The Detroit Lions won 15 games and earned the No. 1 playoff seed for the first time in franchise history last season, but of course it ended in disappointing fashion with a Divisional Round loss to the Washington Commanders. They wouldn't be the first team to suffer a playoff disappointment as a proverbial favorite to go much further, and Peyton Manning in particular can relate.
Manning said he reached out to Campbell via text after the Lions lost to the Commanders.
"I said, ‘I know how you feel, I’ve been there, and it’s not a good feeling,’” Manning said on Monday night, via Joel A. Erickson of the Indianapolis Star. “’Understand that, but we did win the whole thing the next year.’ You just kind of keep sawing wood.”
The 2005 Indianapolis Colts, led by Manning of course, started 13-0 on their way the No. 1 seed in the AFC. The No. 6 seed Pittsburgh Steelers came to town and pulled off the upset, in the worst of the Colts' disappointing playoff exits during that stretch of years.
Manning recognized how that kind of playoff loss, and one like the Lions' suffered, might cause an organization to alter what its doing going forward.
"That was the kind of loss that could probably make an organization say, ‘Let’s change everything. … Let’s kind of blow the whole thing up and start over,’” Manning said. “Or your organization and owner can say, ‘Hey, we’re doing something right, let’s keep going.’”
Peyton Manning's message is sure to resonate with the Lions
Using how the Colts rebounded in 2006 to win the Super Bowl, Manning had a message that feels like it will resonate well with the Lions.
"We’d been knocking on the door, and we were coming close,” he said. “We were obviously doing something right. Just needed to do a little bit more, and ‘Finish’ kind of became the theme of that season.”
Steady leadership, like the Colts had during the peak of the Manning era and the Lions have now, prevents the push for drastic changes after disappointing playoff losses. Now the Lions just have to "finish" like the Colts did.