The Detroit Lions finished the 2021 season 3-13-1 in the first year on the job of head coach Dan Campbell and general manager Brad Holmes, though they’re already looking ahead to bigger and better things in 2022 with 1st round draft selection Aidan Hutchinson as well as several other new faces in tow. Fans may remember the words during last season of Steve Smith Sr., an analyst for NFL Network in which he called the Lions “a trainwreck waiting to happen”:
“We need to stop upping our standards for players and lowering our standards for coaches,” he said last September. “We need to have them on the same playing field. We need to start revoking some of these dumb-ass coaches’ opportunities because that sh*t show they got in Detroit, it’s a train wreck waiting to happen and I’m sitting there, got my popcorn waiting for it.”
http://gty.im/1242176261
“I don’t believe in that culture change they keep barking about,” he continued. “It’s worse. Their actions don’t follow through.”
With the team gathered in Allen Park for Training Camp, Smith had this to say about the prospects for future success involving Campbell and the Lions – and it’s a complete reversal of his comments from just under a year ago.
Steve Smith Sr. feels different about the Lions this year
“Somebody listening might say, ‘You’re talking about the Detroit Lions.’ That’s my point,” Smith explained earlier this week while speaking with the NFL Network in Allen Park. “We know what the Detroit Lions have been for a very long time and I believe Coach Campbell has them on the verge of changing that culture. The type of players he’s bringing in, the type of coaches he’s bringing in, he’s saying that he’s all-in, he’s invested. He’s giving these young men and some of these old guys an opportunity to say, hey, can you change this culture? And Coach Campbell is doing that.”
Will Campbell and the Lions prove Smith comments to be correct this year?
