the committee said in a statement (via Hawkeyesports.com)<\/a>. \u201cHis size, instincts and disciplined approach to the position allow him to control the middle of the field. He plays with authority, communicates at a high level, and consistently puts himself in position to make impactful plays. His rise this season reflects not just talent, but leadership and football character.\u201d<\/p>\nCampbell\u2019s 2025 season was a breakout for the third-year linebacker. He was named First-Team All Pro after tallying 176 tackles, nine tackles for loss, 5.0 sacks, three forced fumbles, and two fumble recoveries.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s extremely valuable,\u201d Lions coach Dan Campbell said in December. \u201cRight now, first of all he leads the team in amount of reps that he\u2019s played for a season. He\u2019s taken more reps than anybody on this team. He plays on kickoff for us and he\u2019s an asset on kickoff and then everything you see on defense. He doesn\u2019t come off the field, he\u2019s our bell cow, green dot. And he does\u2014and the guy is smart and he\u2019s instinctive and he is snap-to-whistle all-out, all the time, in practice too. And he doesn\u2019t take plays off, he doesn\u2019t take days off, he goes after the football, he\u2019s a ball guy. So, he\u2019s invaluable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Interestingly, this is the second time Campbell has won the award. Back in 2022, he won the college version of the award after a standout year with the Iowa Hawkeyes. That season, Campbell posted 128 tackles, 5.5 tackles for loss, a forced fumble, and a fumble recovery.<\/p>\n
Campbell is heading into the fourth and final year of his rookie contract, although the Lions have an opportunity to exercise a fifth-year option worth a projected $16.4 million<\/a>. The deadline to exercise that option is May 1. But the Lions may very well sign Campbell to a contract extension before then.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Detroit Lions linebacker Jack Campbell has been named the recipient of the 2025 Pro Butkus Award. The award,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2071],"tags":[146,113,153,2506,7,147,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-699592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-detroit-lions","8":"tag-detroit","9":"tag-detroit-lions","10":"tag-detroit-lions-news","11":"tag-detroitlions","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-lions","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115946013706353299","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}