THIS WILL AFFECT THE TEAM BECAUSE OF THE INDEFENSIVE..
Watch the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game this Sunday, with kickoff at 8pm live on Sky Sports NFL; the San Francisco 49ers then host the Detroit Lions in the NFC Championship Game from 11.30pm; watch Super Bowl LVIII live on Sunday, February 11
The NFL and its cult of all-scrutinising followers grimaced when Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell began talking about biting kneecaps at his introductory press conference in 2021. Rah-rah was out, it was dated, it was everything that would foreshadow doomed fate in the modern league, where nerdy analytics and pristine scheme architecture tends to supersede old-fashioned moxie.
Another string to the could-be-gimmicky bow emerged when Campbell revealed that he begins his day with two 40-oz coffees consisting of two espresso shots in each, which could have been force-fed as a tenuous metaphor for the full throttle brand of football he sought to install. Bottom line: he was tuned in, and his players had better be, too. Spoiler: they were.
The caveat to taking on the job in Detroit was always the necessity of an outright culture transformation; it would take the rallying cries that risked ridicule in the event of empty promises, it would take divisive brashness, unfiltered emotion and a universal buy-in to mundane, cliche work ethic, all of which could make for shaky grounds without the personnel or play design to prop them up.
Prop them up, they have. Ford Field logged a stadium-record decibel level of 134.3 as the Lions beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in their Divisional Round clash last weekend, such has been its role as an amphitheatre for the release of decades-spanning pain.
Campbell arrived at a franchise that had been without a playoff win since 1991, the most recent and only time Detroit have reached the NFC Championship Game. He entered a building that had advanced to the postseason on just three occasions in the past 20 years, a building that had seen their Barry Sanders-spearheaded team come up shy in the 90s, a building that endured the bitter disappointment of unfulfilled hope for a side led by Matthew Stafford, a prime Calvin Johnson and one of the league’s most potent offenses.
