Detroit Lions aren't a finished product, good or bad. And that's a good thing.

Holly Campbell, the wife of Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell, stood on the sideline in Ford Field, wearing a black skirt, black boots and a No. 89 Lions' jersey with "Campbell" on the back.

I mean, how cool — and yet, incredibly different — was that? To have a coach’s wife show up to a game wearing the number he wore for the team from 2006-08.

It was Thanksgiving, as the Lions warmed up to play the Green Bay Packers.

She was talking with Sheila Hamp, the Lions' principal owner and chairman, and then walked a few feet and chatted with Martha Ford, the former owner and chair emeritus, who was sitting in a tricked-out four-wheeler on the sideline.

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Brad Holmes, the Lions general manger, was bopping around, talking to different people, posing for pictures and giving out hugs in the middle of the Ford family, like you do when you greet close friends.

Watching through binoculars from the press box, I had one thought: Everything is so perfectly aligned in this organization, from ownership to the coach’s wife. These people seem to genuinely like each other.

They look comfortable together.

At that same moment, about 15 yards away, Dan Campbell was doing an interview with Erin Andrews on the Fox pregame show.

“We're getting some wins,” Campbell said. “We're playing pretty good football.”

Campbell ended the interview, signed an autograph and walked through a crowd and found his wife. He gave her a kiss, as the commentators kept talking.

“He is as you see,” said Michael Strahan, Campbell’s former teammate, on Fox's pregame show. “He wears his heart on his sleeve. He says what he feels. He doesn't mince his words. He doesn't send you mixed messages. And the players love that. That's why players play for this guy.”

The juxtaposition of listening to the announcers talk while keeping an eye on Campbell as he walked across the field, giving players high fives and slaps on the back, was wild.

“It's an identity,” Howie Long added on the Fox show. “It's a culture. It's a toughness. There's no kind of mix-up in words when you walk out of the room from Dan Campbell.”

I would argue it’s not just Campbell.

It’s this entire organization right now.

Everything is transparent — as transparent as it can be in the NFL. There are no mixed messages. Everything is out in the open.

All you have to do is watch what they do and listen to what they say and you can figure out what they are thinking.

And none of that will change because the Lions lost on Thanksgiving.

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Not looking great lately

Since the bye, the Lions have not looked like an elite team destined to win the Super Bowl because, ahem, they are not.

Let's recap their games: The Lions beat the Los Angeles Chargers, 41-38, in a wild shootout. Then they had to come from behind in an 31-26 improbable victory over the Chicago Bears — a game in which Jared Goff threw three picks. On Thursday, the Packers beat the Lions, 29-22, because Goff had three fumbles — including a scoop-and-score —as the offensive line struggled.

It’s pretty dang hard to win in the NFL when those things happen.

Right on cue, some Lions fans freaked out, because they have been conditioned to expect the worst.

Their emails screamed: Nothing has changed. This team is horrible! They haven’t beaten anybody.  

But it shouldn’t be an either-or situation: Either the Lions stink — and they will always stink, as they have always — or they're going to win the Super Bowl.

But this team is somewhere in-between. The Lions are still building; in the heat of a season, it’s hard to remember that.

Consider the rest of the league: San Francisco is the class of the NFC. Dallas and Philadelphia are in the next tier.

Where are the Lions?

In some ways, they are ahead of schedule. They are good enough to win five of their next six. They are good enough to get the NFC's No. 2 seed — which would bring a home playoff game in the first weekend — and that should remain the goal.

Will they?

Maybe.

But that would be a colossal jump. Because there is a natural progress of any organization.

The 49ers were 6-10 in 2020, improved to 10-7 in 2021 and really took off in 2022, soaring to 13-4. Now the 49ers are truly elite. They don’t appear to have a weakness.

That’s how a true Super Bowl contender develops — we know, this is completely unfamiliar territory for Lions fans.

Yes, sometimes teams do go from worst to first. But those teams never feel like they are built for the long term. (Or, more often, those teams had a significant injury the year before that skewed everything.)

So even though the Lions are 8-3, they are nowhere near a finished product.

They still have plenty of holes and weaknesses.

And that brings us back to the transparency.

Because you have to pay attention to what the Lions are telling us through their actions.

Would they be in a better position, for the rest of this season, if they had made some trades at the deadline to improve their pass rush? Or if they had brought in more help in the secondary?

Yes.

But every move comes with a cost.

By not making a move, the Lions screamed, loud and clear: We are all on the same page. We aren’t deviating. We are following the plan we created when we walked in the door. We are building for the long term. We are not a single player away. Trading for a player might help us rack up a few more wins but we are not one player away from the Super Bowl.

Still too many holes

The strength of this team is its offensive line.

The weakness? Yeah, that defense.

So this team is not built to win the Super Bowl this year: There are too many holes.

But the Lions should win the NFC North and host a playoff game, especially after starting off 8-3. Anything less would be terribly disappointing and unacceptable. And once you get into the playoffs, anything can happen.

But that doesn’t mean they're done developing.

The Thanksgiving disaster makes it obvious the offensive line has to do a better job protecting Goff. When he’s under pressure, his magic evaporates. The Lions have to figure out a way to get more pressure on opposing quarterbacks, too. And, obviously, they have to eliminate the turnovers.

For this team to have any shot at winning, it has to score — and score like crazy — because the defense is too susceptible against the pass.

Campbell knows this.

It’s why he has been so aggressive on fourth downs and tries so many fake punts.

He trusts his offense — specifically, he trusts his offensive line — and he knows his defense is a weakness.

But when the offensive line has a bad game, or when Goff starts throwing picks or fumbling, this team has no chance.

That doesn’t mean all of this progress is a mirage.

It doesn’t mean the Lions have regressed.

It just means they're still a work-in-progress.

I’ll try to remind myself of that over the next six weeks: This is a long-term process.

Yes, this is a great opportunity, just being 8-3. I’m not diminishing that or even giving them a free pass. You don't want to waste opportunities like this. Ride it as long as you can.

But I’m gonna try to approach this with an even keel, trying to keep everything in perspective and not overreacting to wins or losses.

Because it doesn’t have to be a one-year splash. It shouldn't be, as the Lions try to build something that can be sustained over years.

For once, everything is aligned for the long term.

The ownership. The front office. The coaches. The players.

Even the coach’s wife.

MORE FROM JEFF SEIDEL: You might be thankful for the Detroit Lions but what are they thankful for?

Contact Jeff Seidel at jseidel@freepress.com or follow him @seideljeff.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions still developing, but they're being transparent about it