Dan Campbell Says Lions’ ‘Detroit vs. Detroit’ Experiment Was Exactly What They Needed

Dan Campbell tried something different with the Detroit Lions this summer.

No joint practices. No breaking up training camp to prepare for another team. No shipping his starters across the league for controlled work against somebody wearing a different helmet.

Just Detroit against Detroit.

Now that training camp is over, Campbell believes the experiment worked.

“This is right for this year. This felt right and I’m glad we did it and it was just what the doctor ordered,” Campbell said Thursday.

That does not sound like a coach second-guessing the plan.

The decision represented a significant change from recent summers.

Detroit held joint practices every year from 2022 through 2025, working with Indianapolis, the New York Giants, Jacksonville, Miami and Houston during that stretch.

Campbell eventually felt those sessions were becoming counterproductive.

Coming off a 9-8 season in which Detroit missed the playoffs, the Lions coach wanted his team concentrating less on preparing for somebody else’s schemes and more on fixing its own problems.

It also contributed to Campbell changing the way he approached preseason playing time, with Detroit able to use exhibition games for some of the work previously accomplished during joint practices.

But the biggest benefit may have happened in Allen Park.

Without joint practices eating into the schedule, Campbell said the Lions were able to work deeper into their offense and defense while repeatedly practicing specific game situations.

“We got through full installs, man. We got to hit every situation multiple times,” Campbell said.

That matters.

Training camp is not just about getting players into shape or figuring out who wins the 52nd roster spot. For a team with legitimate postseason expectations, August is also when coaches build the inventory they may need four months later.

Third-and-long. Backed up near the goal line. Two-minute offense. Four-minute offense. Red zone. Special teams.

Campbell believes Detroit was able to spend more time on all of it.

There was another obvious advantage.

The Lions did not exactly lack quality competition.

Penei Sewell could line up against Aidan Hutchinson. Tate Ratledge spent camp dealing with Alim McNeill. Rookie Blake Miller had Hutchinson waiting for him on the other side of the line.

Campbell specifically pointed to those daily matchups when explaining why he believes Detroit benefited from keeping the work in-house.

If you are Ratledge, seeing McNeill every morning probably does more for your development than a week of friendly summer work against an unfamiliar defensive tackle.

There are easier ways to spend August.

Campbell apparently was not interested in them.

The internal competition also fits with what Campbell has been saying about his roster throughout the preseason. He has praised both the talent level and the increased understanding within a defense he believes has become noticeably more evolved in Kelvin Sheppard’s system.

That was the entire idea.

Detroit did not need somebody else to create competition.

The Lions believed they had enough of it themselves.

Campbell was careful not to declare joint practices dead forever.

He remains open to bringing them back if the right opponent and situation present themselves in 2027.

That makes sense.

Joint practices can be extremely valuable. They give veteran starters high-quality snaps against unfamiliar personnel without subjecting them to a full preseason game. They expose offenses and defenses to different schemes. They can also reveal weaknesses that become harder to see when teammates have spent weeks practicing against the same plays.

Campbell’s point is not that joint practices are bad.

It is that the 2026 Lions did not need them.

After a disappointing 2025 season, Detroit needed a month focused almost entirely on Detroit.

Campbell wanted more installation. More situational football. More good-on-good work. More time correcting the things that had slipped.

He got it.

Whether the experiment truly worked will eventually be decided somewhere other than the Meijer Performance Center.

Nobody hangs banners for a productive August.

But Campbell entered training camp believing his team needed to spend less time worrying about everybody else.

A month later, he sounds pretty convinced he made the right call.