Bears quarterback Caleb Williams was not happy with a hit he took from Lions linebacker Jack Campbell on Thursday. But Campbell was doing exactly what he had been coached to do, and hitting Williams near the sideline if Williams didn’t get out of bounds first.
Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown said on his podcast that Lions head coach Dan Campbell told the entire team that Williams had a habit of running toward the sideline but then cutting back inside at the last second. Dan Campbell reminded his players that it’s legal to hit Williams as long as he’s inbounds, and Jack Campbell was following his coach’s instructions when he delivered a hard but legal hit on Williams.
“Before the game, in our team meeting, Dan was talking to us, and he was showing clips of Caleb going out of bounds, going in, then going out. He said, ‘No you don’t. No you don’t,'” St. Brown said. “It was clips of him doing that and he was like, ‘If he does this, we’re going to hit his ass. I already warned the refs, the refs know.’ So when it happened in the game, I already knew there was no flag. Jack hit his ass, we were like, ‘Yeah!’ Everyone on the Bears was like, ‘What? Where’s the flag?’ We’re like, ‘He went out, he came back in and took it.'”
It was a clean, legal hit and the Lions defended Williams exactly the way teams should: If he keeps trying to cut back inside despite having a clear path to the sideline, he’s going to take plenty of hits like that.