DETROIT – Holly Campbell, the wife of Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell, revealed their longest superstition going back to their early dating days, and why that tradition ended during his time in Detroit.
Holly sat down with Local 4’s Karen Drew to talk about a variety of topics before the start of the 2025 season.
One of those topics was superstitions.
“There’s all sorts of superstitions, and they change, too, like, if something isn’t working, then you’re like, ‘OK, it must be this,’” Campbell said. “Our longest superstition that we no longer do – the first movie that we saw together, our first movie date, was Armageddon.”
Holly said when Dan was in college, she would call on the “do a good job” scene with him before games.
“I’d be like, ‘Do a good job,’” she said. “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. So I don’t say it anymore. But it took 23-24 years.”
She said that was their longest-running superstition. But it’s not the only one.
“We do the kiss when he comes out and then we do the kiss when he comes 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 and waves. If I’m not at an away game, he FaceTimes me from the field.”
She said many of their other superstitions are fluid.
“If you’re wearing something and you get really blown out, then that’s out of the rotation for awhile,” she said. “It’s bad mojo. You can’t do that.”
She said that goes not only for her clothes, but Dan’s, as well.
“He’ll have, like, his ‘playoff boots,’ and then if they don’t work, he’s like, ‘Next year, we’re not doing that,’” Holly said.
She thinks it all boils down to trying to tell yourself that you have some control over the situation, even if you don’t.
Another gameday tradition: Dan drives to games, and Holly has a driver bring her so they can ride home together.
“It’s more fun to go home together, win or lose,” Campbell said. “You either want to celebrate together or you want to make each other feel better.”
Dan’s mood depends on the outcome. Holly said he’s usually more talkative after a win, and after a loss, it just depends how mad he is about the game.
“There’s different kinds of losing,” she said.