DETROIT – Holly Campbell, wife of Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell, is opening up like never before about football, family, and the pressures of the NFL.
She first gained social media attention after sharing the couple’s two-kiss tradition before every game. Now, she’s revealing more about what goes on behind the scenes.
Game day nerves and rituals
“I’m always nervous before the game starts. It’s like, you need to, you know, you need a few, you need, like, a few series to, like, figure out, like, what do we look like today?” Holly said.
On game day, Holly gets dropped off at Ford Field while Dan has already been there for hours. She’s ready to cheer on the team—and her husband.
“All the nail biting, I mean, all the, all the going for it on fourth down,” Holly said.
Understanding the infamous fourth down calls
When asked if she always expects Dan to go for it on fourth down, she explained, “I always know that it’s a possibility. But then I also know that it’s not gambling. It’s not like all like, they’ve right, all these plays. They have practiced and practiced and practiced, and they have a set of conditions. And if those conditions are not there, he’s either not going to call it, or they can, like, you know, move out of it. Like they can change the play in the middle.”
She added, “It’s like everything has to go according to the script for them to actually, like, call it and then do it, OK? So I know if they call it and do it, there’s a pretty high odds they’re gonna get it.”
Life as a coach’s wife
Holly knows Dan Campbell better than anyone. They have been married 27 years, have two children -- Piper and Cody -- and a Yorkie. She offers an inside perspective on Detroit’s favorite coach.
“It’s 24/7, it’s like, you know, it’s not that players aren’t, but they are home a lot more, and they are, you know, they have a lot more time off,” Holly said. “Coach. It’s like, really, there’s about a month. But when you’re the head coach, it’s really about two weeks. So he never stops working now.”
Dan Campbell’s passion surprises even Holly
Dan’s famous press conferences never fail to surprise Holly. One of his first press conferences with the Lions is one of the most memorable, but it caught some people off guard.
“So this team’s going to be built on, we’re going to kick you in the teeth. When you punch us back, we’re going to smile at you, and when you know us down, we’re going to get up and on the way up, we’re going to bite a kneecap off. We’re going to stand up, and it’s gonna take two more shots to knock us down. On the way up, we’re gonna take your other kneecap. Then we’re gonna get up and then it’s gonna take three shots to get us down. And when we do, we’re gonna take another hunk out of you.
Dan Campbell, Jan. 21, 2021
When asked if she knew he was going to say that, she said it wasn’t completely surprising.
“I knew he was capable of saying that. I definitely did,” Holly recalled. “And even for me, it was a lot like, I remember when he called me, I was like, ‘Yeah, that was a lot of that was a lot of body parts, you probably could have stopped at one kneecap,’” she said with a laugh.
She also understands where he’s coming from and the passion behind his words. “It’s not shocking at all to me that it resonated.”
The two-kiss superstition and other rituals
One tradition that resonates with fans is the two-game kiss superstition before every Detroit Lions home game. Holly shared on Instagram about it.
“We do the kiss when he comes out, and then we do the kiss when he goes back in,” Holly said. “If it’s an away game, he’ll usually come over to me, but when he’s leaving, he just finds me in like waves, OK, if I’m not at an away game, he facetimes me from the field, from the field, because he needs that. Yes, that’s so we have to do that.”
Holly also revealed a superstition she stopped doing to help ensure a victory.
“It started when Dan was playing college. I’d be like, ‘Do a good job.’ And then, so I’ve said, ‘Do a good job to him’ before every game for like, 20-something years, until we were here and we were losing so much, and then I forgot to say it one day, and that was our first win,” Holly said. “Oh, so I don’t say it. So now we don’t say ‘Do a good job.’”
Monday morning coffee runs and pressure to win
That change seems to be working, which brings fans to the infamous Monday morning Instagram celebratory coffee runs.
“I love the coffee runs, I want to see because I feel like I’m a part of that ride in the morning. And I kind of get a vibe of, how are we feeling, right? You know, like, I’m like, what, you know, it’s a really intimate moment, right? And, heaven forbid, there’s a morning where we can’t do the so, I mean, I still get coffee, but it’s like, we didn’t, we couldn’t do the so I still have to figure out a way to do it, because it’s the pressure, right?”
The pressure to deliver a Super Bowl victory for the fans is immense. This power couple says this year they are ready for a reckoning.