Dan Campbell did not hold back from reality in his words to the Lions locker room 'we're gonna have a rough spot this season'

There are a lot of things to like about Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell. Personally, I like the grit, and I also really respect that he's not afraid to show emotion. But the thing I like the most is that Dan Campbell is not going to lie to his players, and he's not going to hide away from the realities of the game and a 17-game season.

It's really easy to go out there and tell your players and your fans that you're super good and you're not going to have problems and everything is going to go well. Campbell is straight up with it. There's going to come a time this season when things are going badly for the Lions.

"I mean just the same thing you do every year for as long as I can remember. You don’t worry about what’s there, you worry about what’s right in front of you right now. You know there’ll be things that happen, I did tell the team that, there is every year. You don’t know if it’s going to be early, middle of the season, it’s going to be late, but we’ll hit a rough spot. That’s the nature of this game and that’s life, so. We’ll adapt when it comes, you overcome, but you stay the course. You just stay the course, you put the work in and you tweak what needs to be tweaked and you find the substance and why things aren’t a certain way, and you fix it. It really is that simple. It’s don’t get caught up in all the other stuff, just worry about the controllables. Control what you can control.”

The Lions won 15 games last year, but they still had some rough spots during that season. Rough spots don't always mean that you're going on a big losing streak necessarily, but that could be the case this year. Winning 15 games two years in a row is incredibly hard to do; that's why no team has ever done it before. It's easy to think the sky's falling in those moments, but here's your big notice that the Lions won't be feeling that way while you do. It's expected.

That's coaching right there. You want your players to believe that they can do anything, but you also want them to know that it's going to be hard and there will be obstacles along the way. When you know they're coming, you can better prepare yourself to move past them or get over it when you don't.