HE STANDS TALL and strong, looking as if he could still snowplow an outside linebacker halfway into Canada. But on this day, in this place, Dan Campbell can't contain his tears.
His new bosses, Detroit Lions president Rod Wood and owner Sheila Ford Hamp, are a few minutes away from introducing Campbell to the world in a news conference. On the indoor practice field, in the middle of COVID in January 2021, they tell him that they believe in his style, his plan to turn the sad-sack Lions into winners, and his impact on the city of Detroit. The part that hits Campbell hard is that they believe in him.
It's a quiet cry, in a quiet cavern of a building. During his playing days, this indoor field always had the whir of people coming and going, whistles blasting, pads clapping together. The silence today is haunting, and that puts Campbell in a one-on-one collision with his inner thoughts.
They look around the turf field with Lions' logos all over it and tell him this is the exact location where he will turn things around in Detroit, and the moment pancakes Campbell. He didn't just want a head coaching job; he wanted this job, in this city, at this time. He loved Detroit as a player, and though he was born and raised in Texas, Campbell always felt as if he had some Detroit in him. Now, he's the head coach, and it's overwhelming to him.
Wood and Ford Hamp steal a look at each other. They were not expecting to see Campbell show up in a suit, and they certainly didn't think they would see him cry. He's a gym clothes guy who is 6-foot-5, 250 pounds, and he carries himself with a posture and confidence that doesn't scream vulnerability. If the NFL ever puts together an over-40 league, Campbell still looks as if he could change out of his coach clothes and turn into a graying version of Brock Bowers. He is a fascinating case of modern masculinity, a man who isn't afraid of emotion and also loves a good decleating.
They give Campbell a minute to soak it in, and he composes himself as they begin to walk into the team facility for his introductory news conference. That day, Jan. 21, 2021, is still amid the height of COVID precautions, so Ford Hamp goes into one room to address a screen full of reporters and Wood goes into another. She speaks for 10 minutes and takes some questions, then Wood does the same. It's a fairly standard introductory news conference.
But then Campbell steps behind the podium. It's an empty room, with Ford Hamp and Wood in the hallway and reporters on a screen in front of Campbell. He looks very professional, though his tie seems as if it's in the middle of a lane change from the rest of his suit.
Campbell immediately acknowledges he's going to have a hard time containing his emotions, and wonders if he might have to duck off camera to compose himself. He has a fire in his raspy voice as he spends a minute doing Coach Intro 101 thank-yous to a slew of former coaches, including R.C. Slocum, Bill Parcells and Sean Payton.
Then he launches into one of the all-time most memorable quotes in NFL coaching history, which he says was completely unscripted.
"Here's what I do know -- that this team is going to take on the identity of this city. And this city's been down, and it found a way to get up. It's found a way to overcome adversity," Campbell says. "So this team's going to be built on, we're going to kick you in the teeth, all right? And when you punch us back, we're going to smile at you, and when you knock us down, we're going to get up. And on the way up, we're going to bite a kneecap off.
"And we're going to stand up, and then it's going to take two more shots to knock us down. And on the way up, we're going to take your other kneecap, and we're going to get up, and then it's going to take three shots to get us down. And when we do, we're going to take another hunk out of you.
"Before long, we're going to be the last one standing. That's going to be the mentality."
The news conference goes on for another half hour, and Campbell gives a more nuanced, thoughtful blueprint of how he sees things going in Detroit. But his 30-second kneecap quote goes viral. He's mocked unmercifully, with the football world scoffing at the giant guy thinking he's going to turn around the moribund Detroit Lions with that kind of caveman talk.
But here's the thing: Lions players love it. Lions management loves it -- Wood says he and Ford Hamp were giggling so loud in the hallway at Campbell's raw intensity that they worried the videoconference might pick up the sound.
Above all else, Detroit loves it. On the team's official YouTube channel, there is a live chat alongside the broadcast. It's mostly inane, one comment-per-second chatter at the beginning. But once Campbell starts cooking, the chat goes wild. Viewers repeatedly type in "KNEECAP DAN" in all caps. As the world laughs at Campbell's comments, the 313 area code rejoices. It has its guy.
And the NFL has a new force of nature. If you want to know how Detroit became a Super Bowl contender and Campbell's culture became the talk of the NFL, that 45-minute news conference is where the manifestation of a Lions revolution began.
REMEMBER VINCE LOMBARDI'S introductory news conference? Or the day the Giants promoted Bill Parcells? What about when the Steelers brought in Mike Tomlin?
The answer to all three is no. The viral NFL introductory news conference is a relatively new phenomenon, propelled by the 24-hour echo chamber of social media to turn snippets into forever memes and memories. The first truly viral modern news conference moment should be credited to new Jets coach Adam Gase in 2019, when his bulging eyes captivated the internet for a few days.
That primed the pump for Campbell's kneecap speech. Then, eight days later, Eagles fans panicked when new coach Nick Sirianni repeated the word "system" so many times he sounded like an AI chatbot. He closed with, "The first part of being smart is knowing what to do."
Both coaches were mocked for essentially the same thing: coming off as unpolished rockheads. Loudly and proudly, both announced themselves as coaches who weren't going to rehearse and wouldn't be afraid to get emotional. For players and fans of the Lions and Eagles, that makes them unpolished in the most beautiful, non-Belichickian way. It doesn't hurt that they've been the NFC's two most successful coaches since they were hired. But it's probably also fair to say that a key ingredient in their success is the lack of a polyurethane wrap around them.
Campbell thanks his parents, Larry and Betty, for his inability to be phony. Larry was a hard-nosed rancher, and Betty was a kind homemaker, but he watched them rub off on each other, which rubbed off on him. They modeled behavior that portrayed duality as not just OK but something to be celebrated. He saw that he didn't have to choose one or the other -- he could blend them up in his own way.
"I got the best of both," Campbell tells ESPN. "That's truly who I am. I am a hammer, like my dad could be, but I'm also like my mom. I have emotions and can feel people. I can feel when they hurt, or when they're happy, or when they're sad. And I don't want them to feel that way. I want to help them."
The Campbells were modest people, living a modest life, on a modest dirt road in northeast Texas. When Texas A&M was recruiting Campbell, Slocum wanted to come visit Dan and his family. Campbell told him he would meet him at his high school, Glen Rose, and then they would drive back to the family's cattle ranch.
"Why can't I just go there myself?" Slocum asked.
"You'll never find it," Campbell said.
Sure enough, after Campbell pulled up at Glen Rose in a weathered pickup truck, they started driving over the river and through the woods on unpaved roads until Slocum felt as if he had driven 1,000 miles from the high school.
When they got to the ranch, Betty and Larry welcomed in Slocum, and they all sat at the kitchen table. Slocum still remembers Larry walking in wearing a cowboy hat, boots and a large Texas belt buckle. Slocum did most of the talking that day, but he was impressed when Dan spoke. Even at age 18, Campbell was fiery and tough. "He's grown and evolved, obviously," Slocum says. "But that passion has been in him forever."
There's a term that Slocum likes to use when he talks about Campbell: "bell cow." It's one often used to describe a good running back. But its origin story is that there is usually one cow that leads the pack, that herds them and guides them, and ranchers would often put a bell around that cow's neck to more easily locate the herd. Slocum says from day one at Texas A&M, Campbell had a bell around his neck. He worked hard and practiced harder, and teammates gravitated toward him and followed his lead.
Campbell was a solid player at A&M (27 catches, 348 yards and 3 TDs in his career), but he had a very good NFL combine in 1999. Campbell measured in at 6-foot-5, 263 pounds, and ran a 4.84, which got him drafted in the third round by the Giants. He went on to have a nice career in the league (91 catches, 934 yards and 11 touchdowns across 102 games), playing for three teams over nine years, including the Lions from 2006 to 2008.
When he retired in 2009, he immediately began thinking about coaching. He spoke to former coaches and friends about what it would take to become a coach, and almost everybody assured him that he had the skill set. He latched on with the Dolphins from 2010 to 2015, going from an intern to tight ends coach to interim head coach for 12 games in 2015.
From there, he went to New Orleans to work under Payton as associate head coach and tight ends coach for five years. Payton loved Campbell and was a vocal supporter when the Lions called. In fact, Payton had Alvin Kamara text one Detroit exec, "Dan Campbell is the man. Everybody knows he's the man."
Payton and Kamara saw the rare talents of Campbell, who manages to be something we've never really seen in the history of the NFL: a hulking former player who can speak jock but also has incredibly advanced interpersonal skills. Campbell has embraced something Slocum once told him: "It's OK to be demanding of your players, but never be demeaning."
His first impression, though, is often aggressively straightforward. When Wood, the Lions team president, met Campbell, it was via videoconference in early January 2021. Campbell was already logged on when Wood's audio was still connecting. But Wood watched as Campbell took a big swig of coffee -- coffee is a fundamental part of so many Dan Campbell anecdotes -- and blurted out, "I want this job."
Wood laughed and said, "Uh, hi, Dan, nice to meet you."
The rest of that conversation was a perfect precursor to Campbell's legendary news conference. He spoke with infectious enthusiasm. He stressed how much he loved Detroit from his time there as an active player, and Wood just sat back and marveled at how gassed up Campbell was. At the time, the Lions considered Campbell and Titans offensive coordinator Arthur Smith to be in a dead heat. But after a dark, downtrodden three years under Matt Patricia, Wood liked the brightness that he was hearing from Campbell. "I thought he was going to jump through the phone," Wood says now.
Over the next few weeks, Campbell emerged as the front-runner. The Lions offered him the job, and he immediately accepted. His first news conference was set for Jan. 21. For the vast majority of NFL history, those kinds of news conferences have been stuffy, suit-and-tie affairs with an almost identical formula of an opening "I'm excited to be here and I want to thank these 371 people who've helped me get to this point" statement, then questions from reporters.
But that's not Dan Campbell's style, and that's why his news conference -- now known simply as "the kneecaps press conference" -- has become one of the greatest introductions in NFL history.
THE KNEECAP QUOTE is what most people took away from that day. But there's so much more to the philosophy that Campbell explains, and really, so much more to who Campbell is. For the next half hour, he establishes the groundwork for what he is about to do, which is something we've never seen before.
He talks about toughness a lot, in the way a giant, relatable former player might. But he also expresses an extra layer to himself, talking about the importance of empathy and emotional IQ that, four years later, has come to fruition inside the locker room. He talks about meeting with players individually and trying to maximize their abilities in a way that flies in the face of what an old-school "Shut up and do your job" coach might have fallen back on. The NFL hasn't had many former players who are a hybrid of Rob Gronkowski and Andy Reid.
He also shows an early glimpse into his sense of humor, though he has to say several times, "That was a joke," because comedy over video in an empty conference room just doesn't land the same way it would with a live audience. At one point, he mentions that he drinks about a gallon of coffee every day, which might or might not be an exaggeration.
Coffee is woven into the fabric of Dan Campbell -- he has said in the past that he usually drinks 40 ounces of coffee every morning, with four shots of espresso. On the day of his introductory news conference, someone in the live YouTube stream chat types, "Caffeine doesn't affect Dan. Dan affects caffeine," and that anonymous fan was clearly onto something.
Toward the end of his news conference, Campbell says, "When we bring a winner to this city, it's going to be something we can all be proud of." Then, a few minutes later, he sets the chat on fire again by saying, "When you come into Detroit, you're going to leave beat up." He clarifies that he's talking about football, not tourists, and again says, "That was a joke."
As he wraps up a short question session for local reporters, Campbell eventually walks off and embraces Wood and Ford Hamp outside the room. They tell him they're proud to have him on the team, and Campbell immediately does what he said he was going to do earlier in the news conference: He rips off the suit and changes into Detroit Lions gear and goes to work.
But the world went to work on him. The mockery was so far-flung, so condescending, that there's a parallel universe where Campbell never rebounds from it. Social media and daily sports shows (yes, including ESPN) had a field day goofing on Campbell for the kneecap quote, with almost no mention of anything else he said that day. "I wouldn't say I was bummed out -- I was waiting for the world to see the results," Wood says. "I heard people saying he's a meathead and doesn't know what he's doing. Now, I think people look back on him as the most beloved coach in the league.
"There's no other Dan Campbell out there, but people are trying to find one."
Campbell says he didn't practice or even write out anything for his first news conference. That might seem hard to believe for a rookie coach. But he isn't the kind of guy who would lie or sugarcoat anything. "Any time you come in, that's your first chance to let everybody know what your vision is and where you see yourself being when it's all said and done," Campbell says. "It's for the people in the organization, but more importantly, to the team. I was talking to the players and the fans to give them an idea of who you are and where you see this going. I did that. That was the whole point. I did that."
Message delivered. Now Campbell, Wood, and Detroit's new general manager, Brad Holmes, had to deal with a dilemma that threatened to rock the entire rebuild -- franchise QB Matthew Stafford wanted out of Detroit.
RIGHT AFTER THE Lions fired Patricia in December 2020, Wood convened a group of veteran players to address the move and ask them what they thought the organization needed.
Players voiced more general concerns about coaching staff accountability and the bad vibes around the building. They felt as if the whole organization needed a refresh from a new voice. When it was Stafford's turn, he told Wood, "I'd like to meet with you alone to discuss mine."
In Wood's office, Stafford said he wanted out. "I'd like to request a trade. If you trade me some place where I can win a Super Bowl," he said, "within two to three years, you'll have enough draft capital to win a Super Bowl."
Wood and Lions brass managed to keep the initial request out of the media. But once the new brain trust was in place that January, the Lions started a soft launch on trade talks. Initially, Wood says there were nine to 10 teams making inquiries. He eventually landed on a deal with another team -- reportedly the Panthers, though Wood wouldn't confirm -- but Stafford called from Cabo, where he'd been hanging out with Sean McVay. "I want to be traded to the Rams," Stafford said.
So, the Lions went back to the drawing board, and Campbell made a specific pitch for getting Jared Goff plus draft picks from the Rams. It was a wild idea. He seemed to be seeing something in Goff that nobody else was. Goff had looked like a broken quarterback on a career nosedive. And just the sheer fact that no teams had ever exchanged former No. 1 draft pick franchise QBs made it seem like the kind of trade that podcasts come up with, not NFL GMs. Yet the teams got the deal done.
Campbell immediately began a difficult reboot with Goff, most of which had very little to do with football. Campbell thought Goff could tap into the kind of edge that a kneecap-biting, rebuilding Detroit franchise could cultivate. It's hard to argue with that now; Goff is 28-8 since 2023.
That 2021 preseason, Campbell combined a roster of rejuvenated returning players with a brilliant draft class led by future cornerstones Penei Sewell and Amon-Ra St. Brown. That 2021 team would ultimately be terrible -- the Lions lost all three preseason games, then didn't win a regular-season game until Dec. 5 -- but boy did they scrap to their 3-13-1 record. When the Lions scrimmaged the Colts that summer, Indianapolis players and coaches were stunned at the level of aggression and toughness on display, even though the team stunk. "Passion, fire ... the team was different," says Lions assistant Scottie Montgomery, who was with the Colts at the time. "I got to see it up close and personal. We knew that things were going to turn."
A key part of the Campbell magic early on was his directness and availability. In interviews with 12 current and former players for this story, they all complimented Campbell's honesty, with several players who'd been on other teams saying he's more open than most coaches across the league. He doesn't pawn off meetings with individual players to position coaches -- he does them himself.
Before Campbell had been hired, stalwart left tackle Taylor Decker had told Wood that he wanted to make the case to whomever the team hired that offensive line coach Hank Fraley should be retained. He asked for a five-minute conversation to lobby for his longtime line coach, but instead got a 20-minute phone call from Campbell the day after he took the job. Decker explained that Fraley was a fantastic coach who deserved to keep his job. Campbell listened -- Fraley stuck around and is now coaching what has been one of the best lines in football the past few years.
Some players even raved about the way Campbell delivers bad news. In 2023, when the Lions benched lineman Graham Glasgow for several games, Glasgow asked for an explanation. It's common practice in many NFL locker rooms for the player's position coach to let him know he's being demoted. Not Campbell. "I think they need to hear it from me," Campbell says. "Those are hard conversations. You have to look them in the eye and tell them those things, and you have to tell them why."
With Glasgow, the coach had a one-on-one meeting in which he laid out his rationale. Glasgow hated what he was hearing but seized upon what the Lions wanted from him. He has started every game since. "I was pretty heartbroken," Glasgow says. "But he met with me personally and was direct about it. He answered all of my questions. I wanted to know how they arrived at that conclusion, and he explained it. It wasn't, 'Because I say so,' and that I had to deal with it. He addressed everything, with no bulls---."
Multiple players also pointed to the Lions' midseason trade last year for then-Browns pass rusher Za'Darius Smith as an example of how misread Campbell's initial persona had been. In the middle of a historic rash of defensive injuries, the Smith acquisition had Lions coaches and players jumping up and down at the in-season addition of a steady veteran.
But Smith had been getting ready for a bye in Cleveland, so Campbell sat down with him and said he'd earned a bye, and if he needed it, he should take it. Smith did, and players noticed. Multiple Lions brought up the Smith situation as an example of how their supposed meathead coach doesn't just treat them like pieces of meat.
"He understands people," lineman Dan Skipper says. "As a former player, Dan knows there is life outside the facility. That matters in a football locker room."
But this new era of sunshine and butterflies was forged in those dark days of 2021. After his introductory news conference, the Lions got off to a gruesome 0-10-1 start. For those outside Detroit, the box scores sure looked like the same old Lions, with an unserious head coach. The Lions went from Dec. 6, 2020, until Dec. 5, 2021, without a win.
But Campbell managed to avoid the recent rash of one-and-done coaches because of the mood inside the practice facility. Team execs, coaches and players all liked the fight the team was bringing, and the mood in the locker room often seemed like a team that was 10-0-1. In team meetings, Campbell was a maestro of pep talks, pacing back and forth as he delivered three- and four-minute speeches that were often primal but landed with the team. That year, he emphasized that the effort was there even if the outcomes were not. Keep fighting, he told them. This was him as a coach, leading the entire franchise out of the darkness.
"I sat through the Patricia years when you were having similar losing streaks, and it was completely different," Wood says. "When Patricia was here, the players were kind of down and beat up and not paying attention during team meetings."
Then Wood sits forward in his office chair, like an excited kid. He loves talking about the way Campbell works a room of players so much that he often goes and stands in the back just to soak it in himself. "At Dan's team meetings, people are always on the edge of their seat for what he's going to say next," Wood says.
He mentions that the "Hard Knocks" crew in 2022 once asked, "Did Dan do that for us? That was the most amazing team meeting we've ever seen!"
"They're all like this," Wood said.
The team meetings are so rousing that some players watch replays of them. After six years with the Broncos, wide receiver Tim Patrick signed with the Lions in 2024, partially because he liked clips of Campbell. "Let me show you the last thing I watch before I go on the field before every game," Patrick says as he pulls out his phone last December. Right near the top, he clicked on a video of Campbell from before Patrick signed with the team.
"You gotta get in the water to compete," Campbell says in the video. "There's a number of teams that are in the shallows. They come in a hurry and are all over your ass. They're dangerous, man. You just gotta get a hold of them, though. If you can just get a hold of them, you can start dragging their ass out to the deep, dark abyss ... and you can drown them."
Patrick, who was traded to the Jaguars in August, stares at the screen for a long time. He seems lost in thought, moved by a video he has seen about 100 times, including a few minutes before every kickoff. "It sets the tone for me of what he wants out of us," Patrick says. "I missed a lot of this stuff in person, so it helps me feel like I'm part of this culture."
Think about that for a second. The culture of the Lions -- the Detroit Lions! -- is something NFL teams are trying to replicate and players want to be a part of. That culture spread in the offseason, with the Jets hiring former defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn and the Bears hiring offensive coordinator Ben Johnson as their new head coaches. Both coordinators even took their old mentor's approach when it came time for their introductory news conferences.
"Put your seatbelts on and get ready for a ride," Glenn told reporters. "We are the freaking New York Jets, and we're built for this s---."
Meanwhile, Johnson went out of his way to say how good the NFL North is, with compliments thrown toward Campbell, as well as Kevin O'Connell in Minnesota. Then he gave Bears fans a dopamine overload by swerving over to side-swipe the Packers: "To be quite frank with you, I kind of enjoyed beating Matt LaFleur twice a year."
When asked about Glenn and Johnson, Campbell smiles through his goatee. "I'm proud of both of those guys. I love them both," Campbell says. "Without those two guys, would we be where we're at? It'd be hard to say yes. They were my wingmen. We grew together. It was something pretty special."
IN LATE MAY, the Lions have their second OTA session of the spring. Detroit is hot right now, literally and figuratively. The practice field is baking in the 80-degree sun, and the entire city has a new outlook. Just 12 years earlier, Detroit had become the largest city in American history to declare bankruptcy. Now, it's the fastest-growing part of Michigan, with economic growth at plus levels for the first time since the bankruptcy.
Detroit's back, and it would be silly to trace that all back to Campbell. But it also would be silly to dismiss the rise of the city's most popular thing, the Lions, as a nonfactor. There is something about the spirit of the kneecaps news conference that seems to have helped revive the heart of one of America's toughest, most resilient cities. To their credit, the Tigers and Pistons also have been biting some kneecaps lately.
There was offseason chatter wondering how Campbell would do without Glenn and Johnson. But the early returns are that the Lions will be just fine. The roster is stacked with talent across the board, especially on offense, and it's impossible to discount the value of Campbell himself.
He's 28-8 since 2023, with two playoff wins for a franchise that had one Super Bowl-era win before his tenure. His aggressiveness on fourth down -- an NFL-most 156 attempts and 88 conversions since he took over -- has been relentless and will remain so. And his ability to rally teams is remarkable: Since Week 9 of the 2022 season, the Lions are undefeated after a loss. Maybe the better question is, how will Glenn and Johnson do without Campbell?
On this heater of a day in May, Campbell is all over the practice field. His entire staff is loud and chippy, and he isn't afraid to come flying in when he needs to. At one point, he comes chugging in, blowing the whistle around his neck after Goff & Co. cook the Lions' DBs for about the fifth straight play. It's one of those rapid-fire whistle blows that has volcanic ash flying off it. His words are impossible to make out from a distance, but his feelings are quite obvious.
Something wasn't good enough out there.
Off to the side, defensive star Aidan Hutchison makes his first appearance of OTAs and local reporters scramble over to get a look at him as he recovers from a fractured tibia and fibula in December. He does light drills for an hour or so, and practice winds down.
Campbell starts to come off the field when he runs into Wood, the man who hired him back in January 2021. They've grown quite close, so Wood pops out to watch practice quite a bit, even if he just ends up mostly being there to say hello to Campbell. They talk for a few minutes before Campbell puts his giant right hand on Wood's shoulder to signal goodbye.
He walks off the practice field and stops beside a blocking sled. Campbell has on a black Lions T-shirt and a white Lions hat, but the hat's bill is at about a 45-degree angle on his head. He's big on taking his hat on and off, often putting it only halfway back on. So it often sits at an upright angle, as if the hat is popping a wheelie.
This spot of the practice field is just outside the wall of the indoor facility where he stood four years earlier, getting ready for his introductory news conference. There will be no tears this afternoon. But Campbell is such a refreshing NFL figure -- he actually seems like a real human being. That might seem like a micro-compliment in the grand scheme of humanity, but it's the ultimate compliment of an NFL coach. He could easily be programmed to say the safest, most boring boilerplate jargon for eight minutes before he hustles away from the microphone. But he's not. Campbell's a live wire, and the league could use a few more of those.
Campbell is a big, fit guy, and his strength remains a massive conspiracy in the Lions locker room. Players say he must work out constantly and eat really well, and several said they think he'd still be a tough out if he suited up for a series or two. But no one has ever seen him working out. He is Detroit's ghost of fitness present. "I've never gotten to the building before him," says Decker, the Lions' 6-foot-7, 315-pound left tackle. "By the time I get here in the morning, he's already fully caffeinated and seems like he got a workout in."
Decker shakes his head for a second. He questions whether a home gym could produce that level of fitness, and wonders if maybe Campbell comes to the team facility to lift in the middle of the night. "Look at his traps and his abs," Decker says. "He's putting in a lot of time somewhere."
This makes Campbell laugh and pull his hat all the way down from its wheelie position. He has a gym at home, he explains, and yes, he usually gets up early to throw around some iron. But Campbell swears they're mistaking decent regular person strength for NFL player strength when they say he could step on the field now.
"Oh no," Campbell says. "Negative."
But what about one snap? Could he hold up for five seconds across from a guy like Aidan Hutchinson?
"I could get in one play -- and get my ass kicked," he says with a rise in his voice. "Absolutely, that's no problem. I could go in there and get run over. Those days are long gone. I could engage with Aidan for about a half-second. My playing days are done. I can't move anymore."
A minute later, Campbell starts fidgeting with his hat again. He hears some quotes from his players about how they think he cares about them. He doesn't cry. But this emotion is the closest he comes to how he felt on the indoor practice field on Jan. 21, 2021.
"That's flattering," he says. "That's ... that's really flattering."
Silence for a second.
"Um ..."
More silence.
"I do care," he finally says. "And you want them to know you care. You can't be perfect. But you do the best you can to set them up to have success. How do you help them? Every player is different. Some need a pat on the back. Some need a hug. And some need a foot in the ass. They're all different."
With that, Campbell heads for the locker room. He stops and talks to several players who are late stragglers off the practice field. Other guys had been doing drills with their position coaches. Some were wrapping up interviews with reporters. Some seemed to just be wandering around.
But as Campbell walks in, pretty much everybody else on the field also turns and heads for the locker room. He never announces practice is over or blows his whistle. Nobody runs. They just follow him in. Almost as if he has a bell around his neck.