Detroit Lions hire Dan Campbell as head coach. Here's what he faces

After three losing seasons in which they endured locker room strife and looked wayward on the field, the Detroit Lions have a new coach and new direction.

The Lions agreed to hire New Orleans Saints assistant Dan Campbell as their 28th head coach Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the situation, plucking him from a pool of candidates for his leadership and motivational ability.

The deal is for six years, according to the source, who asked for anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly about the agreement.

Campbell replaces Matt Patricia, who was fired Nov. 28 after two-plus seasons with a 13-29-1 record, and interim head coach Darrell Bevell, and is the third ex-Lions player to coach the team in the Super Bowl era.

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The assistant head coach and tight ends coach for the Saints the past five seasons, Campbell has never been a coordinator at any level, but played 11 NFL seasons with four different teams and went 5-7 as interim head coach of the Miami Dolphins in 2015.

He appeared in 19 games with the Lions in 2006-08.

“The big thing about him is Dan’s a tough guy now,” said longtime NFL assistant Gregg Williams, the defensive coordinator of the Saints during Campbell’s one season playing for the team. “Dan doesn’t take any bullshit and Dan is a guy that when he practices, he practiced how he played. And he was an overachiever kind of guy, but whenever you watched him do his trade or do his work, whenever he did speak out to his teammates, you had to respect the example he was setting before he talked to you.”

Campbell both played for and coached under Saints head coach Sean Payton, and counts Payton and Hall of Fame NFL coach Bill Parcells as two of his coaching mentors.

Campbell played three seasons for Parcells with the Dallas Cowboys, and worked with him as a first-year coaching intern, when Parcells was in the Dolphins’ front office.

He said in an appearance on the Luccicast podcast last summer he was “fascinated” by Parcells and took copious notes about Parcells’ coaching style. The two share a similar philosophy of building a strong, smart defense, playing ball-control football on offense and letting the other team beat itself with mistakes.

Campbell said smart coaches have to be able to adapt, though, to their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses.

“I’ll never forget that from him, it was like, ‘Man, what are going to do to win?’ ” Campbell said on the podcast. “You can’t use the same thing every game. Like, you have a philosophy, but not every opponent’s the same. You have to judge each opponent, what they have and what you have and what the matchup’s like different every week, and sometimes what beats that team is not going to beat this team this week. It’s just, I know it sounds like, ‘Well, that’s common sense.’ But, man, I’m telling you, not everybody knows how to handle that like he did.”

Campbell and new Lions GM Brad Holmes have never worked with each other before, but share a common connection through Williams.

Their union in Detroit is an arraigned marriage, as the organization held parallel coach and GM searches. Holmes was hired last Thursday, after the Lions had finished their first round of coaching interviews.

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Along with Campbell, the Lions formally interviewed five other candidates for the job: Bevell, former Cincinnati Bengals coach Marvin Lewis, and coordinators Eric Bieniemy of the Kansas City Chiefs, Arthur Smith of the Tennessee Titans and Robert Saleh of the San Francisco 49ers.

Smith canceled a second interview with the Lions to take the head coaching job of the Falcons, and Saleh was hired by the New York Jets.

The Lions did not conduct second interviews with their other candidates.

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Now, Campbell and Holmes have the tall task of remaking the Lions’ roster. They must rebuild a defense that could need as many as eight new starters, depending on what happens with free agent defensive end Romeo Okwara. They have a decision to make on whether to re-sign top wide receiver Kenny Golladay or use the franchise tag on him before free agency. And they must formulate a plan for how to proceed with Matthew Stafford at the quarterback position, and whether to target his eventual replacement with the seventh pick of this spring’s NFL draft.

Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions hire Dan Campbell as head coach. Here's what he faces