Detroit Lions' 2023 draft class delivers another star in LB Jack Campbell
Chris Spielman foresaw it. Predicted it on a podcast last summer. But then he’s a linebacker — and partial to linebackers — and besides, maybe it doesn’t take a great leap of faith to have believed Jack Campbell was going to pop this season.
Well, Campbell is popping. The latest Brad Holmes special, as another draft pick, questioned by some, who is busting out in his second year with the Detroit Lions.
Pro Football Focus ranked him as the NFL's ninth-best linebacker recently. Considering each team starts at least two linebackers — and many three — that’s not bad math.
If you don’t go for PFF's sort of granular, insider view, how about the view of his position coach, Kelvin Sheppard, who argued earlier this week that Campbell is playing as well as any 'backer in the game at the moment.
Biased?
Sure. Sheppard admits that. But then consider the Lions’ defense, and the number of injuries it has endured — a lot! —and the relative production with so many starters missing.
Yes, the relative health of the back end makes a difference. Plug Carlton Davis III, Terrion Arnold, Brian Branch and Kerby Joseph into the secondary of any team, and that defense will have a fighting chance.
Yet Campbell is instrumental in their positioning — he calls the plays. And he’s critical in connecting the makeshift (and depleted) defensive line to the secondary. And he’s essential to the middle of the defense, another area where the Lions have been hit hard with injury.
“I couldn’t be happier with the way he’s progressed,” Sheppard said. “The vision me, (Aaron Glenn), Dan (Campbell) had for (him) from what we saw on tape (at Iowa), we knew there were things that needed to be corrected. Jack took full accountability, and now you’re seeing that out on the field. I told him that leading up to the Green Bay game — and not just because I’m his coach — that he is playing at the highest level.”
He didn’t just need to improve his reads and positioning and reaction time — the last a product of reads and positioning — he needed to speak up, and to see what Glenn and Sheppard were seeing and react more quickly.
The jump in speed from college to the NFL is vast, and for certain positions it’s more so. Playing middle linebacker isn’t unlike playing quarterback — or center. Every play, teammates need to be directed, sometimes shifted.
“For him to stand in front of a group of men, the way they respect him is unreal, and you see it,” Glenn said. “And I’m sure the players talk about that, too. He’s a man’s man, he understands what we’re trying to do, and he continues to try to get better.”
A man’s man can be a certain kind of box, and Campbell doesn’t necessarily want to be put in any box. He is quiet, but not as quiet as he used to be. That’s clear among his coaches and teammates, and clear among those who cover him.
Ask him a question a year ago and you’d have had to strain to hear him. He was stoic, and not interested in drawing attention to himself. By the end of his rookie season, he began to find his voice on the field. In part because the game slowed down a bit, in part because he began to get comfortable.
When he returned in the spring for minicamp, Glenn and Dan Campbell had Campbell calling out the defenses. This was before Alex Anzalone arrived to camp. The reps were critical, even fortuitous. Not that the coaches want to get in the business of predicting injury, but they know it’s a possibility, and they wanted Campbell to be ready for anything. And they thought he was ready to take on more responsibility.
“He’s a guy who understands the game,” Dan Campbell said. “He is a smart football player, he studies it, he works at it, he was that way when he walked in though. He’s an instinctive player that really understands ball.”
And now?
“He knows exactly what (Glenn) is thinking. They’ve been together long enough to where we get in this situation, ‘this is what you want, this how we’re doing it.’ I mean, he’s been right in (Glenn’s) hip pocket and he watches that and he learns and he listens.”
Holmes and Campbell didn’t just want him for his mind, though. Or his feel. They didn’t grab him in the first round with the 18th pick only because he could read a defense. They liked his size, power and athleticism.
His 40-yard-dash time of 4.6 seconds put him in the middle of the pack. But his 37-inch vertical? At 6 feet 5 and 250 pounds? That helped give him the highest athletic grade of any linebacker in the draft. Add in his shuttle work and it wasn’t surprising he was diving and deflecting a pass from Patrick Mahomes in his NFL debut at Kansas City.
It’s almost silly at this point to think about how many draft picks Holmes and Campbell have hit on. Campbell — the linebacker — didn't jump off the television set like tight end Sam LaPorta (his college teammate) or running back Jahmyr Gibbs or defensive back Brian Branch did in their rookie seasons, but he is starting to jump out now. That all four came in the same draft is ridiculous.
Three of those picks drew side-eyes during the draft. Not because of their potential, but because of their “positional value.” You don’t draft running backs and linebackers in the first round! And a tight end early in the second round?
That’s almost sacrilege, according to some.
Yet as Spielman said back in the summer when he was predicting a big year from Campbell:
“We don’t worry about position, we worry about the player.”
The Lions found one with their middle linebacker.
“A true Mike linebacker,” Glenn said.
A versatile one, too. Glenn and Sheppard position him on the line, behind the ball, in coverage. He is flourishing, as Spielman foresaw, as Campbell the head coach said he would a few weeks ago when Anzalone went down with an arm injury.
The Lions saw this coming. No, they knew it was coming. Campbell knew it was coming as well. He just didn’t say it out loud.
What matters is that he is saying everything out loud now. And he is smiling.
“Guys listen to him,” Spielman said back in the summer.
He is even smiling in public, and dropping phrases like “that’s badass,” as he did earlier this week when describing Dan Campbell’s phrase for the Lions defense: Northern savages.
Jack Campbell smiled as he said it. He is smiling a lot and is comfortable letting everyone see he isn’t always so serious. Until it comes to football. Then that’s all there is, and all he’s ever wanted to do.
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