Dan Campbell Primed to Make More Franchise History

There's a significant list of franchise-first achievements made by the Detroit Lions throughout the 2024 season. Anyone with a similar mindset to head coach Dan Campbell may tell you it's all for nothing if the Lions don't do that one extra thing they've never done: play in and win a Super Bowl.

Ironically, so many football fans, in and outside of the Detroit fanbase, judged Campbell as a typical old-school Neanderthall-type ball coach who would fade out of relevance in Detroit just like all the rest. Instead, he's nearly earned the moniker for the best coach in franchise history.

The bar to be the best coach in Lions history is likely low enough to play limbo in Hell, but this is the NFL and nothing comes easy. Campbell didn't rebuild Detroit's football franchise in a night. It took a year and a half of losing before things finally started to click.

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Once that switch flipped in the core players of his roster and Brad Holmes continued to bring in the right pieces afterward, the Lions quickly rose to the top of the NFL mountain after half a century of being the basement-dwelling laughingstock of the league.

Campbell finished his fourth year as head coach of the Lions with the 7th-most wins in team history at 39. His winning percentage at .581 is fourth and trails only Potsy Clark, Buddy Parker and Dutch Clark, all of whom coached the Lions before the Super Bowl era.

Those three alongside George Wilson and, to a lesser degree, Wayne Fontes are the best coaches in franchise history by a healthy margin whereas only Campbell has closed the gap. With the 2024 playoffs getting underway, Campbell can begin to make a strong case for the undisputed best coach in team history.

Here's what's on the line for Campbell. If the Lions reach the NFC Championship, Campbell will have already coached the most playoff games in team history alongside Fontes. In doing so, he'd also tie Parker for the most playoff wins in franchise history at three. Reaching the Super Bowl would have him break both of those records.

Naturally, playing and winning the Super Bowl would give Campbell all the accolades needed to be worthy of the monicker of "Greatest Coach in Lions History".

And again, that's just what he has the opportunity to add to his already impressive resume.

Consider some more stats he has already accomplished: He's the only coach in Lions history with back-to-back 10+ win seasons. He's the only coach since 1957 (George Wilson's first year) with multiple playoff wins. He's the only coach to win back-to-back NFC North titles in Detroit and the first to win back-to-back division titles since 1954. That 1954 Lions team led the NFL in points which wasn't replicated again in Detroit until 2024 under Campbell.

It isn't lost on Lions fans how special this run is with Campbell at the helm of the franchise. Unprecedented franchise milestones and records are being broken on a near-weekly basis. And it all starts with Campbell.