The Detroit Lions received a lot of attention heading into the 2023 season, and they paid it off with a division title, two playoff wins, and a trip to the NFC Championship Game.
Dan Campbell began the season as a betting favorite to earn NFL Coach of the Year, and he remained there throughout.
There were many deserving candidates for Coach of the Year this year, including Campbell.
If he was going to win it, this appeared to be the year.
To some sense, it’s now or never, since the Lions’ expectations will skyrocket in the coming years, and his candidacy for the award will suffer.
That isn’t to say Stefanski and Ryans were not worthy candidates, and worthy of finishing where they did.
Stefanski navigated the Browns having five different starting quarterbacks, while Ryans and the Texans sheerly defied expectations in his first season.
Campbell and Lions simply did not have the same kind of challenges as Stefanski and the Browns did this year, and expectations were high after the Lions finished the 2022 season on an 8-2 run.
It’s also worth remembering all of these kind of awards are regular season awards. Even within that, the Lions had their most successful regular season in three decades.
And they were an egregious officiating mistake away from being the No. 2 seed in the NFC playoffs.
There is plenty of unhappy reaction to Campbell not winning Coach of the Year, on the “Detroit vs.
Everybody” note that Lions’ fans like to lean into whenever something goes against their team.
But the reality is this, as much as awards like this should even matter in the big picture.
Dan Campbell will never win NFL Coach of the Year-at least for as long as he’s the Lions’ head coach.
