Detroit Lions LB Jack Campbell Seeks Advice From Offense

The former first-round pick also addressed playing Ben Johnson for the first time as an opposing coach. In order to get some clues and tips for the Bears this week, Campbell has been asking questions with the offense, trying to get any advantage from the players who executed Johnson’s offense at a high level last year.

“Obviously, he was here for two years, so, I know some stuff,” Campbell admitted. “Just asking around, the guys’ opinions on things, especially the offensive side who’s worked with him. I think we got a pretty good defensive plan going into the game, we just got to execute it.”

Since arriving in Detroit as a first round pick, Campbell has been making steady improvements in each element of his game, in particular pass coverage. However, he is not complacent, admitting there is always room for improvement. One area that the backer wants to improve on in particular is his blitzing.

“I just got to win. I got to win,” Campbell emphasized about his blitzes. “I’ve been poor, I need to improve on that. Whether it’s just my angle, how I come in, some pre-snap stuff I can improve on. I’d say for me it just starts before the snap and I just, at the end of the day, getting the job done. I’ll tell myself that I need to improve in a lot of areas, and that’s just one of them. I need to continue to do that, take a little bit of pressure off the secondary.”

Challenges of Caleb Williams

The Lions will be seeing Caleb Williams behind the helm of Johnson’s offense. Williams was a player widely expected to improve with Johnson calling the shots, and the quarterback’s mobility adds another element to his game.

“Yeah, he’s talented, he can get out of the pocket, do some stuff,” Campbell said. “We just got to keep him contained, do our job, and again, the back end, we got to do our job as well to keep him from going to his first read and make him get a little scramble-y and the d-line, that’s their job to keep him in.”

Campbell then revealed the main challenges of a Williams scramble drill, that being the extra coverage. During those broken plays, coverage turns more into a backyard football playstyle.

“For me, the extension of the play, you got to cover a little bit longer, your receiver might run his route and then just might make something up as he (Williams) scrambles,” the linebacker said. “Just being able to be good in coverage, if that happens.”

Overall, the former Iowa Hawkyes linebacker had a lot of praise for the Bears’ former Heisman winner, as well as the staff and tools around Williams. That said, Campbell is grateful that he has already played the quarterback and has a sense of what to expect out of the signal caller on Sunday.

“It’s nice when you play a player,” Campbell admitted. “You know his player profile. I feel like he’s grown a little bit, though, in a couple of things. Yeah, he’s a good player. He gets better every week. He’s the number one pick for a reason, we got our work cut out for us. And he’s got the tools around him to be really good.”