The Detroit Lions have already overcome adversity to get to 11–1 on the season after Thanksgiving week. To this point, most of that adversity has been involuntary, injury related: They've lost Aidan Hutchinson and Marcus Davenport, with Alex Anzalone joining the group of hobbled defenders with a broken arm earlier this month.
But recently a self-inflicted wound threatened to compromise both the playbook and winning culture head coach Dan Campbell has been working tirelessly to implement in Detroit over the last few years.
Jahmyr Gibbs posted a video of a teammate with a whiteboard in the background that featured code words presumably related to tactical strategy.
Jahmyr Gibbs posting this is crazy…
— Tim Jenkins (@TJenkinsElite) November 30, 2024
This is actually so much info, Goff gotta be pissed about changing all his calls on a Saturday lol pic.twitter.com/5T56tTzprB
A reporter brought the clip to the attention of Campbell, who admitted he hadn't seen it and would have to look into it. The next time he spoke to the media, he had a bold take:
"I don’t really give a crap. If we’re gonna lose because of code words, then we’re not good enough anyway. I think we’ll just post the whole freaking playbook and every code word we’ve got. It doesn’t matter. It’s not gonna hurt us," Campbell said to the media, H/T Will Burchfield of 97.1 The Ticket.
He followed up by sarcastically saying he would not play Gibbs anymore because he was on social media.
This probably played out as well as the Lions could have hoped. Gibbs was reprimanded in the court of public opinion, leaving space for his coach to write the situation off as ridiculous, going so far as to say code words aren't a crucial-enough part of strategy anyway. A scenario potentially threatening internal conflict winds up helping Campbell reinforce his culture even further.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Dan Campbell Gives Defiant Quote on Jahmyr Gibbs’ Inadvertent Playbook Leaks.
