Dan Campbell has perfect response to Chris Christie’s ‘no class’ remarks

ALLEN PARK -- Dan Campbell had a perfectly on-brand response to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie calling him classless after blowing out the Dallas Cowboys.

For those in the dark, Christie made an appearance on the “Mad Dog” sports podcast after the Lions walloped the Cowboys, saying: “That’s Dan Campbell -- He’s got no class. Never has.” While this was old news, Campbell was asked about the comments during his Monday afternoon press conference, and his response was too good to ignore.

“The only thing, the last time somebody called me classless, I was drinking wine out of the bottle,” Campbell said. “All right? So, no, it’s all good. I’m not worried about it.”

The Lions head coach confirmed he was drinking red wine in that instance, so it’s no surprise he got hit with that line.

On a more serious note, Campbell elaborated on the thought process of taking the foot off the gas or not in a blowout. He pointed to a previous experience where he took the foot off the gas, pulled some starters, and the opponent started storming back. The Lions were up multiple scores for most of the game in Dallas, and Campbell clearly took this previous lesson to heart, because they never let off the gas against the Cowboys.

The game Campbell is talking about was back in October 2015, when the Miami Dolphins went into halftime up 41-0 over the Houston Texans. The Texans trimmed the lead to 21 points going into the fourth quarter after a resurgent streak, but the Dolphins eventually won 44-26.

“I think you just have to go with the feel of the game, really,” Campbell said. “I know that you got to be careful, you just have to be careful. I remember when I was an interim (head coach) in Miami. And it was really the second game that I coached. We got up on Houston big. We were up, man, three or four scores early in the game. And I remember going into the fourth quarter, and we still held a pretty good lead and I started pulling starters and, man, they started roaring back.

“They started coming back and they scored -- a couple of touchdowns and all of a sudden, you’re sitting there and then we had to go get our starters back in. Once you let off the gas, it’s hard to get them back going and accelerate again. It’s just kind of the mindset of it, so you just have to be careful. If you go too conservative too early, teams in this league, they’ll come back on you, man.”

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