5 years ago, an unexpected change in ownership altered course of long-lousy Lions

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Allen Park — Five years ago Monday, with the COVID-19 pandemic creating unprecedented uncertainty heading into the 2020 NFL season, the Detroit Lions accelerated the franchise’s succession plan, with Martha Firestone Ford stepping down as the principal owner and handing off the reins to daughter Sheila Hamp.

Hamp, who had worked by her mother’s side following the 2014 passing of patriarch, William Clay Ford, vowed to emulate many of Firestone Ford’s best leadership traits while aiming to learn more about all facets of the organization in an effort to put her own stamp on the franchise.

The switch was met with predictable skepticism. Fans had long viewed the Ford family as the common thread in decades of on-field failure. They had no reason to believe this change would alter those fortunes.

Admittedly, the transformation wasn’t abrupt. A wrecking ball was required. However, after weathering a rocky start to her tenure, Hamp has been at the heart of two improbable turnarounds: Building a legitimate Super Bowl contender and quieting the narrative that her family was incapable of doing it.

The early stages of Hamp's reign were marked by two low points: One where she was partially culpable and another where she was the target of accumulated frustrations that had been building long before her time in charge.

Prior to taking control, Hamp had a hand in retaining coach Matt Patricia and general manager Bob Quinn for the 2020 season. During a mid-December meeting with a select group of reporters at the team's practice facility, Hamp sat alongside her mother and team president Rod Wood, explaining that decision.

"(Firing them) would have been the popular choice, the popular decision, and we knew that," Hamp said. "But, as I say, we're doing what is right for the organization."

Financially, it was the right decision, but the Lions predictably were unable to transform a roster that went 3-12-1 the previous season into a playoff contender overnight. Things bottomed out on Thanksgiving. The Houston Texans came to town and pummelled the Lions, 41-25. It was the team’s fourth loss in five games, dropping them to 4-7 on the season.

Worse yet, Hamp was captured by former MLive photographer Mike Mulholland during the game with her hands covering her face, a poignant moment that symbolized a city’s frustration with the product.

Two days later, Hamp finally took the necessary action, firing Patricia and Quinn.

Because of the pandemic, the Lions didn’t have fans at Ford Field that season. It wasn’t until next year that they’d have a chance to voice their displeasure.

With the team hosting the Baltimore Ravens in Week 3, Hamp was relentlessly booed during a halftime ceremony celebrating Calvin Johnson’s selection to the Hall of Fame. It was jarring, and even though she powered through her comments, she looked shell-shocked.

What those fans couldn’t have realized is Hamp had planted the seeds that would deliver unprecedented success during the Super Bowl era, including two division titles, two playoff victories and a team-best 15-win season.

If the first domino was firing Quinn and Patricia, the next was luring franchise legend Chris Spielman out of the broadcast booth to serve as a special advisor in the search for new football leadership.

Hamp, Wood, and Spielman, alongside Chief Operating Officer Mike Disner, ran an in-house operation to find those leaders. They were hired independently, with a Hamp-led focus on collaboration.

The previous regime, borrowing heavily from its professional upbringing working in New England, had operated with intense secrecy, building up figurative walls throughout the organization. Hamp, and Spielman as her proxy, aimed to take a sledgehammer to those barriers, bringing the entirety of the operation closer together.

"The whole idea that football is secret and we're not going to tell anybody what we're doing, it was like, 'What?'" Hamp told me in an exclusive interview for the Detroit News ahead of the 2021 season. "Obviously, you don't want to tell your opponents what your game plan is, but you want the fans to know what you're doing. I felt like with this organization, I want everyone to feel like they're a part of it, that their piece is important, because it is. We can't do this alone. You can't."

The panel of four ultimately landed on a fresh-faced option for general manager, hiring Los Angeles Rams college scouting director Brad Holmes. And for the coach, the choice was a hard-nosed yet gregarious former Lions tight end, Dan Campbell, who had an unremarkable stint as an interim head coach in Miami six years earlier.

Much like Hamp’s promotion, both hires were met with doubt. Holmes wasn’t only new to the role, he was a relative unknown. He wasn’t even initially on the Lions’ radar until Disner stumbled upon and was impressed by a mock interview the league performs with potential candidates.

Campbell, meanwhile, was not among the fan favorites for the opening. And while some loved the passion of his kneecap-biting introductory press conference, it was the subject of more ridicule than praise, particularly nationally.

Further eroding faith that the outside-the-box hires could work was longtime franchise quarterback, Matthew Stafford, requesting a trade.

In hindsight, trading Stafford paved the way for Holmes to tear the roster down to its studs. Of course, that meant briefly bottoming out, with the team threatening to go winless in 2021 before a final-play victory in Week 13 led to a 3-3 finish.

Expectations were higher in Year 2, but the Lions stumbled to a 1-6 start, prompting Hamp to offer a public vote of confidence for her coach and general manager.

“I think we really are making progress. We’ve seen it. It’s just this was a huge teardown and then turnaround. We’re only one-third of the way through the season, we’ve got 11 more games to go, so I just don’t want everyone to push the panic button and give up the ship because I think we’ve got the right people in place to pull this off, and I truly believe that, and I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t believe it.”

The timing of the statement couldn’t have been much better. The Lions lost their next game, blowing a second-half lead against the Dolphins, before getting red hot. They’d win six of their next seven and had a chance to make the playoffs entering Week 17. They ended up being eliminated before kicking off against the Packers. Still, they won the game at Lambeau, ensuring the division foe also missed the postseason.

The momentum hasn’t slowed since the second half of the 2022 campaign. The Lions won their first division title in 30 years the following season, culminating with two playoff wins before falling just shy of the franchise’s first Super Bowl berth. Then, last year, the team went 15-2 before an inordinate number of injuries to the defense finally caught up with them in the postseason.

“I always wanted to prove her right,” Campbell said ahead of the NFC Championship game in 2024. “That’s not an easy thing to do, to take a chance on somebody that nobody knows about or thinks deserves a shot or whatever it is. And so, to trust your instincts and trust people around you and to pull the trigger, it means a lot. It sure does.

"…She’s one of one,” Campbell said. “She’s unique, and I’ll say this, everything that we kind of are and what we’re about has started with her. It’s really her; it’s her vision. I’m fortunate she allows me to be myself. I don’t feel like I have to be somebody I’m not, and you can’t always do that. You can’t — and so with that, I can coach. I can do what I need to do, and I appreciate that.”

Hamp has uniquely positioned herself as a hands-on owner who doesn’t meddle. One of her early moves as owner was a physical one, relocating her office from the far corner of the practice facility to a central location closer to Holmes and Campbell.

Hamp has also spent time with every department in the organization, on both the football and business side of things. Those meetings, along with detailed annual player surveys, have guided her reinvestments into the product. The Lions have aggressively spent on upgrading their home stadium and practice facility to ensure they are the most conducive environments to maximize players’ happiness and productivity.

“I think everything we do starts with, how does this help the players?” Wood told me earlier this month. “How does this make the players better and help us win more football games?”

At training camp, Hamp warmly hosts guests and ushers players over as if she's introducing a close friend to a family member. She knows the names of every player on the 90-man offseason roster, evident by her checking in and joking with undrafted rookie long snapper Hogan Hatten as he left the field after a camp practice last year.

At her introduction as owner, Hamp was asked if she had a message for fans.

“I’m going to do everything in my power to create a winning organization, especially on the field,” Hamp said. “The fans deserve it, the city deserves it and I am a very competitive person. I grew up playing competitive tennis and it’s and individual sport and it’s me out there by myself and, boy, I hated to lose. I still hate to lose. I guess that’s my message to the fans. I’ll hate to lose as much as they do, and I’ll try not to.”

Losing was unavoidable at the start, and yeah, she shared some of the blame. Regardless, since she voiced support for Campbell and Holmes in 2022, the team has posted a 35-10 record.

Remember those hostile boos Hamp endured during that halftime ceremony in 2021? They’re a distant memory. Fans now chant her name at training camp, games, and when she made opening comments at the team’s uniform unveiling last offseason.

Hamp will never take the credit. She has declined multiple interview requests over the past couple of years to follow up on our 2021 conversation and discuss the turnaround. But make no mistake about it, she’s at the heart of this golden era of Lions football. Without her vision and its implementation, it’s unlikely any of this could have happened.

"Hopefully sooner than later, but if it takes a couple years, that's what it takes," Hamp said when I asked her about her timetable for a turnaround in 2021. "My goal for the football team and the whole organization, I want this to be an organization people really want to work for, to feel good and excited. And I want our football team to be one of the best. I feel like we have a path and hopefully we'll get there.”