How “egoless collaboration” revived the Detroit Lions
- Sheila Ford Hamp, the principal owner of the Detroit Lions, embarked on a bold restructuring plan at the start of this decade.
- The goal was to create an egoless organization with everyone pulling in the same direction.
- Hamp emphasized the word “collaboration” — the essence of systems former CEO Alan Mulally had installed at Boeing and Ford Motor Company.
As she set out to hire a general manager and a head coach, the new principal owner of the Detroit Lions decided that since the Ford family’s old ways of doing things had produced just one playoff win in fifty-six years of ownership, it was time to try something daring and new. The conventional path was to hire a general manager and let him select a coach who, in turn, would build a staff of assistant coaches. Sheila Ford Hamp had a different idea.
As she began her quest, she had to take into account an unwelcome new development. Matthew Stafford, the team’s Promised Land quarterback since 2009, was now thirty-two years old and beginning to ask himself the questions every NFL veteran must eventually confront. How long will my body hold up to the weekly punishment? What are my chances of winning a Super Bowl with my current team? Is it time to move on? The answers, in order, were: not much longer; slim to none; and yes. Rumors began to circulate that Matthew Stafford wanted to be traded to a contender.
Sheila Ford, [President] Rod Wood, and chief operating officer Mike Disner, an expert on contracts and salary cap, acknowledged that trying to import the “Patriot Way” via Quinn and Patricia [GM Bob Quinn and defensive coordinator Matt Patricia, collectively “Quinntricia,” hired from the New England Patriots] had been a disaster. The answer was to build a Detroit Lions team from the ground up. So one of their first moves after the firing of Quinntricia was to bring back the quintessential Detroit Lion, Chris Spielman—the warrior linebacker who had played his final season as a Lion with a painful and debilitating torn pectoral muscle but didn’t miss a single game, the guy who had stood up on the eve of the team’s lone conference championship game in 1991 and corrected the team chaplain, telling him that the goal was not to win the NFC Championship, the goal was to win the Super Bowl. That was the mentality they were looking for. Spielman’s bitterness over being exiled to Buffalo had faded with time. His love for Detroit and the Lions had not. His would be a critical voice in the search for a general manager and coach, as well as the ensuing rebuild.
Hamp always used the word “collaboration,” which was, curiously, the essence of the systems Alan Mulally had installed at Boeing and Ford Motor Company when he’d set out to smash the warring fiefs inside both corporations and remake their cultures.
Hamp kicked off each GM candidate interview by stressing that the goal was nothing less than a teardown and reconstruction of the team’s culture. She always used the word “collaboration,” which was, curiously, the essence of the systems Alan Mulally had installed at Boeing and Ford Motor Company when he’d set out to smash the warring fiefs inside both corporations and remake their cultures. After Hamp finished her remarks, the others jumped in for a freewheeling conversation. Then they independently graded each candidate in twelve categories, on a scale of one to five, and loaded the results into a spreadsheet. The goal was to create an egoless, collaborative organization with everyone pulling in the same direction. No finger-pointing, no turf wars, no power grabs. Therefore, if a potential GM wanted authority to pick his coach and control all facets of the operation, he was cut from the list.
Before long, one name stood out: Brad Holmes.
Then serving as director of college scouting with the Los Angeles Rams, Holmes had been captain of the North Carolina A&T football team that won the Historically Black Colleges and Universities national championship in 1999. After graduation he got a job as a PR intern with the Rams and doggedly worked his way up the scouting ladder. He was regarded as a master assessor of talent, shrewdly using the draft to help build a roster that had turned a perennial doormat into a team that went 13–3 in 2018 before losing to New England in the Super Bowl. The Rams’ quarterback was Jared Goff, who they’d drafted with the No. 1 pick in 2016. Since the Lions were determined to rebuild through the draft, Holmes’s strengths were seen as a perfect fit.
All the while, the search crew had been looking at possible head coaches. They kept coming back to Dan Campbell, then assistant head coach to Sean Payton in New Orleans. In his ten-year playing career, Campbell was a tight end used mainly as a blocker. He looked the part: 6’5″, 265 pounds, with a bull neck and legs like oak trees. He’d made it to the Super Bowl early in his playing career, and his last season was with the winless Lions in 2008. So he had been to the top of the mountain and to the bottom of the basement, and he understood, firsthand, what Detroit’s players and fans had been through. But he brought more than empathy to the table.
In his ten-year coaching career, Campbell had served as interim head coach of the Dolphins for a dozen games in 2015 after Joe Philbin was fired mid-season. And Spielman, who’d spent years working as a television analyst, had many opportunities to watch Campbell interact with players. It was obvious to Spielman that Campbell had earned their respect. When Spielman called Campbell’s boss in New Orleans to find out more, Payton sang his assistant’s praises for an uninterrupted half hour. Deal closed.
“He’s known as a coach who gets what he asks from his players because he speaks and interacts with them from a place of shared personal experience,” Nick Baumgardner wrote in The Athletic. “And in that way, he’s the opposite of Patricia.” And for that reason, he was perfect for the Lions’ rebuild.
The Lions announced the hiring of Holmes as GM on Jan. 14, 2021, and named Campbell their new head coach the following week. The two met for the first time after they were hired. At his ninety-minute introductory press conference, Campbell delivered a mad-dog monologue that lit up the football world and has since become embedded in Detroit lore. It’s worth quoting at length: “This place has been kicked, it’s been battered, it’s been bruised, and I can sit up here and give you coach speak all day long. I can give you, ‘Hey, we’re going to win this many games.’ None of that matters, and you guys don’t want to hear it anyway. You’ve had enough of that shit, excuse my language.”
Now he cranked it up a gear.
“Here’s what I do know, is that this team is going to take on the identity of this city. And this city’s been down and it found way to get up. It’s found a way to overcome adversity. So this team’s going to be built on: we’re going to kick you in the teeth, all right, and when you punch us back, we’re going to smile at you and when you knock us down, we’re going to get up, and on the way up, we’re going to bite a kneecap off. And we’re going to stand up and then it’s going to take two more shots to knock us down. And on the way up, we’re going to take your other kneecap, and we’re going to get up and then it’s going to take three shots to get us down. And when we do, we’re going to take another hunk out of you. Before long, we’re going to be the last one standing. That’s going to be the mentality.”
What the f**k was this? Had the Lions hired a foam-at-the-mouth Texas lunatic? Or was this a refreshing break from the tight-ass conventions of head coach introductory press conferences, with their pablum “coach speak” that Campbell so clearly scorned? Could this be a breath of fresh air? Nobody knew what to think.
