New Lions coach roars loudly, Bears shouldn't be scared yet

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Can an introductory press conference launch a franchise into relevancy? That’s what Detroit Lions fans hope after their new head coach Dan Campbell delivered one of the more energizing pressers in recent memory.

Beware, the following clip has some NSFW language:

"This place has been kicked,” Campbell said. “It's been battered. It's been bruised. And I could sit up here and give you coachspeak all day long. I can give you, 'Hey, we're going to win this weekend.' None of that matters, and you guys don't want to hear it anyway. You heard enough of that s---, excuse my language.

"Here's what I do know. This team is going to take on the identity of this city, and this city has been down and it found a way to get up. It's found a way to overcome adversity, right? So this team is going to be built on, we're going to kick you in the teeth, 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. All right? And we're going to stand up and 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 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."

That clip would certainly make anyone want to run through a wall for Campbell. The fact that he looks more like Stone Cold Steve Austin than your prototypical football coach helps too. But the Lions’ last head coach, Matt Patricia, was infamously a hardass too. His tough case attitude rubbed players the wrong way and blew up before Patricia’s first game. That’s not to say Campbell and Patricia will treat players the same way, but it certainly sounds like Detroit is in line for some more grueling training camps.

In fact, the Lions enjoyed their most successful seasons in recent memory under a comparatively chill coach. By all accounts Jim Caldwell was even-keeled and calm as Detroit’s coach, and led them to a 36-28 record from 2014-2017. While the Lions never won a division title with Caldwell, they finished second three times, and never placed dead last. That’s more than most modern Lions coaches can say, considering Detroit's last division title came in 1993— when it was still the NFC Central— and they've finished in last place 11 times since then.

No matter how Campbell’s received, the Lions still have to solve big question marks about their roster too. Will they move on from franchise quarterback Matt Stafford? What will they do at wide receiver with both Kenny Golladay and Marvin Jones set to hit the free agent market? Will there be enough cash to keep their defensive playmakers like Romeo Okwara, Everson Griffen and Duron Harmon?

Campbell can hype players up til he goes blue and silver in the face, but the fact is Detroit has a long way to go before they dig their way out of the NFC North basement.

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