By Blessing 
Wife of Detroit Lions Coach Dan Campbell Reveals Her Game-Day Secret: “Sometimes I Just Have to Hide”
Game day may be thrilling for fans, but for the families behind the coaches and players, it can be an emotional roller coaster. Just ask Holly Campbell, wife of Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell, who admits she’s “not calm” when her husband’s team takes the field.
At 50, Holly has spent more than two decades beside Dan, who’s now 49. The two tied the knot in 1999, and after all these years, she jokes, “We’re pretty much grandfathered in at this point.” With so many seasons behind them, Holly has built her own set of game-day rituals — and some of them might surprise you.
Before every home game, Holly gets to the stadium early and makes her way down to the field about an hour before kickoff. That’s when she and Dan share their pre-game ritual — a simple kiss for luck. “I mean, that has to be done,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively. And when she can’t make it in person, the couple always FaceTimes before the first play to keep the tradition alive.
But once the game begins, Holly’s emotions often get the best of her. From her suite at Ford Field, she watches closely — at least until things start to go south. “If things are not going our way, I get sent to the bathroom,” she admits with a laugh. The suite’s private restroom has become her unofficial refuge.
Inside, Holly sits on the toilet — not to escape, but to cope. “It’s like a break,” she explains. “I can just, you know, sit on the toilet and watch the gamecast on ESPN and just wait for the cheers so I can come out.” Her family and friends fully support the routine, sending her into the stall when the Lions need a momentum shift and calling her back out when things start to improve. “I mean, I can’t argue with it because it works,” Holly says.
Superstition has long been part of her football life. When things go wrong, she blames her outfit — shelving any unlucky clothing “on ice for a while,” as she puts it. “It’s not being worn any time soon.”
Her quirky traditions actually go way back to when Dan was a tight end for the Lions between 2006 and 2008. Back then, Holly wore a bracelet with his jersey number, 89, engraved on it. Unfortunately, those seasons were rough. “We were losing and losing and losing,” she recalls, but she refused to take off the bracelet. Convinced the jewelry had somehow absorbed the bad energy, she tried something drastic — boiling it. “It’s crazy! It’s crazy to talk about it!” she says, laughing at herself. But her unorthodox ritual seemed to work. “I think we won the next game after that,” she adds. “So there’s gotta be something to it!”
For nearly 20 years, Holly also had a tradition of telling Dan, “Do a good job,” before every game — a line that originated from their very first date. “I don’t know if you remember, whenever they’re about to do the bomb or whatever, and Steve Buscemi’s going nuts… ‘Do a good job, do a good job,’ you know, so that it’ll blow up,” she says, referencing a memorable scene from Armageddon. What began as an inside joke became a sweet ritual that lasted through tough times — including Dan’s first season as head coach in 2021, when the Lions lost their first 10 games.
Then, one Sunday, she forgot to say it. “The day we won our first game, I forgot to say it – for the first time ever,” Holly recalls. “And it’s worked out for him, so maybe it was me. The whole time, it was me saying, ‘Do a good job.’”
Now, as the Lions enjoy one of their strongest starts in years — 4–2 heading into midseason — Holly is enjoying the ride. After an opening loss to the Green Bay Packers, the team roared back with impressive wins over the Chicago Bears, Baltimore Ravens, Cleveland Browns, and Cincinnati Bengals. The energy, she says, feels different this time.
“We’re ready to go all the way,” Holly says confidently, echoing the optimism sweeping Detroit. And though she might spend part of every game hiding in a bathroom stall, one thing’s for sure — she’ll be right there, cheering her husband on in her own way, every step of the way.