Decker bemoaned a communication breakdown between him and the team. In short, he believes the Lions failed to properly communicate that his return to the team was dependent on his willingness to take a pay cut. So, when Decker announced his intentions of returning to the team for an 11th season instead of retirement, he was surprised, and disappointed, to hear that the team would only allow him back if it was on a reduced salary. Decker refused, and the team released him earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Campbell was obviously disheartened to hear about Decker\u2019s frustration.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou never want a player to feel like something has happened to them that they don\u2019t feel good about. You don\u2019t want that,\u201d Campbell said.<\/p>\n
Adding to Decker\u2019s frustration was the fact that the team offered no contact after the release. No thank you\u2019s or appreciation of his time in Detroit. Campbell indicated he\u2019ll eventually reach out to Decker, but noted that sometimes the business is just callous like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese guys, you\u2019re around all the time, it\u2019s like coaches, (then) they\u2019re just gone, and it\u2019s crazy,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cBut that\u2019s the nature of the business. That\u2019s the way that it was when I was a player. Some of these coaches are like\u2014I had a coach that it was like we talked every day, man. He would send me messages, he would talk. And then the minute I go to another team, I never heard from him again. It wasn\u2019t being vindictive, but it\u2019s also a little bit like\u2014well, you\u2019re not part of the team anymore and all my focus is on this. That\u2019s kind of the world we live in, unfortunately, and it\u2019s hard. But that\u2019s the way it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n
And while Decker may not get a direct message from Campbell and company for a little while, the Lions head coach made sure to tell the media on hand at the owners meetings how much he appreciated Decker\u2019s time with the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeck\u2019s a stud, man. He gave a lot for a long time through three regimes, and we\u2019ll be forever grateful, man,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cHe\u2019ll always be a Lion, and it\u2019ll always be his home at some point. So, he\u2019ll be missed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Decker bemoaned a communication breakdown between him and the team. In short, he believes the Lions failed to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[153,1889,7],"class_list":{"0":"post-845218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-detroit-lions-news","9":"tag-detroit-lions-quotes","10":"tag-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116324792233903720","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845218","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=845218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}