Unsettling Take From Dan Campbell
April 9th, 2026
New Bucs inside linebacker Alex Anzalone.
When fans think of tough-guy NFL coaches demanding aggressive play, most put Lions head coach Dan Campbell in their top-5 or top-10.
Right or wrong, that’s the perception of how Campbell runs his team and what he demands of players.
So with that in mind, the Bucs added two Campbell players in March for key roles: edge rusher Al-Quadin Muhammad and inside linebacker Alex Anzalone. However, Campbell said last week his 2025 team wasn’t “salty” enough and he’s focused on adding edgy players so the team can recover the swagger and fire it had a couple of years ago.
That stuck out to Joe because the Bucs believe Muhammad and Anzalone bring an edgy/fiery/nasty factor that’s been lacking on the Bucs. So why did the Lions let them leave?
“Everybody wants talent, I’ll always want talent, but it’s always nice to have a little bit of saltiness to you over the talent that lacks saltiness because that’s what we were in ’22, and a part of ’23,” Campbell said via ProFootballTalk.com. “We had talent, but we had some salty guys and we were highly competitive. We were willing to make it work, figure it out, so just getting a little bit of that edge back.”
Bucs fans should find out rather quickly whether Muhammad and Anzalone represent an upgrade from the defensive softness they’ve become too used to.