Jack Campbell

Career StatsB

Year	Team	GP	Tkl	Sacks	INT
Career		51	402	8.5	—
2025		17	176	5.0	0
2024		17	131	1.5	0
2023		17

Current Contract

Contract Value Index (CVI)

Jack Campbell's four-year, $14.7M extension with full guarantees represents a steal for Detroit, earning an A CVI that reflects exceptional value in today's linebacker market. At just $3.7M per year, the Lions locked up an above-average starter at a fraction of what similar production typically costs, especially considering the rapid inflation at the position over the past two seasons. Campbell's age-24 profile suggests his best football is still ahead of him, making this deal even shrewder as he enters his prime developmental window. The full guarantee structure might seem aggressive on paper, but the total commitment remains modest enough that Detroit faces minimal risk even if his trajectory plateaus, while the upside of securing a potential franchise-caliber linebacker at below-market rates is enormous. This is exactly the type of forward-thinking contract extension that championship-caliber front offices execute — identifying ascending talent before the market catches up and paying them like yesterday's player while getting tomorrow's production.

Performance Analysis

Jack Campbell, the Iowa product selected 18th overall in the 2023 NFL Draft, has emerged as one of the more compelling linebacker development stories in recent memory, anchoring Detroit's defense as a high-motor, every-down presence in just his third professional season. After a difficult D+ rookie campaign that saw him fighting through the inevitable growing pains of translating college instincts to NFL speed and complexity, Campbell has responded with consecutive seasons of improvement — a B in 2024 followed by an A- through the current 2025 campaign — a trajectory that speaks volumes about his work ethic and the Lions' investment in his development. At 25 years old with 51 career games under his belt, Campbell carries both the pedigree of a top-20 pick and the humility of a player who has genuinely earned his current standing rather than simply inheriting it. He earns a solid overall B grade, a reflection of an ascending talent who has not yet reached his ceiling but is trending in all the right directions. The statistical profile Campbell is producing this season is nothing short of elite at the core function of his position — stopping the run and being around the football. His 10.4 tackles per game is a genuinely stunning number against an NFL average of 3.80 and an elite threshold of 7.69, placing him among the most productive tacklers in the entire league and drawing legitimate comparisons to peak Bobby Wagner in terms of sheer volume impact. His tackles-for-loss rate of 0.85 per game likewise clears the elite benchmark of 0.70, demonstrating that his production isn't just accumulation on the back end but genuine disruption behind the line of scrimmage. The areas that keep him from a higher grade are his pass coverage metrics — his 0.24 pass deflections per game sits right at the NFL average of 0.20, well short of the elite mark of 0.50 — and his sack production at 0.29 per game, which is serviceable but similarly average, suggesting that as opposing coordinators increasingly attack him as a coverage liability, those numbers could become a more pressing concern. Campbell's upward trajectory makes him one of the more exciting linebacker investments in the NFC, and if he can develop even a league-average presence in zone and man coverage, the Lions could be looking at a perennial Pro Bowl defender for the next half-decade. Watch for whether Detroit's defensive staff designs more blitz packages to leverage his athleticism and translates his run-stopping ferocity into pass-rush production — closing that gap would push him from a very good linebacker to a genuinely elite one. At 25 with three seasons of accelerating growth, the arrow is firmly pointed up.