DETROIT — Out of uniform and out of his comfort zone, about a week before the chaos ensues, Jack Campbell could, and probably should, be doing just anything else with his time.
With his season around the corner and so few days off remaining, it’s understandable to suggest as much. And yet, his black Ford pickup truck pulls into a parking lot in Metro Detroit at the agreed-upon time of 8 a.m. ET on the first Saturday of September. Out hops Campbell to greet the reporter standing before him and settle in for a 90-minute conversation on a subject that, if it were up to him, he’d never have to discuss.
Himself.
“I don’t know why I get uncomfortable when the focus is me,” Campbell says during our interview.
It’s no secret that talking to media is, um, lower on the list of job perks for Campbell. But fresh off the most transformative season of the All-Pro linebacker’s career, the focus on him has never been greater. So when a story to discuss it all was pitched to him in January, hoping to dive into the year that was, Campbell agreed and made good on his word. It’s what he does.
You see, Campbell is, in fact, a people person. Just not in the traditional sense. His rough exterior and no-nonsense approach tend to typecast him as a football machine devoid of personality or emotion. Some of it is of his own volition.
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When Campbell was a rookie in 2023, a smile from him was so rare that his then-position coach Kelvin Sheppard had to ask if he enjoys this life. “Shepp, it ain’t you,” Sam LaPorta, Campbell’s college roommate and now NFL teammate, would tell him. “He’s been like that.” During a joint practice that year with the Jacksonville Jaguars, Campbell accidentally took down running back JaMycal Hasty in a non-padded practice. He claims Hasty tripped, but that didn’t stop Jaguars players from leaving the sideline to approach Campbell about it. The rookie was unfazed. “I mean, I’ll stand on the sideline and face whoever,” Campbell said after practice. “I mean, I don’t really care.”
The following year, after a physical practice against the New York Giants in which several fights broke out, Campbell’s right glove was soaked in blood after a tackle attempt. “I’ve had tougher practices at Iowa,” Campbell said with a straight face. And against the Baltimore Ravens last September, Campbell took a cleat to the mouth in an act of friendly fire, gushing blood for the rest of the game. He continued to call the defense, as a Joker-like laceration formed across his mouth that later required stitches. “He’s at the end of the game trying to call plays, and blood’s spitting out everywhere,” Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell said. Jack didn’t get what all the fuss was about.
“People try to make it seem like it’s super tough,” he said. “… All you gotta do is be able to breathe.”
These are vignettes of the tone-setter the Lions drafted Campbell to be. Just don’t mistake his stoicism for apathy.
He cares. Deeply. Not so much about the people who thought the Lions reached to select him with the 18th pick in the 2023 draft. He has thoughts on them. We’ll get to that later.
Rather, Campbell cares about the people who were there in the early stages of this journey. About the people who molded him along the way. About the people who’ve invested in him long enough to have seen the returns. About the people in Michigan who support him and his team each Sunday, and the people he’ll spend his Sundays with decades from now — when it’s all said and done.
Spend some time with the man behind the helmet, and he’ll tell you what this is all about.
Ask Campbell about his hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa, and he’ll tell you about the relationships he built there.
He begins by thanking his immediate and extended family, for the sacrifices they made and the way he was raised. He takes a moment to shout out his best friends from back home, retracing steps in his mind, hoping not to leave anyone out. They know who they are.
It’s the people who make it special.
“It’s not a town where everyone knows everyone because it’s so big,” Campbell says, “but I would say it’s a town where if you were ever in need of help, people would lend a hand.”
You can see this instilled in Campbell, both then and now. In high school, Campbell befriended a student named Will Reinart. A fellow Cedar Falls native, Reinart was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when he was 9 years old. Years of chemotherapy. A stroke that forced him to miss time and school and even relearn how to walk.
Building friendships was sometimes difficult for Reinart, given the circumstances. It wasn’t with Campbell.
A budding linebacker at Cedar Falls High, Campbell heard Reinart’s story and offered his support. He’d carry Reinart’s books to class, walk with him in the hall, talk sports with him; he even helped the school raise money for a Coaches Against Cancer fundraiser. Reinart, in turn, gave Campbell a bracelet that read, “WILL POWER,” with the Bible verse John 3:16.
Campbell wore it every day. All the way to the NFL.
In 2019, Campbell and Reinart were set to graduate. Campbell walked with the rest of his classmates, but Reinart had to miss the ceremony. A school counselor planned a mini-graduation just for Reinart and enlisted Campbell to help spread the word to students. They held it in the high school’s auditorium. Members of the band played “Pomp and Circumstance,” as Reinart took the stage in his red graduation gown and a walker. A turnout of a few dozen would’ve sufficed. A few hundred came.
“He worked his whole life to get to walk across the stage, and then he wasn’t able to with everybody,” Campbell recalled. “Getting to be there, and see that the kids in your grade care enough to come and pay respect to the journey and the battle that he went through to get to walk across that stage, … it’s something that I’ll honestly never forget.”
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During the 2019 season, his first at Iowa, Campbell stayed in touch with Reinart, who was studying biology at Hawkeye Community College and hoped to become a physician. Before or after a game, he’d check his phone and could typically find an endearing message from Reinart — an Iowa superfan who now got to root for a close friend. Campbell was primarily a special teams contributor back then, but those words of encouragement meant the world to him as he navigated life in the Big Ten.
One day, those messages stopped. In January 2020, Reinart died. A devastating loss for the community.
Campbell was a pallbearer at Will’s funeral, at the request of Reinart’s family.
“From my perspective, Jack took Will under his wing,” Susan Reinart, Will’s mother, told Hawkeye Headquarters years ago. “He’s just a down-to-earth kid who has a big heart and cares about people, and uses his talent to help others.”
“I was just trying to be there to have a genuine friendship with him and let him know that I’m there for him,” Campbell said. “… To get to be a pallbearer in his funeral was just a huge honor, and something I’ll never forget. The lessons that I learned from Will and everything that went down throughout that time period, I hold with me throughout my daily life.”
All he had to do was look to his wrist for a reminder. It served him well at Iowa.
Kirk Ferentz once said if he had five Jack Campbells, they’d be his three starting linebackers and two starting defensive ends.
“I don’t know if the defensive ends are gonna be eating too much on third downs,” Campbell said, flashing his self-deprecating sense of humor. “But I appreciate that Coach believes in me that much.”
Campbell can laugh about it these days, but there was a time when he wasn’t sure if he’d ever play meaningful snaps at Iowa. Many top high school recruits these days commit to schools expecting to start as true freshmen and hit the league in three years. Campbell was realistic.
He understood there was a process to it all. Iowa made sure of it.
Ferentz and his staff have a long track record of development, often boasting about their best success stories during team meetings. Campbell can recite the names like a party trick: Dallas Clark. Brad Banks. Brandon Scherff. Josey Jewell. Chad Greenway. Abdul Hodge. Christian Kirksey. Anthony Hitchens. James Morris. Bob Sanders. Robert Gallery.
When the proof of concept is so readily available, you can’t help but aspire to be next in line.
“It takes a lot to be a football player there, just because they expect so much out of you,” Campbell said. “Sometimes, that’s a process, and a lot of kids don’t like it. But man, the University of Iowa just does a fantastic job at developing people.”
Campbell set out goals for each season at Iowa. After playing mostly special teams as a freshman, he earned All-America honors as a senior and won the Butkus Award. (Scott Taetsch / Imagn Images)
Each season, Campbell wrote goals for himself. Realistic ones. Iowa strength coaches asked each player to write theirs down for the weight room every year. Campbell took it a step further and applied it to his career.
As a freshman, that goal was contributing on special teams. Done. As a sophomore, he just wanted a role on defense. Box checked. As a junior, he aspired to win the Big Ten Linebacker of the Year award. He didn’t win. At least, not that year. He reassessed and went to work.
Extra film study, longer hours in the weight room, more questions asked in meetings, coming to practice hoping to get better at one thing each day entering his final year — the way the Iowa greats before him did it.
The accolades tell the story. Unanimous All-American. Big Ten Linebacker of the Year. Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year. Butkus Award winner, as the best linebacker in college football. William V. Campbell Trophy winner — known as the academic Heisman. That one came with bragging rights.
“I love bringing that up to my wife,” Campbell says, laughing. “She gets so mad when she thinks she outsmarts me. I’m like, ‘I’m the academic Heisman. I’m probably right.’”
He might not have learned the phrase “happy wife, happy life” at Iowa, but Campbell learned just about everything else there. It’s where he learned about run fits and gaps, coverage variations based on formations and cut splits, pre-snap reads, situational football — all of it.
These days, you can add Campbell to the long list of players Ferentz points to as an example of the process at work.
“One of the finest players I’ve ever worked with in my entire career,” Ferentz said of Campbell. “He’s just a really exceptional human being.”
When asked about the notion that he’s too serious, Campbell scoffs.
“Yeah, I’m a robot,” he says. “Yup, I get it.”
You can tell a part of him doesn’t love it. Because it’s not true. He feels and thinks and internalizes like the rest of us.
There’s no better example of that than draft night.
As the draft neared in the spring of 2023, friends and family would ask Campbell when he expected to be selected. He told them he’d probably be a mid-round pick. Behind the scenes, Campbell’s agent informed him he could sneak into the first round.
On April 23, 2023, around 9:06 p.m. at his draft party in Cedar Falls, Campbell and his family watched Roger Goodell announce the 16th pick. That’s when his phone rang.
He didn’t think much of it. He didn’t recognize the area code. But he stepped outside on the front porch, away from the noise, and answered.
“Hey, Jack. It’s Brad Holmes of the Detroit Lions,” Campbell heard on the other end. He knew what came next.
The Lions informed Campbell, an off-ball linebacker, that he would be their selection at No. 18. It was higher than even he anticipated. Campbell quickly returned to his draft party and relayed the info to his family. The room erupted. Campbell celebrated a dream realized.
Until he watched the broadcast evaluate the pick.
“I get announced on TV,” Campbell recalls. “All the commentators, I just remember they’re like, ‘Once you get outside of Pick 15, you never know what’s gonna happen.’ Pretty much saying, ‘We like the kid, but I don’t know what Detroit’s thinking.’ There was some other stuff said that I’ll always hold dearly, just because I feel like it’s pushed me to get to where I am today.”
Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell, left, and GM Brad Holmes, far right, posed with their first-round picks in the 2023 NFL Draft. (Kirthmon F. Dozier / Imagn Images)
To this day, Campbell doesn’t quite understand the rhetoric. Most of the critiques had nothing to do with his talent or skill. It was simply the position he played, and where the Lions took him. Something about positional value. You might remember the discourse.
On what was supposed to be one of the best nights of his life, Campbell couldn’t avoid it.
“If you can get a great football player that’s going to help your team, why would you not?” Campbell asks. “A receiver, edge, offensive tackle — why would you risk taking, at 18, the third- or fourth-best player at that position when you can get arguably the best player at a different position? I don’t know why people don’t prioritize good football players.”
The Lions did in that draft, with their selections of Jahmyr Gibbs at No. 12 and Campbell at No. 18.
They knew what Campbell was about. The stories of his upbringing. How he didn’t cut corners in college. The type of player he was and the type of person they’d be getting. They’ve never regretted it.
“Ultimately, what are we trying to accomplish?” Lions GM Brad Holmes said that night. “We’re trying to win games. That’s why we acquire these players. … We didn’t acquire an inside linebacker in the first round — we acquired a legit anchor to elevate our defense in the first round. That’s what the ultimate goal is, and that’s what our vision is.”
Two months after the draft, a man from a neighboring town in Iowa — the father of a kid Campbell played basketball against in high school — printed out a draft article, placed it in a children’s book about dreaming big, and mailed it to Campbell.
He was … confused. The article graded his selection an “F” — again citing positional value.
“Come on, man. Why is he sending me this? I don’t need to see this,” Campbell thought.
But remember, the people in this town lend a hand to their own. The book came with a written message, one that reminds Campbell why he does this.
“Show them what you’re all about.”
A self-described introvert, Campbell would probably be content spending his Sundays with his loved ones on a few acres of land, enjoying a Busch Light somewhere in the heart of Iowa. If he weren’t living this life, he says, he’d be the exact same person. He just so happens to be quite good at this football thing.
The NFL finally noticed last year.
Campbell is coming off of what was undoubtedly the best season of his career. He ranked second in the NFL with 176 tackles to go along with five sacks and three forced fumbles. He made his first Pro Bowl appearance and was named a First-Team All-Pro. He became the fifth player to win both the college Butkus Award (2022) and the professional Butkus Award (2025). He earned a spot in the NFL’s top-100 rankings, where his peers spoke glowingly of him. He won the Pro Football Writers of America Detroit chapter’s “Good Guy” award, honoring the player who shows the most professionalism, cooperation and help to reporters during the season. In July, Campbell and his wife, Megan, welcomed their son into the world. Just this week, for the first time in his NFL career, Campbell was voted a team captain by his peers.
And, of course, Campbell signed a four-year, $81 million contract extension this offseason — perhaps the greatest sign that he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be.
“It wasn’t about proving them wrong,” Campbell said at a news conference to announce the deal. “I feel like, for me, it was proving the people that believed in me right.”
As Campbell’s career has taken off, his coaches and teammates acknowledge this isn’t the same player who never smiled as a rookie. An admitted deep thinker, Campbell can now look back and admit he was in his head back then. He had to process everything before the process could begin.
These days? His teammates see his personality, his ability to laugh at himself, his sarcasm, his dry wit. They see his improvement, mirroring his time at Iowa. They see his work ethic and his trajectory.
“He’s doing Hall of Fame stuff now,” Lions defensive tackle Alim McNeill told The Athletic. “He’s trying to reach that type of level now because he’s already one of those guys. He’s on his way there, in my opinion.”
“Anything that Jack says, people listen,” Dan Campbell said. “He’s earned that.”
Some things have changed, while others haven’t. Campbell has newfound perspective after his son’s birth. On one of the final days of training camp, Campbell, his wife and son, his family and others lingered on the practice field, posing for photos to commemorate the moment. He wants to be the best version of himself for his son.
“On the bad days when I come home, seeing him, it changes everything,” Campbell says. “It’s just been the best. It’s been the greatest change for my wife and I.”
Despite a year of accolades and individual success, the most-coveted trophy in Campbell’s possession is one you’ve never heard about. It’s called the Golden Spurs Award — given annually to the Campbell family member who shoots the turkey with the biggest spurs. You can leave Iowa, but Iowa never leaves you.
Now that he’s firmly established himself in the league, Campbell — a people person through and through — is focused on the people of Detroit. He says his time in the city has been fantastic, and reminds him of home. He sees how much folks love football here. How deeply they care.
“Just all the stories of people coming up to me, telling me that they’ve been Lions fans their whole life and wish that their parents were still here to see it,” Campbell says. “Coming up at a gas station and being like, ‘You changed my life.’ It’s so crazy that football can do that to people.
“And for me, it’s like: How can I bring a Super Bowl to Detroit? How can I do everything in my power, with every waking second inside and outside of the building, to do that?”
When people are your motivation, this life is always enjoyable.