Lions, Bears both bet on coaching culture — only one is winning

Charles Rex Arbogast, AP Photos

The Lions went looking for a head coach in January 2021.

What they found was a culture.

Dan Campbell had written it all down and sent it to owner Sheila Ford Hamp in advance of his job interview. The document packet laid out what he’d do as the coach, from practical ideas to broad philosophies.

“I read his statement on culture and leadership and it was like he read our minds,” she said after the Lions gave him the job. “You know, ‘Really? Did someone tell him what to say before?’ He was amazing.”

The Bears liked Matt Eberflus’ philosophies, too, when general manager Ryan Poles chose him from a group of three coaches in January 2022. His H.I.T.S. system had been successful when he was a defensive coordinator and now he thought he could apply standards of hustle, intensity, takeaways and smarts — and the meticulous grading system each coach applies to game film — to both sides of the ball.

Both franchises bucked the league-wide trend of hiring offensive play-callers as head coaches. Campbell was a tight ends coach. Eberflus didn’t call plays when he was named head coach, either; that changed when coordinator Alan Williams left the team earlier this season.

Culture can be a tricky thing, though. Without wins, it’s just a word — a stand-in for real accomplishment when progress isn’t obvious.

Campbell eventually won. Eberflus has not.

The decision to hire Campbell looks smart in retrospect. The decision to hire Eberflus doesn’t — he has the worst winning percentage of any coach in Bears history. Eberflus has five games to try to change that narrative, though, starting Sunday at Soldier Field against Campbell’s Lions. A victory would give Eberflus a signature win this year, his first winning streak as a head coach and, just maybe, some momentum for a late charge toward respectability.

He can look to Campbell for some inspiration.

Like Eberflus, Campbell won only three games in his first season, 2021. Their second seasons look similar, too — Eberflus is 4-8, while Campbell was 5-7 through his first 12 games last year.

Eberflus is 7-22 through his first 29 games with the Bears; Campbell was 8-20-1.

Campbell’s program turned around at this point last year. The Lions won four of their final five games and are 9-3 this season, where they sit one game out of the top seed in the NFC North.

Campbell leaned on culture — and then he found success. The latter justified the former, which seemed extreme at first. In his introductory press conference, Campbell vowed the Lions would take on the identity of Detroit. They would “bite a kneecap off” and then “take your other kneecap,” he said with a straight face.

“He’s a high-energy guy,” Eberflus said. “He’s got a lot of passion, and you can see that. You can see his fingerprint on that football team. You can see the way they fight all the way through 60 minutes.”

His offense was historically aggressive in his first season, even though it wasn’t very good. Campbell went for it on fourth down 41 times, an NFL record. In Campbell’s three years as head coach, the Lions have gone for it on fourth down 105 times, the most in the NFL.

The ultra-aggressive mindset started off as a gimmick, a way for a bad roster to gain an edge. Now it’s fed one of the league’s best offenses. This year, the Lions lead the NFL is 20-plus-yard plays, rank second in yards per game, third in yards per play and fourth in both passing and rushing yards per game.

Perhaps Eberflus’ defense is ready to make a similar leap. Unless Eberflus can find wins the way Campbell did at this time last year, though, he might not be around long enough to find out.