Why The Detroit Lions Made A Key Change To The 1st Padded Practice

As the Detroit Lions transitioned from individual drills to team drills on Monday—the first training camp practice with full pads—a familiar scene arrived. On the far field, the players amassed in a semicircle around coach Dan Campbell.

Training camp veterans and keen-eyed witnesses knew what was coming next. It’s the very same thing that has kicked off the first padded practice every year under Campbell: one-on-one tackling.

Reporters scrambled to the end zone of the far field to ensure they didn’t miss a single one of these highly entertaining reps. However, what they saw was something different than in previous years.

Campbell has previously set the tone of padded practices by going full live tackling during these drills, meaning the defenders would attempt legitimate tackles all the way to the ground. Not every team likes to do this, but in Campbell’s passionate speech on “Hard Knocks” in 2022, he explained why he thought it was important.

“I had a couple of you look at me like ‘What the (expletive)? Why are we going live (tackling)?’ I got it. Here’s what I need, man. I need you to trust me. I swear to god I’m not a lunatic. I swear to you. If I absolutely knew we could get to where we need to get without ever putting pads on, I would do it. I swear to you. But also for us as a team to get better defensively, what is the essence of what we do? What are the two things? Pursuit and tackle. Pursuit and tackle. Man, if you don’t work on tackling, if we don’t work on run after the catch, making a move, man, what are we doing? Then we finally get to Week 8 and we come to life because we’ve got enough reps? That’s why I’m doing it. I swear, man, I don’t want to put anybody in jeopardy, but we have to do it, man. I believe it.”

But on Monday, the Lions didn’t do live tackling. Instead, they opted to do two-hand touch to start padded practices, a pretty significant shift in strategy. On Tuesday, I asked him why the change.

“Let’s just do it to where these guys get a feel,” Campbell said. “It’s crazy how you saw that drill under control and all this.”

His argument, essentially, was that when you go live tackling—particularly that early in camp—the form is sloppy and dangerous. Players excited by the promise of contact try to run over each other—which is forbidden in this drill, even when it’s live. But by easing them in, the form gets settled before the actual tackling gets done.

“Let’s just fundamentally, let’s go through it a couple times,” Campbell said.

Campbell found another benefit of two-hand touch drills. In previous years, he had held some players out of that drill to protect them. But now those players can participate and show off the one-cut skills they have, which also helps the defender.

“There were some guys I held out of that drill last year. And that are—they have got some juice, and they got some cuts, and they got some—,” Campbell said. “So, by not doing it live, you get them and keep them in the drill, which works the tackler a little bit.”

This is just one of many changes the Lions have made to their approach this offseason. They switched around their spring OTA and minicamp schedule, opted not to do joint practices, and it sounds like they intend to play some starters in the preseason, as well.

But don’t mistake Monday’s practice as a scrapping of live tackling completely.

“We will get to that drill and do it live for you, Jeremy,” Campbell said. “It is coming, my friend. I’m telling you.”