Four years ago, Kelvin Sheppard flew to Detroit for an interview with Aaron Glenn. The Lions' freshly-hired defensive coordinator was filling out his staff under Dan Campbell, and Sheppard was a candidate for a job. Sheppard and Glenn had never met, but wound up talking for several hours in Glenn's office.
"We just gelled from the start, talking life, taking ball, similar upbringings. And he said after those five hours, ‘Shep, you didn’t know this, but I left the room and I said, ‘Dan, I don’t care what he’s coaching but he’s going to be on my staff,''" Sheppard said Monday in an interview with Fox 2 Detroit.
Glenn's office is now Sheppard's, as the Lions' linebackers coach moves into the role of defensive coordinator. Sheppard says he's "deeply indebted" to both Glenn and Campbell for pushing him to this moment. His relationship with Campbell dates back to 2014 when Campbell coached him on the Dolphins, and "he’s one of the first people who told me I should take a shot at (coaching)," Sheppard said. "He saw it in me as a player."
In fact, Campbell believed so deeply in Sheppard that he put the rookie coach -- whose non-playing resume comprised one year as director of player development at his alma mater LSU -- in charge of the outside linebackers in his Sheppard's year with the Lions.
"I’m confident in myself, I’m confident in my abilities, but having a man of his stature stand in front and behind me and say, ‘You got this, you can do it' ... He said, ‘It would be easy for me to make you Mark DeLeone’s assistant. You played linebacker, that’s comfortable.' But to truly grow as a person, not just in this profession, you have to step outside of that comfort zone,'" Sheppard said.
Sheppard spent 2021 coaching defensive ends like Romeo Okwara, a former teammate of his in Detroit, and Trey Flowers. He became linebackers coach the next season and continued to grow under Campbell and Glenn. They encouraged Sheppard to spread his coaching wings by doing things like speaking in front of the team. To get his first job as a coordinator under Campbell, a coach who's had his back at every turn, "means everything to me," said Sheppard.
"It’s the reason I chose to stay here over other opportunities. It would have been almost impossible to take another job, no matter what. He said, you know, ‘Shep, looking ahead, that day’s about to come to where I’m not going to be able to keep you.’ And I said, ‘Well, maybe by that time there will be a system to where we can have two head coaches and I’ll be your head coach B here,'" Sheppard joked.
"Because, man, I owe a lot to Dan," Sheppard said. "No. 1, the belief system he’s had in me since day one when I met him in 2014 as a player, and that’s carried over into the coaching career."
Sheppard, 37, is taking on a big task in Detroit. The Lions had a top-10 scoring defense last season after three years of growth under Glenn, but it buckled down the stretch under the weight of several key injuries. Sheppard's job is putting it back together to help the team win the Super Bowl. The Lions' best season in franchise history ended with a 45-31 loss to the Commanders in the divisional round of the playoffs, three wins shy of the goal.
With a laugh, Sheppard said his biggest challenge will be "not trying to put everything around the linebackers, and not making the linebackers the priority in everything I do." He said that Campbell joked with him after naming him coordinator, "I might not even get you any linebackers to look at because I know you, you’re gonna spend all your time (with them)."
"So just having that open mindset, the bigger landscape picture," Sheppard said. "It’s not just about my three or four guys on the field. It’s about, how does this now impact Alim McNeill? How does this impact a guy like Terrion Arnold? How does this impact Kerby Joseph? Every time I’m thinking about something now, it has to encompass all 11, so that’s something I’ve expanded my mind to."
Sheppard said it helps to have holdovers on his staff like DeShea Townsend (defensive backs) and Jim O'Neil (safeties), both of whom had opportunities elsewhere this offseason but are "sticking around and sticking with me."
"That’s the stuff I work for, is guys who are willing to pour into me," Sheppard said. "I gotta make sure I fill their cup as well."
If there's a single area of growth that would catapult the Lions' defense next season, it's the pass rush. Aidan Hutchinson was their leader in sacks last season, by a wide margin, and only played in five games before breaking his leg -- a tribute to Hutchinson's dominance when healthy, but also to the lack of playmakers around him. Alim McNeill, Detroit's other star player up front, tore his ACL in Week 15.
The Lions finished tied for 23rd in sacks. And while they were fourth in QB pressures, that owed mostly to the second highest blitz rate in the league. The Eagles reminded everyone of the power of a dominant defensive front when they bullied Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in the Super Bowl without blitzing a single time.
"Everything you do on defense starts with the front," Sheppard said. "Just look at the final guys in the championship game. And everybody knows. This is not (like) I’m telling some secret. It starts with the trenches in both the run and pass game. Everybody is so pass-happy nowadays, but if you really watch these games, it’s a lot of people going back to the roots of football, and that’s toughness in the trenches. You better have that. It starts there.
"I always say, ‘You have to earn the right to rush the passer.’ It doesn’t matter if you can get off the ball and be this glorified pass-rushing type player if you don’t earn the right to get to those pass-rushing downs. So, just making sure we find that fine balance in guys that can play the run and the pass, and making sure they gel with who we want to be because that supersedes everything."
Ultimately, said Sheppard, his defense will reflect "a team that plays together and for one another."
"There’s no ‘me,’ there’s no ‘I’ in this, and I seriously mean that. That’s not coach-speak. That’s exactly the message that they’re going to hear. I coach for my coaches, we are in this together. No voice is bigger than the other, no role is bigger than the other. This is one unit, and that’s why I’m saying we’re going to move as one in everything we do. That’s No. 1, that togetherness."
More from Sheppard's interview with Fox 2:
On the other qualities of his defense: "Absolutely relentless effort, non-negotiable. Those are things I say, the coaches aren’t coaching effort. You will stand out if your effort lacks on this defense. And then just nasty, tenacious, finishing, scratching, clawing, fighting for every blade of grass that’s out there. If we’re able to do those things — you notice, I didn’t say one stat, I didn’t say one accolade — then the bigger-picture things will come from that. But that, to me, will be the DNA of who we are as a unit."
On prioritizing players who fit the Lions' culture: "You can have the most talented guy, but if Brad (Holmes) and Dan don’t see him as a fit for who we believe we want to wear this uniform, then we’ll pass on those guys. We’ve seen it happen now for four years I've been here, I’m like, ‘Whew, we sure?’ And you look up a year from that decision being made and myself or guys who don’t do the deep-dive studies like our front office are like, ‘Oh, they were right.’ And Brad’s going to be right more than he is wrong. So I always trust, whatever players they give me, we’re going to coach them all the same."
On young players who are ready to take a jump: "It’s various. We have a young nucleus, a young core, but somebody that jumps out at me, a Terrion Arnold. There is so much meat on that bone that he don’t even know. He called me a couple days ago, playing around, I said, 'Where you at?’ ‘Down in Florida.’ I said, 'You better enjoy it because when you get back the next time you see me, we gettin' to work, brother.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, absolutely, Coach! I know how you roll!!'
"The Ennis Rakestraws of the world, the Mekhi Wingos, you even talk about the Brian Branches of the world. Everybody’s like, 'Brian Branch?' Brian Branch is only going into his third year. That’s a young player. I know we see this dynamic athlete, but there’s so much meat on the bone from the neck up with that player. Kerby continuing to grow where he took a step, a major leap from the neck up.
"A lot of these players, you guys see their talent on Sundays, but we get the deep dives throughout the week. You might think, ‘Kerby, All-Pro, Ed Reed stats.' He can grow. And showing the player where, that’s the big thing I try to tell my staff. I’m big on telling people why. And it’s not disrespectful if a player ever asks, ‘Why, coach?’ He’s not challenging me, he wants understanding. And if we create a bigger understanding of what we’re trying to get done, you’ll see a natural progression and a natural growth with multiple guys on this roster."