Life Lessons Learned Along the Way: Lessons from the Detroit Lions
We continue our series of personal, impactful stories that have shaped how we practice law.
As with most sports fandoms, mine are dictated by the accident of geography. As a lifelong Michigander (aside from my law school years in Indiana), my fandoms were, in the French parlance, a fait accompli, or, in American: I had no choice. I had to be a Detroit sports fan.
One choice that I could make, however, was which of the Detroit “Big Four” teams would be my favorite. Playing Little League made me fall in love with baseball, and listening to the legendary Ernie Harwell call games on the radio made me fall in love with the Detroit Tigers. The fact that the 1984 Tigers won the first championship of my lifetime didn’t hurt either.
And yet, as much as I love them, the Tigers are not my favorite Detroit sports team. That rank belongs to the NFL’s Detroit Lions. My relationship with the Lions is more complicated. I didn’t play youth football. The Lions had no broadcast personality to speak of. And as for championships, the Lions: (a) haven’t won a championship since 1957, 10 years before the first Super Bowl was played; (b) are one of 2 teams that have existed for every one of the 59 Super Bowls and has yet to play in one (we Lions fans feel your pain, Cleveland Browns); and (c) have had the ignominy of the 2008 NFL season, in which the Lions became the first team to go 0-16 for an entire season (the second? You guessed it! Sorry again, Cleveland). In short, being a diehard Lions fan has been the definition of that word, ignominy: a public shame or disgrace.
To be sure, there have been highlights over my decades as a Lions fan. Barry Sanders was (arguably to some, inarguably to me) the best running back ever to play the game. Calvin Johnson was an outstanding Hall of Fame wide receiver with (also inarguably to me) the best nickname ever given to an NFL player: Megatron. Other stars and personal favorites have come and gone over those decades, from Mike Cofer and Billy Sims in the 1980s to Robert Porcher and Herman Moore in the 1990s to . . . (well, let’s just ignore the first decade of the 2000s, shall we?) . . . to Matthew Stafford and Ndamukong Suh in the 2010s. Even without many winning Lions teams, there have always been fun players to root for.
And then came the current Lions era, which started with the hiring of General Manager Brad Holmes and Coach (and former fun Lions player in his own right) Dan Campbell in January 2021, after the previous regime had won 6 games, 3 games, and 5 games in successive seasons. It’s no wonder that with the roster Holmes and Campbell inherited, the Lions won only 3 games again in 2021. 2022 started the same way, with the Lions winning only 1 of the first 7 games.
And then, something remarkable happened. Miraculous, even. The Lions started winning. Of the 10 games remaining in the 2022 season, the Lions won 8 of them. In 2023, the Lions went 12-5 and came within a half of a game of making the Super Bowl. In 2024, despite suffering 13 injuries on the defensive side of the ball, the Lions went 15-2 in the regular season before losing in their first playoff game (almost assuredly because of those defensive injuries). Even though the team lost in the playoffs, Holmes, Campbell, and company have filled me with feelings that I haven’t experienced often as a lifelong Lions fan: hope and excitement for seasons to come.
How did the team accomplish this massive turnaround? How many lessons can be learned from the work that Holmes, Campbell and the players have put in? Several! To wit:
- Team assembly: Holmes hired talented scouts to identify young players with potential. In draft after draft since his arrival, Holmes and the scouts and coaches he hired selected players who have rapidly become among the best in the game at their positions. In Holmes’ first four drafts, the team selected 7 players who were named to the Pro Bowl, 4 of whom have been named All Pros. Holmes also acquired several other players through free agency and trades (including Pro Bowl Quarterback Jared Goff) who have been instrumental to the team’s recent success.
- Team culture: Selecting talented players is only the first step. Upon selection, the players fell under the tutelage of Coach Campbell and his staff. In turn, Campbell instilled a new word to describe the culture that the team would exude: GRIT. With every team-wide speech, one-on-one conference with players, and press conference, Campbell made sure the team was ready to face and overcome all adversity. Despite the team winning only 4 of the first 24 games that he coached, Campbell’s consistent messages (all of which can be boiled down to that one word: GRIT) made the players believe that they would start winning soon. All they had to do was not give up. And sure enough, over the next 44 regular-season games, the Lions won 35.
- Creativity. Campbell was not acting alone. Throughout those 44 games, the Lions faced in-game adversity on a number of occasions. A drive might be in danger of stalling out on offense. That’s when offensive coordinator Ben Johnson (since hired as head coach of the Chicago Bears) would call brilliant play after brilliant play to get the team moving down the field again. In 2024, when the team’s defense suffered through those 13 injuries, the Lions won 15 games largely because of the work of defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn (since hired as head coach of the New York Jets), who shifted players around the field in myriad ways and dialed up new blitz and coverage packages to compensate.
These are only the beginnings of the lessons to be learned from the renaissance of the Detroit Lions since January 2021. Each of these lessons is applicable to the practice of law. Successful defense of complex cases requires the assembly of a talented team of lawyers and non-lawyers alike. It requires a culture of GRIT and determination in discovering relevant facts. It requires creative problem-solving to overcome any number of obstacles and strategize about the most efficient and effective way to extricate our client from each case.
Like the resurgent Detroit Lions, we stand ready to apply each of these lessons.
In our second article this month, File Smart, Not Fast: Rethinking the Motion to Dismiss, Jesse L. Roth outlines strategies for positioning a case for early resolution or dismissal.