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Sitting next to each other at the podium in front of reporters in the Lions makeshift media tent, Detroit GM Brad Holmes and head coach Dan Campbell presented a unified front. Their press conference breaking down the decisions and players that make up the Lions’ youthful 53-man roster showed two leaders with the same vision for their team.
The two work closely together, and each has admitted on multiple occasions that they feel “cut from the same cloth”, something Holmes again said on Thursday. But they’re not a monolithic entity, nor are they inflexible in their thoughts.
Holmes even brought up that they do disagree. In many NFL cities, that’s an understood fact of being part of a large team. But the last three years in Detroit, any dissent was intolerable and often ended in exile to Seattle or Philadelphia, or Coombs-ing the street looking for work. The days of the Quinntricia bloc creating more of a Stasi than a successful football team are long gone.
“We might have had some longer discussions on two guys, maybe two to three guys,” Holmes said calmly when asked about their discussions and decisions in the roster-forming process. “But, again, I don’t view disagreement as a negative. I always viewed it as a learning experience to get better because you hear different views, different opinions, different viewpoints. We’ve always said we’re taking the ego out of it. As we go through this process with the ego removed and our intuition along the way, it’s been an easy process. I may hear a different viewpoint from Dan, and I’ll say, ‘OK, I didn’t see it that way, but hey, I’m glad you brought it up,’ and vice versa.”
The collaborative approach is a much healthier way. Campbell and Holmes’ cloths are cut with enough humility to understand they might not always be right, that other opinions should be considered. It’s common sense.
Their consensus choices focused on players who might not present the best chance to win in 2021. While Holmes emphatically stated, “ultimately we want to win”, there was an underlying tone that they realize some of the roster decisions might have made that less likely. Both Holmes and Campbell seem okay with that but determined to prove that the hungry, young group will capably compete and rack up some victories along the way.