If Dre Bly's being honest, he sizes up the Lions and gets "a little jealous." The team he played for in the mid-2000's is not the one he's returning to as a coach. It might be the same franchise, fueled by the same "fiery fans and fiery people that love football here in Detroit," said Bly, but "the talent is a lot different, the leadership is a lot different."
The Lions started last season in the spotlight of HBO's Hard Knocks and ended it on Sunday Night Football with a rousing win over the Packers that topped off an 8-2 finish and sealed their first winning record in five years. Over Bly's four years in Detroit, when he was a two-time Pro Bowler and one of the top corners in the NFL, the Lions never won more than six games in a season.
"When I hear people talk about the Lions and this community just all across the football world, there’s a lot of excitement," Bly said Wednesday. "Me as a former player, that’s something you could wish to be a part of. I didn’t get a chance to experience some of that as a player, so its pretty cool to be back on the other side."
Bly is back in Detroit as the Lions new cornerbacks coach, hired by his old teammate in Detroit, Dan Campbell. He's also reuniting with Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn, one of his inspirations as a player and mentors as a coach. When Bly received number 31 as a freshman at North Carolina in 1996, he looked to the pros for a fellow corner wearing 31 and "AG might have been the only guy that resonated with me in that number," said Bly. "And our games were very similar. He was dynamic as a player, he was explosive, he was a kick returner, he made plays."
More than 20 years later, Bly would start his next career by shadowing Glenn as a minority coaching intern with the Saints, where Glenn was defensive backs coach and Campbell was assistant head coach. Bly said Glenn is "really the reason why I'm here today."
"Learned a lot from him in New Orleans, shadowed him the whole preseason (in 2017)," Bly said. "Having a chance to work with those guys is what got me started on this path of coaching."
Bly, 45, is joining a staff in Detroit rife with former players. He's taking over a room full of new faces. The Lions have overhauled their secondary this offseason, signing proven vets in Cam Sutton, Emmanuel Moseley and C.J. Gardner-Johnson. A weakness for the NFL's worst defense a year ago -- the Lions allowed the most yards per completion in the league -- could well be a strength. At the very least, it should be signficantly better.
In the same way Bly once saw some of himself in Glenn, Sutton might see some of himself in Bly. While Bly has to admit Sutton is an inch or two taller after recently sizing him up -- "Most little guys say we bigger than we actually are," he grinned -- everything else about Detroit's new No. 1 corner is pretty much the same: "Very instinctive, smart, savvy and one of the things that impressed us about him was his ability to make plays," said Bly.
Sutton also got a ringing endorsement from his former head coach when Bly bumped into Mike Tomlin this offseason. Tomlin, who's from the same town in Virginia as Bly, coached Sutton for six years with the Steelers and told Bly that the Lions "are getting a great player (who's) like another coach on the field, and one of those guys that’s going to be in your office all the time talking ball, asking questions."
"As a coach, as a former player, that’s what you love to hear," said Bly. "Because at the end of the day, and this is why Dan coaches, this is why AG coaches and the rest of the guys on our staff that are former players, we want these guys to learn from us, but also have a chance to do what we weren’t able to do. That’s the whole point of us coaching and passing the torch. Helping these guys have a chance to be better than us."
Bly is one of 10 former NFL players on Campbell's staff; together, they played 98 seasons. He's one of only two, along with Antwaan Randle El, who won a Super Bowl. The other eight combined for 78 seasons and came up empty. Bly might have, too, had he not won it all with the The Greatest Show on Turf as a rookie. He returned to the Super Bowl two years later, where the Rams' dynasty would be ended by Tom Brady and the Patriots, and "after that," he said, "I never went to back to the playoffs." He shook his head: "Never."
"It tells you, things come and go so fast and if you don’t make the most of it, it can leave you just like that," said Bly. "My last eight years in the league, even though I had some individual success when I came here, ultimately I didn't have the team success.
"That's why I’m so excited to be back, because I feel like I left some things out there on the field that I wasn’t able to provide here in Detroit. And to see the way those guys are trending now and the way we're trending with the leadership that we have, it’s really a blessing to be back and to be a part of. Because I wasn’t able to provide something here as a player, I’m excited to hopefully provide something as a coach."
Bly already has a fine legacy as a player. Even in Detroit, he was a bright spot on bad teams, a fan favorite, a fearless corner who picked off 19 passes in four seasons and lent the Lions a semblance of legitimacy. But that was it. His legacy here is otherwise tied to losing. Now he has a chance to rewrite it, as the same franchise but a much different team tries to follow a new script.
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