Three years ago, the Detroit Lions were coming off a disastrous season and an even more disastrous coaching experiment. Confidence in the ownership to get the team pointed in the right direction was about as high as a turtle can jump.
When Lions principal owner Sheila Ford Hamp hired largely unknown Brad Holmes as the GM and inexperienced Dan Campbell to lead the team, the default reaction was “same old Lions.” The hashtag “sell the team” was on a predominance of social media posts.
My how perceptions have changed in three years!
As Campbell prepares his team to play for a trip to the Super Bowl after winning two home playoff games in the same season for the first time in franchise history, the Loins are suddenly the new blueprint for successful team-building. Campbell himself has a great appreciation for Hamp — she dropped the “Ford” from her name along the way —sticking to her guns and making a largely unpopular hiring.
“It means a lot. I always wanted to do that. I always wanted to prove her right,” Campbell said of Hamp during his Thursday press briefing. “That’s not an easy thing to do, to take a chance on somebody that nobody knows about or thinks deserves a shot or whatever it is. And so, to trust your instincts and trust people around you and to pull the trigger, it means a lot. It sure does.”
Hamp stayed faithful to her risky choice when the team opened 0-10-1 to start the new regime. She gave another vote of confidence when Campbell struggled to a 1-6 start in 2022.
Campbell credits Hamp for being a special owner with a different mentality.
“Once you know her, and once I know her, it doesn’t surprise me one bit. She’s one of one. She’s unique and I’ll say this — everything that we kind of are and what we’re about has started with her. It’s really her, it’s her vision.”
True to her own words, she’s not meddling with the process.
“Like I’m fortunate she allows me to be myself. I don’t feel like I have to be somebody I’m not, and you can’t always do that. You can’t – and so with that, I can coach. I can do what I need to do, and I appreciate that. So, she took a chance on me and yeah, it feels good to prove her right, but we’re not done either.”
