Sheila gave Campbell a six-year contract, according to reports.

Now look at the fine mess the Lions have gotten themselves into.

It’s a very real possibility that this year’s team will finish winless—winless!—and it will be the second time the Lions have managed to do that within 13 years.

In 1966, the longtime losers Philadelphia Eagles enjoyed their first winning season in six years, and Eagles ownership was so giddy, they gave HC Joe Kuharich a gaudy 15-year contract extension. You heard me.

Of course, immediately the Eagles sank back into their losing ways, and the ostentatious contract given to Kuharich was the butt of jokes throughout Philly. He was fired after the 1968 season. And in poetic tragedy, Kuharich passed away on Jan. 25, 1981—the day the Eagles played in their first Super Bowl.

So what do the Lions do with Campbell?

The kneecap biting, maniacal Campbell might be a guy that players will run through a brick wall for, but the trouble is, Campbell doesn’t know what’s on the other side of that wall. Let’s just say that when they handed out Xs and Os, Campbell was absent that day.

The Lions are looking at having hired a new coach to shepherd a new era, and that coach is about to go winless.

Ha ha!

Only the Lions. And as usual, they only have themselves to blame.

Ford Hamp, Rod Wood, Spielman et al are living a nightmare. A PR nightmare, if nothing else.

How do you bring back a winless coach?

The Lions rightly fired Rod Marinelli after 0-16 in 2008, though it was Rod’s third year on the job. Still, you can’t go 0-fer and keep your job. John McKay was brought back by the Bucs after 0-14 in 1976, but that was an expansion team.

Speaking of expansion teams, even they don’t go winless, the ’76 Bucs be damned.

Campbell even has one more game to work with than Marinelli had in 2008, and MCDC will still go winless.

The Lions are going to have egg on their face more than usual. This is more like a three-egg omelette.

The alternative is to buy Campbell out after 0-16-1 and just say that it was an experiment that failed.

But the Lions won’t do that. Of course they won’t.

They’ll bring Campbell back and stand behind him and declare that whatever it is that he’s building, it’s going to be just great, someday.

They’ll do some more grifting, in other words.

I don’t know what Campbell did in his interviews with Ford Hamp, Wood and Spielman, but it was a great con job. Then again, if any NFL team can be sold a bill of goods, it’s your Detroit Lions.

It’s 11 games into the season and it’s safe to say that Campbell hasn’t learned one iota from the game management mistakes that he has been making. The Lions don’t play football so much as they commit it, like a crime.

Campbell might be a great motivator. Maybe he gets credit for his team not laying a 60-minute egg every week. But when handed a pistol, Campbell points it squarely at the team’s feet and pulls the trigger.

The Lions have lost three games this season to last-second field goals. In each of those three games, Campbell was at least partially to blame. In some cases, fully to blame.

He came into the job talking tough with the aforementioned “biting kneecaps” talk but between the lines, he’s been mostly bark and little bite. His unimaginative, pop gun offense playcalling is laughable. He zigs when he should be zagging—going for it on 4th down when it’s not advisable, and punting when he should be going for it. He treats field goal kicking like it’s a sign of weakness.

I’m afraid if the Lions fans see one more draw play on 3rd-and-forever, they’ll burn Ford Field to the ground.

How do you bring a winless, clueless coach back after 0-16-1?

The Lions once again made the wrong choice for head coach. They’ve been misfiring on that decision since Joe Schmidt quit on them in 1973. Again, zigging instead of zagging.

When assistant Chuck Knox wanted the job after his boss quit, the Lions looked elsewhere.

When Knox still wanted the job three years later when the Lions had a vacancy, all but begging through the papers to be granted an interview, the Lions, cheapskates that they were, looked elsewhere.

Even when the Lions have broken open the pocketbooks—*cough* Steve Mariucci *cough*—they’ve gotten it wrong, proof that not only does money not buy happiness, it doesn’t buy a successful coach, either.

Why Ford Hamp gave Dan Campbell six years of a commitment is such a Lions thing to ponder.

Someone else wrote it recently: Competence beats meathead motivation every time. It’s like the old business axiom, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This current Lions situation is, “Xs and Os eat rah-rah for breakfast.”

The Lions will be faced with an absolute nightmare in about six weeks. They’ll have a winless football coach to whom they’ve committed six years, on paper. And they’ll want to bring him back. And everyone will mock them. And they won’t understand why.

And the fans, who will mock the Lions relentlessly and destroy them on social media, will come crawling back emotionally in 2022. The ultimate abusive team-fan relationship.

The Fords are too nice. Sheila, I’m sure, simply loves Dan Campbell. No doubt she gushes over him. The GM, Brad Holmes, is sitting pretty for now.

The niceness the Fords have shown over the years, the loyalty to a fault to nice guys who lose, will again rear its head. The lack of a killer instinct, the refusal to cut bait early, the aversion to playing cutthroat in a business that requires it, has torpedoed the franchise for going on 60 years. Bill Ford, the patriarch, was a very nice man. A very nice, incompetent football owner. But a nice guy!

How many owners of Super Bowl winning teams have been showered with praise for how nice they are? Not that you have to be a horse’s ass, but you do have to demand accountability.

The Lions won’t win a game this season for their new coach who has a six-year contract.

Another knee slapper from a franchise that has mastered the art of tragicomedy.