During practices this summer, Dan Campbell got flashbacks to the 2009 New Orleans Saints. He'd watch Jared Goff and Alex Anzalone match wits before the snap -- the quarterback changing the call, the linebacker adjusting the front, their respective units working in unison -- and "it reminds me so much," Campbell said, of how the Saints looked ahead of their Super Bowl-winning season.
"To watch Drew Brees and Jonathan Vilma go back and forth at the line of scrimmage trying to outsmart each other and everybody being in tune with what each one of them wanted and executing -- man, it’s a thing of beauty," Campbell said Wednesday on 97.1 The Ticket. "And I felt that this camp."
His voice rose as he spoke, like a composer hearing a song come to life. To Campbell, the moving parts make music. When they're played like this, the notes lift his soul.
"You watch Goff get up there, he’s making the call, he’s turning the protection, all of a sudden Alex flips the pressure and now Goff sees it coming, ‘Do I have time to make the adjustment?’ ... Man, that’s next level," Campbell said. "And that’s where we’ve gotten to, where we’ve grown."
The '09 Saints marked the final stop of Campbell's playing days, but he was an observer to their triumph. A knee injury in camp shelved him for the year and ended his career. A ring slipped through his fingers. This might be the year he wins his own.
Like his mentor Sean Payton in 2009, Campbell is entering his fourth season at the helm in Detroit. His star quarterback is entering his age-30 season and just keeps getting better, like 2009 Drew Brees. The Saints brought back one of the best offenses -- and one of the best offensive lines -- in the NFL and upgraded their defense, investing a first-round pick in a cornerback. They started 13-0 and never looked back.
And the Lions boast something the Saints did not: coordinators returning on both sides of the ball. The offense is in year three under Ben Johnson, the defense year four under Aaron Glenn. And Dave Fipp is in year four running the special teams. Both Johnson and Glenn have been pursued for head coaching jobs; Johnson has turned teams down to stay in Detroit. Continuity on the sideline breeds confidence and creativity on the field.
"I think it’s huge," said Campbell. "I think it’s very important. We’re able to go much farther (with what we do). Being able to retain Ben and having Goff here going on year four, it’s the same as AG and Alex. Anzalone is our quarterback on defense. The evolution of it and how much we’re able to open it up, and then the personnel that’s involved in it, and then Alex understanding exactly what we’re calling and what AG wants and why we’re doing it, I think it’s big, man."
The defense looked much improved in camp, capped by a dominant day against the offense in a best-on-best scrimmage. The defensive line has drawn the attention of Johnson, Goff and others for being more disruptive. The secondary is full of new talent. Anzalone noted Monday that (needed) "assets were contributed as far as getting some DB's, some D-linemen" this offseason and that the defense as a whole is "much more squared away."
"Just top down, from defensive coaching staff to the bottom of the defense," he said. "That’s a good feeling going into the season."
Detroit's defense ranked in the bottom half of the NFL last year and wilted in the NFC title game. It bulked up in the trenches with DJ Reader and Marcus Davenport and bolstered the backend with two new starting cornerbacks in Carlton Davis III and Terrion Arnold, among others. If the defense can be even league-average this year, the offense has the firepower to take this team to the top.
The big boys up front might be even better with the addition of Kevin Zeitler. The backfield duo of David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs should run teams ragged -- again. There are questions at receiver after Amon-Ra St. Brown, but Jameson Williams will have every opportunity to answer them. Sam LaPorta might be the best tight end in the league.
And "this quarterback allows you to do a lot of things in the pass game that you can’t do with everybody," Campbell said. "Goff, man, his rhythm, his timing, his accuracy, and then the fact that he just has such a grasp of the playbook and what the defense is trying to do to him that we’re able to open things up much more. The ability to get into the best plays available per look, and that’s coming from your quarterback, is going to help."
It bears repeating that Goff has been one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL for the past two seasons -- the past two and a half, really. By some measures, only Patrick Mahomes has been better. Goff said at the start of camp that he wants to hit more deep shots this season, which is where Williams could take this offense to new heights. He said Wednesday that he generally feels "more in control ... being in the third year of (Johnson's) system."
"You can't understate how beneficial that is for not only the quarterback but for our entire offense, offensive line, everybody," said Goff. "There's a lot of conversations had where we can reference things that have happened in the past and why we do or don’t want to do things. For me, it’s just continuing to grab that command of the offense and take it to the next level."
And what's the ceiling for the offense?
"There isn’t one," said Goff. "We can take this thing as far as we can go. It’s limitless, if we continue to work and put our heads down and improve. But we’ve got the pieces. We’ve got some pretty good players, obviously a really good O-line, good coaches, we’ve got everything in place. It’s about going out there and executing – and ultimately winning games."
To extend the comparison, the '09 Saints had the No. 1 offense in the NFL, in both points and yards. They ranked in the top 10 in both passing and rushing. Last year, the Lions ranked in the top five in both. (Only the team that ended their season could say the same.) And the Saints made up for an otherwise mediocre defense by finishing second in the league in takeaways. Campbell and Glenn treat takeaways like oxygen. Anzalone pointed out that he didn't have any last year for the first time in his career, "so that’s definitely been a focus for me personally, just being that playmaker."
Stasis feels like the biggest threat to the Lions' ambitions. Continuity is an asset so long as it doesn't turn into complacency: "If you just get stuck in the mud and do the same things every year, it gets stale," said Campbell. "And man, our coordinators don’t do that." Johnson tells his players all the time, "Hey man, give me ideas, I want to hear them," said Goff. And if he likes one, "he finds a way to fit it into the formations and the motions that we’re doing that week and make it work."
"They’re constantly looking for new ideas, new concepts, new ways to push the boundaries of what we can do," Campbell said of his coordinators. "And that, to me, is a sign of damn good coaches."
"Yeah, we can go further, man," he said.
He was referring to their schemes, on offense and defense. He might have been talking about their dreams.