Dan Campbell is everything that football romantics love about the NFL, and him leading the Detroit Lions to a division championship is affirmation that his unorthodox perspectives are working for the franchise. And as a football romantic, Pat McAfee didn’t take too kindly to NFL media mocking Campbell and the Lions when he was hired. On Tuesday, he took the opportunity to mock them right back over the swing and miss they all took analyzing the Campbell hire two years ago.
The incorrect analysis began when Campbell was hired and talked up Detroit’s culture and said the Lions would “bite a kneecap off” their opponents.
“After that press conference, there were a lot of people that were mocking,” McAfee said. “That’s an opening press conference from an NFL head coach on a Zoom … and I assume there were some Lions fans that were like, ‘Here we go again.’ But they were getting kind of egged on to think that way from the national media. Sports media cooked this man.”
McAfee then showed the receipts. He played a clip from First Take in which Max Kellerman shredded Detroit for an unserious hire. He read a tweet from Colin Cowherd likening Campbell to Fred Flintstone.
After Detroit clinched its first division title in decades over the weekend, McAfee gave them a piece of his mind.
“Then you think about what has happened to this Lions team, everything that Fred Flintstone had to say in that opening press conference has become true,” McAfee said. “They started drafting pillars that built the culture that they wanted, they set the culture publicly … everything he projected was like a call to people who were coming to the Detroit Lions. It worked out for the sonofab****.”
McAfee then played a clip of Campbell’s equally powerful postgame speech after Detroit clinched.
“That’s quite a come-up from being the laughingstock of everybody to the first banner in 30 years,” McAfee said. “Good on Dan Campbell and all the boys and girls who work for the Detroit Lions.”
The Pat McAfee Show has basically adopted the Lions the past two years as the franchise went through a rebirth under Campbell. The head coach has joined the show for annual interviews, and PMS makes sure to check in on Detroit just about every week.
It’s a good example of the different spirit and perspective McAfee brings to a national platform like ESPN, when it can be easy for most hosts to pile onto a funny character like Campbell.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.