Grading Dan Campbell’s first year in Detroit

Evaluation and insight into the highs and lows of the inaugural Campbell season.

Last month we spent an episode of the Pride Of Detroit PODcast to evaluate the first year of Detroit Lions general manager Brad Holmes, and offered our thoughts and grades. This week, it’s time to shift our eyes to the head coach, Dan Campbell.

Campbell started with an impressive press conference, but his style was already from that moment divisive to fans and commentariat—either he was a breath of fresh air or a knucklehead. Regardless, it was a dark horse candidate hire, and all things flowed out from that. From there, questions arose early in the season about the offense, play-calling efficiency and things of that nature.

With 17 games under his belt, have things changed for Campbell? Does he have a command of the offense now? Do we need to see more? What about locker room presence, personnel decisions, fourth-down decisions; anything else that you would judge a coach on? Of course, we need a letter grade, man. How can you offer evaluation without such a thing?

We’re covering all that, plus some reader mailbag questions, on the latest episode of PODcast. Stick around to hear our thoughts on free agent wide receivers, Kyle Hamilton and Jared Goff’s trajectory as a quarterback. We’ve got it all covered for you—but again, we do have letter grades too. Very important.

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