Dan Campbell said Monday that Lions running back Jamaal Williams is "our energizer bunny."
"He gets us going," Campbell said.
Indeed, Williams' voice is often the loudest when the Lions huddle up. He delivered a passionate speech early in training camp in which he implored his teammates to "lock the fu*king gates!" And he outdid himself after a recent practice in a near-tirade shared Monday ahead of the first episode of HBO's Hard Knocks on Tuesday night.
Moving himself to tears, Williams urged his teammates to push past exhaustion in practice by thinking of their 3-13-1 record last season.
"Do not give up," he said. "Do not feel like you’re tired. When you’re tired, think of last year and think of that fu*king record! Every time I get tired or I think I can’t go no more, I think of that fu*king record!! Last year wasn’t it! That ain’t us! We can make it! Have some heart! I get emotional about this, I’m about to cry, because I care about y’all! Do your best! Let’s go!!"
And in an extended cut of the speech shown in the Lions' latest episode of Inside the Den, Williams is nearly sobbing as he refers to a group of young fans fighting cancer who had come to Allen Park that day to watch the Lions practice.
"Remember your why. Remember why you play football. Them kids over there got cancer. Do you think they give up? They over there fighting! They came out here to see us! They fighting every day. Look at everybody else around you. Look at the people around you! They got problems too, Keep going! Tomorrow, let’s go. Don’t give a fu*k if we got pads on or not. I don’t give a fu*k. I want y’all to give everything you got! Everything!!"
Always known for wearing his heart on his sleeve, Williams has become more vocal entering his second season in Detroit.
"First of all, he understands what winning is about," Campbell said. "He came from a program that has won a lot of football games in Green Bay, man. Those are the facts. The other is, he’s very competitive. He’s very emotional, not in a bad way, and his teammates feed off of him."
Difference this season, said Campbell, is "he’s a year into the program."
"He knows the guys well, the guys know him well, so he’s very comfortable now. He did some (talking) last year, but now he’s truly embedded in this locker room. That’s really where you see the transformation taking place."
If nothing else, Hard Knocks will give Campbell and the Lions a chance to start changing the national perception of their team. GM Brad Holmes said last week "we're excited for the world to see us." But Campbell said Monday he's "not even worried about it."
"I’m not worried about Hard Knocks, I’m not worried about winning Hard Knocks," he said. "I’m just worried about trying to get this team better to see if we can win some games here, which is the whole point of this.”
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