Rod Wood looks back fondly on his time as president of the Lions, but also has a few regrets as he prepares to step away.
"The highs certainly are winning the division back to back, that LA Rams playoff game (in 2024) and the environment and the euphoria of winning a home playoff game," Wood told reporters this week at the NFL meetings in Arizona. "Taking a chance on Dan and Brad and hiring two guys who had never done the job before, never worked together, but believing that we had the right people for Detroit, that’s a big high.
"Some of the lows, the early years we struggled and didn’t get things figured out as soon as I would have liked to. The Covid year was really tough and some of the things that we did during COVID and believing all of the science around the vaccine and masks and testing and those things. But at the time, that was an unknown, uncharted territory."
In a separate interview with the Free Press, Wood admitted that he regrets "buying into the vaccines as a panacea for everything."
"There wasn’t my normal personality to challenge some of this stuff," he said.
In hindsight, Wood wishes he had raised more questions about "forcing the players to get vaccinated" and "forcing everybody to get tested every day."
"Is there real science behind some of this? Or is it just – and you kind of just went along with it. Now, I'd never dealt with anything like that before and no one else had, either, but I regret not pushing back more on that, in hindsight. And I know there were some players and even staff members that were almost forced to be vaccinated against their better judgment. That bothers me, but again, it was a first-time situation for everybody," said Wood.
On the other side of Covid, the Lions have enjoyed their most successful run in the Super Bowl era, led by Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes, the duo that Wood helped select after the 2020 season. Wood, 66, is proud that he's leaving the franchise on solid ground after an 11-year tenure as president.
"The last several years have trumped the first couple years in terms of the success," he said. "And we're positioned, I think, for continued success."
