A couple of years ago, the Detroit Lions were NFL laughingstocks, and the outlook didn’t look great for them.
They had just traded franchise quarterback Matthew Stafford to the Los Angeles Rams for Jared Goff, and after going 3-13-1, they had to watch Stafford lead the Rams to the Super Bowl championship over the Cincinnati Bengals.
It also happened to be Dan Campbell’s first year as the Lions’ head coach, and after that miserable season, he started to turn things around. The team won eight of its last 10 games in 2022, and right now it holds a 7-2 record, which is tied for the second-best record in the league.
But even as Detroit jockeys for optimum seeding in the NFC, there seems to be a chance that Campbell won’t be its head coach for that much longer. Bruce Feldman of The Athletic wrote that he may be a “big wild-card wish candidate” for the head coaching job at Texas A&M University.
NFL News & Rumors: Dan Campbell, Detroit Lions Updates
“The 47-year-old Texas native played at A&M,” Feldman wrote in a story published November 12. “Campbell epitomizes everything we suspect the school would want in a head coach, and if you’ve watched any clips of him in front of his team, you’ll see why. He has jumped into what was an abysmal franchise and has that city thinking there’s finally a Super Bowl in its future.”
“… Could A&M lure him home despite all that he has done and is doing in Detroit, getting all the buy-in he has gotten?” Feldman wrote. “It would seem doubtful that he’d walk away from all that. As one source said Sunday morning, ‘The timing for him (with A&M) is horrible.’”
Dan Campbell has gotten lots of praise for resurrecting a long-dormant Lions franchise while also seemingly resurrecting Goff’s career. Although Goff had taken the Rams to the Super Bowl five seasons ago, where they lost to the New England Patriots, he was thought to be not that much better than the average starting NFL QB.
But so far this season, he has completed 68.4 percent of his pass attempts and has thrown for 2,507 yards and 14 touchdowns. It is therefore not too much of a surprise that his team was sixth in points and second in total yards going into Monday.
Third-year wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown is having a banner season and is among the league leaders in receiving yards, while the tag team duo of David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs at running back has been very productive.
For the first time in what seems like forever, the Lions have an excellent chance of not only making the playoffs but of also winning at least one playoff game, something they haven’t done in 32 years.
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