Dan Campbell rewatched end of 49ers game, convinced Lions 'not going to break' in 2024

ORLANDO - For the first time since their season ended, Dan Campbell gathered his assistants last week for a group film session to watch the Detroit Lions'NFC championship game loss to the San Francisco 49ers.

Campbell wasn't interested in reliving the first half of the game, when the Lions raced to a 24-7 lead and looked like they were on their way to the Super Bowl. But he watched every play of the second half, charting "a little bit of everything on what went wrong."

"Talk about ripping the Band-Aid off," Campbell said Tuesday at the NFL's annual spring meeting. "It was good."

The Lions dropped passes and lost fumbles and missed tackles and whiffed on blocks and passed on field goals in an epic second-half meltdown, and as Campbell digested the mistakes again, he came to the realization that "San Francisco willed that to happen."

"They had players that, man, they in critical moments, that quarterback made big plays, (Christian) McCaffrey made big plays, made a big catch. (Brandon) Aiyuk made a big catch," Campbell said. "And they willed those things to happen and that’s the next step for us."

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Two months after the season ended in heartbreak, Campbell seemed re-energized about a third of the way through the offseason this week.

The Lions begin their formal offseason program April 15 and the draft is less than two weeks later in Detroit. There are Organized Team Activities in May and minicamp in June, and training camp is a little more than 100 days away, when the Lions will report, for the first time in a long time, as one of the Super Bowl favorites in the NFC.

Campbell said Tuesday the Chicago Bears are going to be "loaded and ready to go" and the Green Bay Packers will be dangerous again in a division that's "about to become very difficult" after nearly putting two teams in the NFC championship game last year.

But he also said the Lions have the best roster they've had in his four seasons as head coach and a group of players hardened by their battle scars.

"I’m very excited," Campbell said. "I really am. I can't wait to get started. And I know the staff's that way, too. I think, if anything, when you get over the licking your wounds a little bit and you really step back and take a look at it for what it is and where you can improve, you get really excited. I got really excited. So, I feel like every day I've just gotten more and more energy back and more and more desire. And I just, I feel like we're going to be battle-hardened and ready to go. Like, 'Man, that's the next one.' We got to get over that hill and we can do it. And I love that we've got something to shoot for and something to go get."

The Lions upgraded the two weakest areas of their defense this offseason, signing D.J. Reader and Marcus Davenport to bolster their defensive line and adding Carlton Davis (via trade) and Amik Robertson (as a free agent) to their secondary.

They signed guard Kevin Zeitler to fortify one of the best offensive lines in football and brought back a handful of their own free agents including guard Graham Glasgow and special teams ace Jalen Reeves-Maybin.

Mostly, though, the Lions will be counting on the nucleus they've built the past three years to get them over the hump.

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"It's pretty special, because you've been with them in the highs and the lows, the inconsistencies to grow into what they're becoming and what they have become, and we've kind of all grown together," Campbell said. "But along the way, nobody ever lost hope, nobody ever got down, nobody ever thought we couldn't do this. And so, we've just kind of all grown together."

The Lions are working to keep the most important pieces of that nucleus together long-term, with contract extensions on the not-too-distant horizon for Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jared Goff. Penei Sewell should have a new deal before long, too, and Aidan Hutchinson has an extension coming later on down the road.

Campbell said the team will have difficult decisions to make eventually on who to keep and who to let go among "these guys we've invested in and been around for so long."

They still are in "a nice little window right now," though, he said, and rewatching the second half of the championship game reaffirmed they have everything they need to make a run.

"I think we’ve got to put a tremendous amount of stress on our players before the season gets here, starting in OTAs but then certainly in training camp a lot more than we have and just mold them and shape them and get them there," Campbell said. "But that experience is going to, that’ll play well to us. Because look, you’re either going to get better from it or you’ll just get worse because you’re broken. And I just, we’re not going to break, we’re just not. We got too good of guys, so it’s exciting."

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dan Campbell motivated after rewatching Lions loss to 49ers