Lions’ DT Tyleik Williams just earned something Dan Campbell values more than almost anything
Tyleik Williams just earned something Dan Campbell values more than almost anything. That could have a major impact on his role this season.
Detroit Lions defensive tackle Tyleik Williams made a statement this offseason, and it had nothing to do with on-field reps. Williams dropped 50 pounds, going from 375 to 325, and Lions coach Dan Campbell noticed. The 2025 first-round pick’s weight loss represents a significant step in building trust with a coaching staff that values accountability above almost everything else. With DJ Reader now gone, Williams steps into a massive role as Detroit’s nose tackle, and the work he put in this offseason could determine how much the Lions lean on him in 2025.
The Dan Campbell Trust Index
During the offseason, we built something called the Dan Campbell Trust Index. The idea was to try to understand how Campbell looks at rookies in their first year, second year, and third year. We measured two things: an initial trust score, which tracked how much trust the Lions coaching staff showed a rookie before he proved himself in a regular-season game (training camp reps, preseason usage, added responsibilities), and an earned trust score, which measured how much trust the rookie earned during the season through bigger roles, more snaps, starting jobs, and added responsibilities.
For Williams, he came in as the first-round pick and had an initial trust score of 36. His earned trust score dropped to 28 during his rookie year. You saw that he definitely had less opportunity as the season went on. A really big part of that was because Alim McNeill had come back from a torn ACL, and Williams had both McNeill and Reader in front of him. That’s going to make a difference.
| Player | Rd | Pos | Initial Trust | Earned Trust | Total | Tier | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tyleik Williams | 1 | DT | 36 | 28 | 64 | Earned His Way | First-round DT got early rotation/starter-level trust, but not a Hutchinson-style every-down role. |
| Tate Ratledge | 2 | G | 48 | 45 | 93 | Immediate Foundation | Started all 17 games as a rookie guard. |
| Isaac TeSlaa | 3 | WR | 18 | 26 | 44 | Development Track | Package/development WR role with production spikes but not full-time trust. |
| Miles Frazier | 5 | G | 0 | 8 | 8 | Incomplete/Injury context | PUP/late activation makes him hard to score cleanly. |
| Ahmed Hassanein | 6 | EDGE | 6 | 8 | 14 | Redshirt/Low Trust | Developmental pass-rush/ST path; limited rookie role. |
| Dan Jackson | 7 | S | 14 | 18 | 32 | Redshirt/Low Trust | ST/safety-depth profile; some game-day trust, limited defensive trust. |
| Dominic Lovett | 7 | WR | 8 | 10 | 18 | Redshirt/Low Trust | Late WR/ST pathway, little offensive trust. |
His total trust score for the rookie season was 64. For comparison, Tate Ratledge had a 93. You want a higher trust score than 64, especially if you’re the first-round pick.
What Williams did about it
So what can you do to earn trust? You can make the coaching staff proud by setting a goal and reaching it. Williams’ goal this offseason was to lose weight. He went from 375 to 325 pounds. Dan Campbell had this to say about him:
“I’m really proud of him. He’s a man of his word. Before we drafted him, we sat up there. Brad and I did say, is there going to be an issue with your weight ever? He said no. He came in, noticed that he was a little bit heavy in the spring, came in 2 weeks before our program even started, and was pretty heavy and said, ‘hey man, I want to get this right.’ And he put in the work. Scott (Lions director of performance nutrition Scott Nealon) did a hell of a job with him, our nutritionist. All that got him right. And then he’s just put the work in. And I tell you what, man, he’s a man of his word. Came in 325, made his way, crushed the conditioning test. And like I told him, told the team, so now he’s put some money in the bank of trust. It’s awesome. So really fired up, man. That’s a credit to him.”
That’s huge. Williams just put money in the bank of trust, and that has to bring his trust score up significantly. We won’t really know what the full picture looks like until after training camp and the season has concluded. We’ll come back and take a look at the entire 2025 draft class trust scores and see how much things grew. We need to see snap counts. We need to see more from the summer.
The opportunity ahead
Campbell says the Lions’ eyes are open with Williams right now, and they’re willing to give him more opportunity. There’s a chance he could be out there more on third down if he earns it. Campbell says Detroit absolutely knows there’s a role for Williams and something he can do that really helps. But he wants to see if Williams can be more than that.
This is where the trust score could grow even more. Williams is stepping into a huge spot. Reader is gone. Williams now has to be that nose tackle, the guy expected to stuff the run. On third down, you would expect he’s probably going to come off the field while the Lions bring in someone who can rush the passer, possibly rookie Skyler Gill-Howard. But if Williams can show during training camp that he also has some pass-rush juice (and he did show a little bit of that at Ohio State), it’s going to give him the opportunity to be out there all the time alongside McNeill.
If there’s one thing we know about Campbell, he wants players he doesn’t have to take off the field. Williams has all the opportunity in the world to show that this summer. He’s already banked some trust. Now let’s see if he can earn more leash, more opportunities, and more leeway to stay on that field and lock down that spot. We’ll be watching once the pads come on, but what a heck of an offseason for Williams to go out and gain that trust. We’ll see what it looks like at the end of the year when we revisit the Trust Index.
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