After six years in the NFL, David Montgomery knows how to "let things go." He doesn't obsess over games of the past. The Lions made a mess of their playoff loss to the Commanders last season, but "you can’t hold onto spilled milk," Montgomery said Sunday after the first practice of a new year. "You just clean it up, and figure out what you do next to get another glass."
All that said, Montgomery acknowledged, "this is probably the hungriest that I have been."
He's not the only one. After the Lions won 15 games last season but fell short of their own Super Bowl or Bust expectations on the heels of a collapse the year prior in the NFC championship game, "everybody's out here hungry," said Montgomery. "We're tired of just being close."
"It’s cool to be close at first, but you don’t want to get comfortable with being close all the time. That’s not what you want to be known for, especially when you got the guys that we got on this team," Montgomery said. "You want to finish it. So this is the year for us, the Year of the Reckoning, and the year that we choose we need to finish."
Before the Lions' first practice of training camp, Dan Campbell talked about sacrifice. It resonated with veteran receiver Kalif Raymond, who internalized it like this: "What are you willing to sacrifice today, to become who you want to be tomorrow?" What's that "old-school saying?" Raymond asked. "Almost is only good for horseshoes and hand grenades?"
"Man, you don’t work for almost," he said. "You work for the whole thing. And the groundwork that we lay right now is going to determine the small, minute details that come with the Almost that happened last season."
Almost also came with injuries, which sabotaged the Lions' defense and played an undeniable role in their demise. They felt an aftershock Sunday when Campbell announced that starting defensive lineman Levi Onwuzurike, who was finally healthy last season, is out for the year with a knee injury. He joins Alim McNeill and Josh Paschal as important players up front who will miss at least the start of the year, as the Lions prepare for a brutal schedule out of the gate.
Their first six road games: Jordan Love and the Packers, Lamar Jackson and the Ravens, Joe Burrow and the Bengals, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs, Jayden Daniels and the Commanders, Jalen Hurts and the Eagles. Raymond, for his part, isn't worried about the schedule, because "I don’t look at the schedule. I don’t look at the Insta-ma-grams or the Tika-ma-toks," he said with a laugh. "I’m good on all that stuff." Raymond swears he doesn't know who the Lions play, other than each team in the division twice.
Campbell knows, and Campbell loves it. The aim remains the same for the Lions, to win the NFC North: "You understand what that road looks like, and there’s going to be nothing easy about it," said Campbell. As they replace two starters on the offensive line and two coordinators who left to become head coaches, and try to patch together a pass rush opposite Aidan Hutchinson, the Lions might not look as well-oiled as they did for most of last season. 9-1 through 10 games could well be 6-4, or worse.
But when it comes to transitioning from Ben Johnson to John Morton, and from Aaron Glenn to Kelvin Sheppard, "if you’re asking me personally," said Campbell, "I don’t think it’s what it’s played out to be." While it obviously "hurts to lose two guys that have been here from the beginning," it helps that Sheppard arrived in Detroit the same year as Glenn, and that Morton was a key behind-the-scenes figure in Johnson's first season running the offense and reviving Jared Goff.
The biggest challenge, in Campbell's eyes, will pertain to chemistry more than scheme. Campbell often communicated on the sidelines with Johnson and Glenn without even talking -- "a look, a nod, body demeanor, says it all." Amid the chaos of a game, he'll have to develop the same flow with Morton and Sheppard.
"That takes a minute, it takes time," Campbell said. "We’ll get it, it’ll come. That’s what practice is about, preseason games, all of that. We’ll be good."
Endings spawn new beginnings, with rookie Tate Ratledge and second-year pro Christian Mahogany poised to fill big shoes on the offensive line. Injuries eventually yield returns, which is the hopeful view for a defense that's ready to re-integrate good players at every level. Like his players, Campbell is "still enthusiastic as ever."
"There’s a price to be paid to get yourself back into the dance -- back into the tournament -- and that will never change," he said. "And if we let that slide at all, we’re going to be sitting here at home in January, and that’s not what we want."
Last year, the beginning looked better than the end for the Lions. What they want this year is the reverse, to close the circle on close.