Lions owner still has faith in coach Dan Campbell, GM despite 1-5 start: ‘It requires patience’
Dan Campbell’s time in Detroit isn’t off to a great start.
The Lions have opened the season, Campbell’s second with the franchise, just 1-5 and will head into Sunday’s matchup with the Miami Dolphins on a four-game losing skid. Most recently, the Lions fell 24-6 to the Dallas Cowboys.
Yet for now, despite seeing only four wins under Campbell and general manager Brad Holmes, Lions owner Sheila Ford Hamp isn’t considering making any changes.
“I believe in the leadership,” she said, via the Detroit Free Press. “Really, I mean it.”
Campbell and Holmes took over for the Lions in 2021, and the two have amassed a 4-18-1 overall record in that time. While Campbell has garnered plenty of attention, especially for his antics on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” earlier this year, it’s not translating into wins. At least, not yet.
That’s nothing new for the Lions, either. The team hasn’t had a winning season since 2017, hasn’t seen double digit wins since 2014 and hasn’t won a playoff game since 1992.
“I know this is difficult," Hamp said, via the Detroit Free Press. "A rebuild is hard. But we really believe in our process, we really believe in we’re going to turn this thing around the right way, through the draft. It requires patience, it’s frustrating.
“Am I frustrated? Absolutely. Are the fans frustrated? Absolutely. Are you guys frustrated? But I think we really are making progress."
Campbell, who played for the Lions, said he had a lengthy meeting with Ford Hamp about the team this week, too.
“I told her everything that I saw, things that we needed to be better at, offensively, defensively, special teams, myself, and moving forward, practice," Campbell said, via ESPN. "So, really, everything. Everything that I had looked at our team and felt like we needed to be better at. I shared all of those thoughts with her and where we were going moving forward and that was it, so she's been informed."
While Ford Hamp is patient now, things could certainly be different by the end of the year if Campbell and the Lions don’t start winning.
But as they’re just six games into the season, she’s trying to keep perspective.
“We've got a long way to go in this season," Ford Hamp said, via the Detroit Free Press.
"You’ve seen it. It’s just, this was a huge teardown and then turnaround. And we really, we’re only a third of the way through the season. We’ve got 11 more games to go. So I just don’t want everyone to push the panic button and give up the ship because I think we’ve got the right people in place to pull this off and I truly believe that. And I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it."
