Detroit Lions' Dan Campbell has potential to become city's next Hall of Fame coach

NEW ORLEANS — The Road to the Playoffs is sometimes just the beginning. The beginning of a journey for a team, but also for a coach.

Detroit Tigers skipper Jim Leyland taught us that on his way to being the 23rd MLB manager selected for the Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday night. The hall conducted a video news conference from baseball’s winter meetings in Nashville, Tennessee, so I was able to tune in after the Detroit Lions' victory over the New Orleans Saints and see Leyland get his due.

I thought about Leyland and how much I enjoyed covering him and learning from him. Leyland taught me about baseball, but also the skillful art of dealing with people in a very public profession. He wasn’t afraid to joust with reporters, but he treated everyone with respect and understanding.

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The more I thought of that, I thought of how much his approach reminded me of Lions coach Dan Campbell. It’s a different sport and a slightly different era, and Campbell is at the very early stages of his career as a head coach. But more than anyone else I’ve covered in Detroit over the past 20 years, I believe Campbell has the potential to become the city’s next active coach inducted into a hall of fame.

Buddy Parker, who led the Lions to two NFL titles in the 1950s, is on the verge of making the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but he’s from a different era. More on him in a bit.

From our current era, Mike Babcock might have had a chance before his actions and treatment of players cost him jobs in Toronto and Columbus and scuttled his reputation. A.J. Hinch would have to win numerous World Series with the Tigers, and even then I’m not sure Hall of Fame voters would forgive his part in the Astros’ cheating scandal.

That pretty much leaves Campbell. And yes, as I said, it’s very early. But Campbell shares three qualities with Leyland that lead me to believe in his potential.

The first, of course, is winning. That’s an obvious requirement. How much he wins is a different question. Campbell either has to win at least two championships — like many of the other 20 coaches in the Pro Football Hall of Fame — or get to multiple Super Bowls, like Marv Levy. Other roads, such as having an extremely high winning percentage (like George Allen) or being an innovator (like Sid Gillman) aren’t as likely.

Campbell not only has the Lions poised to win double-digit games for the first time in nine years, but he’s flirting with setting a franchise record with 13 wins. Precedents like these, especially when they’re attached to rescuing a perpetually bad franchise, are catnip to hall of fame voters.

Leyland did something similar in 2006 when he took over the Tigers, just three years removed from 119 losses, and immediately took them to the World Series. Campbell hasn't hit that high yet, but then again, Leyland already had a veteran general manager in place, so he wasn't starting from the bottom.

The second quality, which isn’t exactly a hard data point, is Campbell’s appearance and persona. It matters. Whereas Leyland had the gravely voiced gravitas we’ve come to expect from our baseball managers, fictional or otherwise —think Sparky Anderson in real life or Wilford Brimley in “The Natural” — Campbell is practically the embodiment of football itself. Big, beefy and buff with a Texas drawl — what else could you ask for?

Campbell’s appearance belies his true nature. Anyone would assume, based off his appearance, that he’s a meathead jock. Of course, he’s the opposite of that, which is why he fascinates us. The most common question I get from fans — and even other reporters — is, “What’s Dan Campbell like?”

But by far the most important quality Campbell shares with Leyland is his understanding of people and how to treat them. He obviously has a great relationship with his players and his staff, but he also goes out of his way to be decent to anyone he meets. Last month, I wrote about an encounter he had in a postgame news conference with a Los Angeles reporter he didn’t know; he made sure to treat her with basic human decency, even amid the flurry of questions in news conference, by asking her name.

You don’t have to be a great people person to become a Hall of Famer. Just ask Ty Cobb and Tom Landry. But being a jerk can either keep you out. Just ask Tom Coughlin, who won two Super Bowls in New York — where everything good was invented and counts twice as much (just ask a Noo Yawkuh) — and yet didn’t make it past the semifinal round as a coach or contributor this year.

Conversely, being a beloved good guy is why Coughlin’s quarterback, Eli Manning, will definitely be enshrined in Canton, Ohio, at some point.

Perception matters, as does how you treat people. Campbell is expertly managing both, and that’s not easy in today’s NFL, when access has been severely curbed. These days, coaches rarely get the chance to let down their guard and have normal conversations with reporters that help foster a better understanding and connection between coaches and the people who try to give their actions context.

There’s one thing for sure about Campbell that’s noteworthy and beyond question. He will be the first Lions coach to get another full-time NFL job since Parker became the Pittsburgh Steelers’ coach in 1957, after he led the Lions to two titles then quit just before the '57 season.

Parker, who coached from 1949-64, is also one ballot away from being elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. If he gets in, it might not be too hard to imagine the road growing shorter between the Lions’ last great coach and their newest one.

Contact Carlos Monarrez: cmonarrez@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions Dan Campbell already showing Hall of Fame potential