When Brad Holmes (general manager) and Dan Campbell (head coach) were hired by the Detroit Lions, they were immediately faced with a monumental task.
That task was to trade long-time Lions’ quarterback Matthew Stafford, who had requested the move.
During a recent interview with Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated, Holmes and Campbell talked about handling the Stafford situation.
First, they saw that Hamp and Wood were genuinely giving them the keys. “Sheila and Rod were saying, ‘Hey look, we trust you guys, you guys are going to make the right decision for the franchise,’ “ Holmes said. “And they just made sure that we had the right resources we needed that allowed us to make that decision.”
Second, they immediately got to see how the other handled a high-leverage situation.
“You just dive in and you try to make the most of it,” Campbell said. “I thought Brad did a great job. I don’t know how you would’ve done any better than he did. That’s a credit to him and [VP Mike Disner], working through all that. And I thought Stafford was a class act on all regards with it. There was no ill will or animosity, anything. Both parties won.”
You could’ve never told me in a million years that the third week on the job I would’ve been tasked with doing that, making that move, with my former boss [Rams GM Les Snead],” Holmes added. “I was still trying to recover from the text messages, congratulatory of getting the job. Hundreds and hundreds, I’m trying to get back to everybody. But then the trade’s made and then hundreds of more texts, now I’m going through hundreds of texts that were made from congratulations on getting the GM job to congrats on the trade.
“It was just how quickly it happened.”
Holmes was able to get a pair of first-round picks (2022 and 2023), a third-round pick (2021), and quarterback Jared Goff in exchange for Stafford. Not too shabby.
