{"id":714232,"date":"2026-01-29T15:20:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T15:20:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/714232\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T15:20:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T15:20:18","slug":"fred-warner-lions-coach-dan-campbell-needs-to-come-to-his-senses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/714232\/","title":{"rendered":"Fred Warner: Lions coach Dan Campbell needs to \u2018come to his senses\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Detroit Lions have suffered a frustrating amount of injuries over the past few years, and many outside the organization are trying to figure out why. In 2024, the Lions suffered more injuries than any other team on defense by adjusted games lost<\/a>, and they figure to be high on the list again after losing key players like Sam LaPorta, Brian Branch, Kerby Joseph, Christian Mahogany, Levi Onwuzurike, DJ Reed, Terrion Arnold, Alim McNeill, and Marcus Davenport for long spans of the season.<\/p>\n

This week on the St. Brown Brothers podcast, 49ers veteran linebacker Fred Warner weighed in on the situation and playfully criticized the Lions\u2019 practicing habits under coach Dan Campbell<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After Warner weighed in on the odd conspiracy theory for the 49ers\u2019 own injury issues<\/a>, Lions receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown brought up Detroit\u2019s injury struggles. St. Brown then asked whether the 49ers did live tackling in training camp practices. After Warner said no, St. Brown revealed that Detroit does, and Warner offered some feedback for Campbell.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the full exchange between St. Brown and Warner:<\/p>\n

St. Brown: \u201cThe Lions have hella injuries every year, too. I\u2019m like, \u2018(expletive)!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Warner: \u201cY\u2019all go hard. Ole\u2019 Dan Campbell be over there tellin\u2019 y\u2019all to bite kneecaps. So, at some point, you\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

St. Brown: \u201cWait, so do you guys go full tackle in camp?\u201d<\/p>\n

Warner: \u201cNo, no, we would never do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

St. Brown: \u201cSee, nah, we go full. We go live.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warner: \u201cSee, at some point, old Dan is going to come to his senses, man, and be like, \u2018Listen, this ain\u2019t making nobody better, brother. We can still get our work in without bringing guys to the ground.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

St. Brown: \u201cEvery time a new player comes to our team, they look at us during practice, they be in the locker room like, \u2018Y\u2019all practice like that all that time?\u2018 I just be like, \u2018Yeah, this is all I know.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Warner: \u201cI get the mindset that he\u2019s trying to instill in y\u2019all, but\u2014because he\u2019s obviously saying you can\u2019t become better at tackling unless you practice tackling, right? I\u2019m sure that\u2019s the mindset, but tackling is about getting all the way there, wrapping the guy\u2014thudding the guy, wrapping him\u2014and then you just don\u2019t got to do the extra bring him to the ground, right? Half the time, guys are just in desperation trying to get somebody on the ground where you\u2019re putting yourself and the person who you\u2019re tackling at risk, right? That\u2019s improper tackling technique, but if you\u2019re doing it correctly, you can be in a position where you can tackle and be like, \u2018Okay, I ain\u2019t bringing you all the way to the ground.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

You can watch the entire conversation on injuries here. It starts around the 21:00 mark. <\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s an interesting perspective from an eight-year veteran who has played for a successful franchise for the entirety of his career. But this has also been something Campbell has defended for years now, including a popular speech he delivered in 2022 after a physical practice as captured by the HBO series \u201cHard Knocks.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI had a couple of you look at me like \u2018What the (expletive)? Why are we going live (tackling)?\u2019 I got it. Here\u2019s what I need, man. I need you to trust me. I swear to god I\u2019m not a lunatic. I swear to you. If I absolutely knew we could get to where we need to get without ever putting pads on, I would do it. I swear to you. But also for us as a team to get better defensively, what is the essence of what we do? What are the two things? Pursuit and tackle. Pursuit and tackle. Man, if you don\u2019t work on tackling, if we don\u2019t work on run after the catch, making a move, man, what are we doing? Then we finally get to Week 8 and we come to life because we\u2019ve got enough reps? That\u2019s why I\u2019m doing it. I swear, man, I don\u2019t want to put anybody in jeopardy, but we have to do it, man. I believe it. [\u2026] I\u2019ve got a plan, I swear to you. All I think about is you guys. That\u2019s all I think about. That\u2019s all I (expletive) think about is you guys, and how I set you up for the best possible advantage I can give you to have a season. I swear to you, man. I just need you to trust me. That\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n

It seems unlikely Campbell will go back on these practice philosophies. In fact, at his end of season press conference, Campbell alluded to getting back to their foundation when it comes to their training camp practices\u2014although he was vague about what that meant.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to get back to some of the things we were doing a couple of years ago,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cAnd what I mean by that is just getting back to a little bit of what we did at the ground level, just a little bit of the way we train, the way we go about things,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cThis is going to be a good training camp for us. We\u2019re going to go back and really sharpen the sword a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Detroit Lions have suffered a frustrating amount of injuries over the past few years, and many outside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2071],"tags":[146,113,153,1889,2506,7,147,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-714232","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-detroit-lions-quotes","12":"tag-detroitlions","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-lions","15":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714232","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=714232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}