LIONS HEAD COACH DAN CAMPBELL QUOTE SHEET
October 21, 2025
Opening Statement: “So obviously the defense, outstanding performance by those guys. I mean, every one of those guys got a game ball. It was just, top to bottom across that whole roster, those guys just did a really good job, man. I thought we were aggressive, went after the football. Had a number of balls on the ground, so that’s – it’s paying big dividends, man. Working at takeaways in practice and it’s showing up on the field and guys are taking pride in it, and they’re trying to be the next one to get one out. Just outstanding performance. Offensively, did what we had to do. Things we’re going to clean up and easily correctable, will be corrected. We’ve got good guys in that room and they’re prideful, and we’ll be better. I just kind of mentioned last night, I thought our coverage units did a really good job on special teams, so that was good. And we’re 5-2 at the bye, and when we come back, we’ve got to continue to improve. We’ve got to evolve and improve, and we’re in a race to improve quite frankly with everybody else, particularly those in our division.”
On what the bye week is like for the coaching staff: “I’m cutting the staff loose tonight, but I gave them some things that I want to see. Work at their leisure when they get back. I want just a couple of answers on a few things that I wanted them to look out for, but I think it’s important that they get away. I do, man. This’ll be the last chance we get a little bit of time to – no different than the players. There’re things I’m going to do, I’m going to continue to work through. I’ll do some things at home. But some of that, work’s never done. So, we keep going. Where can we improve and get a little bit better in areas and set our players up in certain areas to have a little more success, across the board? So, that’ll be the bye.”
On what it is like to have a shorter bye week than usual: “I think it just makes it hard to do anything because by the time you get some of these guys recovered, even if you want to gain some reps for the young guys, a lot of them, to really be able to go out and practice, you still need a couple of days to recover. By the time you do that, it’s kind of not worth it. I’d rather give them off and let them refresh. I think it’s important.”
On what he saw in Lions CB Nick Whiteside to give him an opportunity: “He’d been here and been in the system. That was a big part of it is he understood our terminology, what we were looking at, how we were going to play certain leverages per the call. He’d been around (Lions Special Teams Coordinator Dave) Fipp, the special teams, things of that nature. There was just more of a comfort level with a guy who’s been here and really went through a whole training camp with us. We just felt like that was the right move. It was good, man. You saw it, he stepped up and made plays for us. Did some things on special teams, too. Man, I thought none of those guys blinked, went in there and competed. From (Lions S Erick) Hallett to (Lions S Thomas) Harper, it was just – it was really good, it was impressive. As a coach, that’s all you can ask for. Just go in there and compete, man. Give yourself a chance to make plays. And you’re not alone. You’ve got the other guys, they’re going to help you, and they did that.”
On how impressed he was with the secondary in Monday night’s performance: “Like I said, they stepped up, but it took every one of those guys. Early in that game, there was a lot of disruption in our front, and I think that kind of started it off. That kickstarted everything for us defensively. (Lions DL) Alim McNeill, (Lions EDGE Aidan Hutchinson) Hutch, (Lions EDGE Al-Quadin) Muhammad, (Lions LB Derrick) Barnes. There was a lot of disruption going on. And then we were sticky in coverage. And so the two, as you know, the rush and coverage, go hand in hand. They play off of each other, and it really gave our guys a lot of confidence.”
On Lions DL Alim McNeill and when they decided how much of a workload he would have on Monday night: “It was a little more than we wanted to give him for his first time out. We were shooting for a little less than that, just to be smart with him. But he was handling them well, it was going to be more of passing downs originally. And then we got worked in there on a couple of these base reps. But really, we ended up, we had him in some second-and-long. There were a lot of third downs in there, and we wanted him part of all that. So, it got up there in the 40 range, but I thought he handled it well. Man, got out of it good. He’s got the bye, and he’ll come back now in a little bit better shape, football shape. That’s the only way to duplicate it is to actually go through it. I think this’ll be good for him.”
On if he believes the team is more equipped for the ‘next man up’ mindset after dealing with injuries on the team in years past: “I think we’ve always – I go back to this, man. After ’21, man, we got hit on a bunch of stuff in ’21. I remember telling the staff, ‘We’ll never have another season where our guys aren’t prepared to play.’ The next guys up, man, those guys have to be ready to play. So, we try to get them reps in practice, they’re doing our stuff. Man, if you’re here, whether you’re on the vet squad, practice squad, you’re a reserve on the roster, you are literally the next man up. Those reps are valuable. We look at those reps. We look at your practice reps. Even if it’s from a card, we look at them, and we teach off of that. We want you doing our technique. Unless it’s somebody that we’re playing, it’s a little different and, ‘Hey, we need this look.’ We coach them like they are the next man up. We don’t coach them like, ‘Well you’re not going to play.’ No, you are literally one play away. I think people have figured this out, I hope they have by now. It’s like man, trust goes a long way here. And if you’re somebody that you show up every day, man, and you’re reliable, you’re dependable, we know you’re going to do the right thing, we’ll take you to the game, man. We’ll play you.”
On the challenges of getting everyone the ball on offense and if he feels like they can maximize opportunities for other key players: “I would say this. This is all we’ve got to do is convert on a third down and then convert on another third down. We convert on a couple of these third downs, it either helps us for the next one, or we may not be in very many. We’re back first, second down, back to first. And so, man, we get a little bit better in third down, we tweak a couple of things, we set a couple of different players up, I think it’s going to go a long way for us. And so obviously the more first downs, the more plays, then the more opportunities for everybody that we have. And yes, we can do a better job. And we will.”
On what he thinks the issue was on third down during Monday night’s game: “Literally one thing here, one thing there. One guy here, one guy there. You’ve got 10 guys doing the right thing, and one guy either gets beat, or he’s doing the wrong thing. And it really just went, we just kind of passed it around a little bit. It’s all of us, literally. I’m talking about myself, the coaches, all of us. But there again, it’s correctable. It’s easily correctable. That’s what a little bit of this bye will be too, man, looking at some of these things. What are things we do really well, and we can hang out hat on? But yes, we can.”
On Lions T Taylor Decker and the frustration he had in himself after Monday night’s game: “He’s a perfectionist. He’s a prideful guy, and he wants to know he can play his best kind of football. It can get frustrating when you know you’re not 100 percent. So, I understand what that is. I tell him, ‘You help us, you elevate us.’ I just appreciate the fact he’s out there trying to get it done, and hopefully we can get it to calm down. Good news is, I think there’s still some strength in it. But, the guy’s a stud, man. He is.”
On if he believes Lions T Taylor Decker’s shoulder will hold up for the rest of the season: “I hope so. I know he’ll do everything he can do make it right and be able to play.”
On what he makes of the excellence across the League so far this season: “There’s a lot of teams. There’s a lot of good teams right now that are sitting kind of where we’re at. But I love it, because November shakes everything out. That’s where you begin to get the big separation. You’ll begin to see it. Some will start dropping and some will continue to move up. This is where you can really set yourself up in December is with November. Because I think sometimes what happens, there again, it’s a long season. If you don’t continue to get better, you stay the same, you get passed up by some of these other teams. Or man, you get a little tired, you get a little fatigued. The players, the coaches, and then it costs you a loss here and there. You just, man, you’ve got to stay in it. You’ve got to stay urgent, you’ve got to stay focused on the details. You’ve got to continue to put in the work, and you just can’t brush anything off. You can’t just throw it off to the side and say, ‘We’ll be OK.’ No, you’ve got to look at everything. You’ve got to clean up and correct everything, even after wins.”
On if he was challenging the completion of the catch on his first challenge yesterday: “Yes.”
On his second challenge: “Yeah, that was a bad challenge. That was just a total mess up on my part. That was me thinking that he was down at the fumble site. That’s more grasping for straws, I shouldn’t have done that. You were totally like, ‘What the hell is he doing?’ You’d be correct.”
On if he believes the calls at the Kansas City game gives the team a better chance to have calls in their favor going forward: “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know if there is or not. I know that every game, there’s different angles, and it took a while to get the angle that they saw that proved that he did not get the marker. Normally, it doesn’t always go down that way. I don’t know, I’ll take it. We’ll take it and we’ll move on.”
