Campbell Admits What We All Knew: The Pass Rush Needed Work
Look at the stat sheet from 2025 and you might think the Lions were putting quarterbacks on their backs just fine. Fifth in sacks, ninth in quarterback hits, sixth in pressures. Not bad, right? Except anyone who actually watched these games knows the truth. It took forever to get home.
The advanced numbers tell the real story. Detroit’s average time to pressure of 2.86 seconds ranked third-worst in the league. Third-worst. That’s not defense, that’s giving quarterbacks a coffee break in the pocket.
So Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes did what they always do. They identified the problem and went to work fixing it.
Out With The Old, In With The New
They let Al-Quadin Muhammad walk despite his 11 sacks. Sure, the production looked good on paper, but his 3.03 average time to pressure told a different story. Instead, they brought in DJ Wonnum, who has hit 8.0 sacks twice in his career.
Then came the draft picks. Derrick Moore in the second round to rush the passer. Skyler Gill-Howard in the sixth and Tyre West in the seventh to add juice up the middle. They even took a flyer on oft-injured former first-rounder Payton Turner.
“We certainly wanted to see if we can add a little bit of juice in there on the perimeter, but also in the middle,” Campbell said last week.
A Philosophical Shift (Sort Of)
This marks a small but notable departure from the Holmes-Campbell blueprint. For the first five years of this regime, this team has lived by one rule: stop the run first, rush the passer second. Clog the middle on early downs, earn the right to pin your ears back later.
It worked. Teams found themselves in unfavorable down and distance situations. But when the Lions finally got their chance to rush the quarterback, they couldn’t capitalize quickly enough.
Here’s the thing though. Campbell isn’t abandoning his principles entirely. Guys like Gill-Howard and West might be pass rush specialists, but they better learn to stop the run or they won’t see the field.
“If you’re going to add a couple of these guys that maybe their strength is a little more in the rush game, then they’ve got to be able to hold up in the run game or we can’t get them to the game,” Campbell explained. “They have to be able to hold on and do some of those things.”
Making The Transition Faster
Campbell admits the priorities need some tweaking. The Lions have mastered the art of stopping the run pre-snap, then transitioning to pass rush mid-play when needed. Now they’re working on making that transition happen faster through techniques like stemming.
“I think that (pass rush) is a priority, but it’s still a priority when we talk about first, second down, stopping the run and then the transition to it,” Campbell said. “Whether that’s movement, you’re stemming into the call at the snap or you’re trying to do some of these things just to gain a step or get an edge.”
The Lions didn’t make a Myles Garrett type splash move that dominates the headlines. But they did something arguably more important. They admitted a weakness existed and took concrete steps to address it.
Now we wait to see if a slight philosophical shift, some new faces, and Aidan Hutchinson can finally give Detroit the quick, consistent pass rush this defense has been missing.
Think this pass rush overhaul actually moves the needle or are we just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic? Drop your take below.
