Watching the Lions practice each day at camp, Chris Spielman says he gets all "goosebumped up." From the players to the coaches, from the starters to the reserves to the guys on the bubble, Spielman senses desperation across the field -- and "desperation can breed greatness, man, if the desperation is pointed in the right direction," he said Monday on 97.1 The Ticket.
"I just like the fact that there’s competition. I would say there’s noticeably more competition in this camp than in our first year here and even last year," Spielman said. "And when you have competition, that brings out greatness, man."
In his third season as a special assistant to Lions owner Sheila Ford Hamp -- in his own words, a "servant to the organization" -- Spielman is as determined as ever to push the team to places it's never been. Once the heartbeat of Detroit's defense in the early 1990's when the club made four trips to the playoffs, won two division titles and reached the 1991 NFC Championship game -- its only stretch of success in the Super Bowl era -- the 57-year-old Spielman is now a valued behind-the-scenes voice for the likes of Hamp, GM Brad Holmes and head coach Dan Campbell.
It was Spielman who helped steer the Lions toward Holmes and Campbell in 2021 after they had fired Bob Quinn and Matt Patricia. And it was just a couple days ago that Campbell opened his pre-practice press conference with this: "Man, I don’t speak a lot about him, but Chris Spielman, he does a lot for us and he’s a little bit unseen and not always heard on the outside."
"But I’ll tell you what, he’s an important confidant and I’m glad he’s here," said Campbell. "He certainly helps keep me straight and tells me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear. I always appreciate that about him. I just wanted to get that off my chest."
A four-time Pro Bowl linebacker and an inductee to the Lions' ring of honor, Spielman still burns to fill the only hole in his resume: a Super Bowl ring. His desire to win football's ultimate prize compelled him to leave his job as an analyst for the NFL on Fox and rejoin the organization that drafted him out of Ohio State in 1988. Asked about trying to recapture the success of the Lions' 1991 season, Spielman said, "I want an actually better-than-'91 season."
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"The standard is higher. Not that our standard wasn’t high, we just didn’t meet it. The goal and expectation is to meet the standard and the only standard is the Super Bowl," Spielman said. "I’ve always considered that in my career, I fell short of the goal, and it’s left me longing. That’s why I left the TV booth to come back and get another shot at this thing."
And that's exactly what the Lions have under the leadership of Campbell and Holmes. They went from three wins -- and their fourth straight last-place finish -- in year one to nine wins and a near playoff berth in year two. Now they're favored to win their division for the first time since Spielman was calling plays in the middle of the defense. Campbell and Holmes have added talent and toughness on both sides of the ball and, with Spielman's help, built a culture of togetherness throughout the organization.
For Spielman, rising expectations are exciting. So is "having an opportunity to be the hunted," he said, "instead of the cute little story and the engine-that-could Lions."
"I hate it. It disgusts me when that was going on: ‘Aw, look at ‘em, man. They really try hard.’ There’s nothing more insulting to a football player than saying, ‘Oh, they try hard.’ Now you got a chance. Now you have expectations. Now you are the hunted. You better embrace that. If you don’t embrace that and you fall short, then we gotta try something else," Spielman said.
One of Spielman's long-held beliefs -- "and as you can tell, I got a lot of stuff that goes through my mind when I wake up every day," he said -- is that the best football players and coaches "operate from a position of victory." That is, with the expectation to win. At practice, Spielman often operates from his old position on the field -- or as close to it as he can get without infringing on the action. It's one of the many ways he serves the coaching staff, by diagnosing offensive plays from the perspective of a linebacker and relaying those that gave him the most trouble.
"It’s 9-on-7 and I get in my Michael J. Fox DeLorean (time machine) and go back to the future and picture myself playing linebacker. The purpose for that is, if there’s a play that Ben (Johnson) calls or Hank (Fraley) designs a run or whatever it is and it gives me problems? Then I’ll say, ‘Hey, man, just so you know, that got me.’ Because I know this: my body doesn’t work like it used to, but my brain is on it, man," Spielman said.
With Campbell and Holmes leading the Lions, Spielman says "there is no fear in this organization." It's part of the reason he was drawn to them, because "it takes strong people to lead strong men," he said. To Spielman, weakness is poison, and you can't "bring poison into a strong foundation." After hiring Campbell and Holmes, the Lions poured their foundation in the 2021 draft. Now they're trying to build something lasting on top of it.
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’"The philosophy that Brad has subscribed to is draft players, not positions. You have to have good players. Without good players, you have nothing. I think, yeah, you did draft a foundation. Penei Sewell – and I don’t say this lightly, believe me – is a possible future Hall of Famer. Amon-Ra (St. Brown) is really, really good and only getting better.
"But the best thing about it, when your best players are your best leaders and hardest workers, that sets a foundation not only for a couple years but into the future. Because everyone that comes in here, when they see these best players working at the level that they work, they understand if they’re not up to that then they have to go. You can’t have people that aren’t willing to meet the standard. You have to let them go because they’ll kill you in a heartbeat. They’ll bring your team down. They’ll bring everything down."
The Lions, at long last, are on their way up. The heights they reach remain to be seen, and Spielman knows the climb is just beginning.
"In the NFL, humility is seven days away, man. You gotta stay humble and stay hungry and stay strong and operate from a position of victory with confidence not cockiness," he said. "If we do that, I think we’ll handle the expectations and meet the standard and meet what people want. And more importantly, and I say this with all sincerity, what the fans of Detroit need."
Other highlights from Spielman's interview on 97.1 The Ticket:
On the Lions' thought process of drafting a running back and linebacker in the first round, at so-called devalued positions: "That’s pretty simple. When you have all your grades, and we’ll just use the letter system, A, B, C and D. When your pick comes up and you have an A up there – an A – and everybody else is a B, I’m picking the A. I’m picking the player. I’m picking the guy that’s going to make us better.
"And I’m not just picking a running back, I’m picking a guy that’s going to be a possible returner, a guy who we’ll line him up in the slot, match him up on a linebacker and the linebacker has zero (!!) chance. Third and 3, third and 4, you’re going to anticipate they’re in man, how you gonna play him? If you do play him, you have to bring the safety down, you have to go vice coverage on him and guess what? Then you have to win one-on-one on the outside. That’s picking the player.
"When you pick a linebacker, what you’re betting on is not only are we getting a starter, but the importance of communication at the green dot and the intelligence of that position and you’re setting a foundation for your defense. And by the way, does he fit the culture? Yeah, yeah he does. You’re picking foundational pieces to set yourself up not just for 2023, but you gotta be in it for the long haul or go find something else to do."
On his early impressions of Jack Campbell: "Pretty good. See ball, get ball. Linebacker is really not that difficult to play. There’s the ball, go tackle the guy. Here’s the thing. To play linebacker, you have to have instincts. And let me give you a quick analogy on instincts. At Easter, I was home and one of my daughters got a new dog and there was a piece of pizza up on the counter and this little dog, one bound, leaped and got the pizza. I said, 'Damn, that’s blue-chip, that's elite ability right there.' Then a ball was thrown, this sucker jumped over the couch, planted without hesitation, made a direct 90-degree cut, able to pick up the ball on the run. Beautiful! So all this explosion and athletic ability.
"Then all of a sudden, the doorbell rings. You know what this dog did? It goes to the wrong door. Got zero instincts! Can’t happen, he can’t play! I just said, look, man, don’t count on him as a guard dog. Because if a burglar comes in, (the dog's) going to go to the back door and the burglar’s gonna run out with all your stuff through the front door. You can’t count on him. So when you draft that position, he better have instincts. If he doesn’t have instincts, he’s got no shot. And Jack has them."
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