Derrick Barnes has broad shoulders, but the weight was becoming too much to bear. He had put most of it on himself. After struggling through his first two seasons with the Lions and then watching the team invest a first-round pick in another linebacker, Barnes felt his time running out. He came to training camp this summer stressing his role, and sweating every mistake. He was obsessed with "whether I’m a starter, whether I’m going to play," he said. After the third practice of camp, Barnes "had to sit back and tell myself, ‘That’s not the worry right now.’" He also had a talk with a man he calls "my father away from home."
Sean Pugh was the player development coach at Purdue each of Barnes' four years with the Boilermakers. He was a sounding board for the players, "the guy everybody went to" if you didn't want to go to the coaches, Barnes said. Pugh and Barnes became close. As fate would have it, the Lions hired Pugh as their director of player engagement the same year they drafted Barnes in the fourth round. "A win-win," said Barnes.
The third practice of camp was a particularly stressful one for Barnes. His nerves on the field were frayed, like tripwires at every turn. He wondered if Jack Campbell was about to replace him. He questioned whether he was good enough to stick around. He doubted, even as he told himself not to, whether he still fit in the Lions' future. Playing linebacker requires thinking ahead, and here was Barnes constantly looking over his shoulder.
"It was really worrying because I wanted to be here and I felt like — maybe other people didn’t feel this way — but I felt like I was on a short leash for my time here, and that’s what kind of got in my way," Barnes said. "Didn't have the best rookie season, didn’t have the best second-year season that I wanted to have. And then we got to my third season, obviously Jack's a great linebacker and I love playing with him, but when they drafted him, that’s where the worry started to come in. I’m not going to lie, that’s what happens. At the beginning of camp, I was losing it. I was worried too much, I was worried I would make mistakes and then I just hit a wall."
That's when Barnes, 22, went to Pugh. They are both men of faith. A former offensive lineman at Western Kentucky, Pugh would become a pastor in Kentucky while earning a master's in theology from Campbellsville University. He has a unique ability to connect with a lot of players in the Lions' locker room.
"He just brought me back to being sane, honestly," Barnes said. "We talked about whatever God has in store for me, that’s what will happen. Nobody else writes my story, He does. I truly believe that and that’s what I’ve been continuing to follow. Honestly, if it wasn’t for Coach Pugh and that day, I don’t know where I would be."
The conversation helped Barnes recenter himself. It shifted his focus from fighting for his job to striving for growth, one day at a time. It altered his goals from survival to something a little less heavy: "Finding comfort in myself by competing." It also reminded him that he plays this game because he loves it. By relinquishing the things beyond his control, Barnes has regained control of his career. All of this has "allowed me to play looser and go out there and have fun," he said.
"There was a point in time where I kind of lost sight of the fun of the game, and I finally got that back this year," he said.
The mind does funny things. As he fixated on trying to be a starter his first two seasons in Detroit, Barnes started just 10 of his fist 32 games. By the metrics, the eye test and his own raw admission, he was one of the worst linebackers in the NFL. He ranked 92nd out of 94 qualifying linebackers as a rookie, according to Pro Football Focus. He was better in year two, but still ranked outside the top 50 players at his position. In the season that both he and the Lions hoped he would take a leap, Barnes was beaten out for one of the starting linebackers jobs by sixth-round pick Malcolm Rodriguez. The game looked too fast for him. He's starting to catch up.
"Even my wife jokes with me, she was like, 'It’s just a huge difference this year compared to last year. You look comfortable, you look confident. When you see plays you go make them.' She was like, 'I feel like when I watched you play your first two years, you were hesitant. Like, you wanted to do it and then you didn’t do it,'" said Barnes.
After letting go of his obsession with starting, Barnes has started all six games this season next to Alex Anzalone, another one of his mentors in Detroit. "I don't think I would be right here in this league without him," Barnes said. Anzalone literally wouldn't be where he is this year without Barnes, whose emergence at the MIKE linebacker spot has allowed Anzalone to play more of the WILL, where he's thriving. Barnes now ranks 37th out of 85 qualifying linebackers, per PFF, while Anzalone has jumped to 21st. They are tied for 12th in quarterback pressures.
If we limit it to linebackers who have played at least 50 percent of their team's defensive snaps, both Barnes and Anzalone rank in the top 25. Barnes ranks 11th in pass rushing, which was always a strength of his in college, and 14th in run defense. Guess who ranks 15th? Anzalone. That makes the Lions one of only three teams with two top-20 linebackers against the run. And guess who has the No. 1 run defense in the NFL?
It doesn't mean that Barnes has been perfect, or that he's done growing. Far from it. (And the defensive line deserves tons of credit for allowing Barnes and Anzalone to play downhill.) He can still be exploited in coverage and his consistency as a tackler needs work. When everyone was praising him for "playing great ball" through the first couple games, "in my head I’m like, 'If you think that’s playing great, just wait until I actually explode,'" said Barnes. "And that’s what I want to do. You haven’t seen great yet."
"Credit to him," said Anzalone, "it's really impressive how he's handled all of it. To be the starting linebacker when you have a first-round draft pick, that's really hard to do. That's inspired me to see that."
The inspiration is mutual. For Barnes, to see Anzalone "ballin' and shinin' just gives me more motivation" to do the same. He said he believes he can be one of the best linebackers in the NFL because he's "learning from a guy who is actually one of the best right now." Deep within, Barnes believes that "one day I could be the best." He says he's only "halfway where I want to be," and this is literally, statistically true: Barnes ranks 25th out of those 50 qualifying linebackers.
"I know that my ceiling is high and that I can continue to grow from where I am now," he said. "Hopefully I’m here for a long time. I love Detroit, man. It’s done nothing but been good to me, even through the rough times. I feel like personally I will continue to get better and become what I want to become, and what God wants me to become."
When Barnes was asked what's changed for him this year, fellow linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin answered on his behalf at the neighboring locker: "I became more of a dawg!" Barnes laughed, perhaps funny because it's true, and said, "I would just honestly say my awareness of things, how comfortable and confident I am on the field. ... And then also, just me not feeling like I’m walking on egg shells." Like Anzalone, Barnes is playing more instinctually. He credits coordinator Aaron Glenn and linebackers coach Kelvin Sheppard for continuing to believe in him.
Campbell, no doubt, is coming. His role continues to grow, but not at Barnes' expense. Instead, the Lions have been experimenting with Campbell as a pass-rushing edge to get their three best linebackers on the field at the same time. In arguably the defense's best performance of the season in last week's beatdown of the Bucs, Anzalone played 56 snaps (read: all of them), Barnes 44 and Campbell 29. 'Rodrigo,' last season's sensation, has settled graciously into a special teams role. Barnes is third on the team in tackles. Anzalone is first, Campbell is fourth.
Barnes would be lying to say he's not proud of what he's done so far. But he takes just as much satisfaction in seeing the players around him succeed: "Alex has been lighting it up, Jack is developing well, it’s been awesome." And ultimately, Barnes' joy comes from winning: "5-1 is amazing, man." This was part of the joy he'd lost when the Lions won three times in his first 23 games in the NFL.
"My thing now is, what can I do to help the defense get better? And what can I do to help us continue to win?" said Barnes.
On Sunday in Baltimore, that will mean slowing down a top-five rushing attack and containing one of the most explosive quarterbacks in the NFL. For the first time in a long time, Detroit's linebackers seem up to the task. The Lions have two good ones in Anzalone and Barnes, and maybe a great one in the making in Campbell. With the vets playing so well, there's no need to rush the rookie.
Barnes is his own harshest critic. He says that when people "tell me I don't give myself enough credit, it’s only because I know where I want to go." He's actually right where he wants to be, playing winning football in the middle of one of the best defenses in the NFL. Barnes just remembers where he was, and has no interest in going back.
"At some point in time, you just get a vibe, and not that I was getting a vibe that I wasn’t going to be here, it was just a vibe that I had to pick my sh*t up — excuse my language," Barnes said. "I’m just glad they believed in me to allow me to continue to develop, because I truly believe that I am the player they thought I would be when they drafted me.
"And from my perspective, I feel like it’s starting to show."