ALLEN PARK, Mich. — If there was any separation anxiety before, there can’t be now.

Not with this team. Not on Dan Campbell’s watch. And certainly not after what the Lions’ head coach saw last season and the “embarrassment” he says he felt when it was all over.

The reasons for his team’s precipitous fall — from the top of the conference to the bottom of the division — have been a talking point ever since, through a winter of reckoning and a spring of resolve. But now that we’re in the dog days of summer, a week into training camp — the time when players finally put on the pads and “the intensity goes way up, naturally,” as Campbell says — we’re about to find out if all that talk truly has taken hold.

“Here we go, now it's real,” was how Campbell put it Monday, at the start of a physical, punishing week where he told the players “this roster will begin to separate itself.”

Yet it is in the collisions — and in the closest of quarters — where the Lions are hoping to find what was missing a year ago. They’re trying to find their identity, to put it plainly. And after just two days in pads, it’s clear they’ve found something, particularly in the trenches where it matters most. There’s more aggression, more competition, more noise.

“Man, I love the violence of it, the way these guys played,” Campbell gushed Tuesday morning, a day after he’d watched the Lions’ rejuvenated defensive front trade body blows with a revamped offensive line.

As for who came out on top, that’s always up for debate this time of year. But what isn’t in this camp, clearly, is the intentionality.

“We all knew we needed to come out and be more physical today,” said Tate Ratledge, the Lions’ second-year right guard.

And so they were, responding to what line coach Hank Fraley called an "eye-opener" on Monday with a better showing on Day 2, opening some big holes in the run game and playing with the kind of tenacity that’s audible from the sidelines and even in the grandstand.

The backbone of the Lions’ back-to-back NFC North titles bowed noticeably last season, as age and injuries led to cracks and inconsistency. A line that was one of the two best in the league in 2023 and ’24, according to Pro Football Focus rankings, fell to 12th last season as Detroit went 9-7 and missed the playoffs.

That led to even more offseason changes as general manager Brad Holmes effectively completed a two-year overhaul of the line, signing a free-agent center in Cade Mays and then drafting another first-round tackle in Blake Miller, whose arrival in May allowed the Lions to flip Penei Sewell to protect Jared Goff’s blind side.

And though the chemistry’s still a work in progress, they know the demeanor can’t be.

“Yeah, that's a big emphasis: We have to be able to run the ball,” Ratledge said. “Being able to run the ball opens up everything else in the offense. And being able to run the ball against somebody's will is demoralizing to another team. So that's our goal is to get back to that.”

Not that they need any reminders, but Fraley harps on it constantly.

“We can say who we want to become or what we want to become,” Fraley said Tuesday in a pre-practice interview on 97.1 The Ticket. “But our identity comes from what do we put on that field, what do we put on that tape. Some of the best O-lines out there are the ones where when people walk off the field, that other team is like, ‘Man, I do not want to play those guys again. We got beat up.’

“So we need to come out here and not just say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna be physical.’ We need to actually put it on tape and do it.”

And the way he sees it, that goes beyond just working a double-team block to spring a running back, or stymying an edge rusher to give Goff more time in the pocket. It’s also about finishing what you started, whether it’s a block after the whistle, a play downfield or a shove around the pile.

“I joke with these guys all the time, because everybody’s worried about getting fined anymore in this league, ‘Screw it. You make a lot of money. Send it to charity.’ But put some fear in the defense.”

That’s a two-way street in camp, obviously. Violence is encouraged, but extracurriculars are not. They’re all on the same team here, after all.

But what’s on the line here does go both ways. And as eager as the Lions’ offense is to hit the ground running come September, the defense has something similar in mind. Because what had been the strength of the Lions’ defense — stuffing the run — showed signs of weakness a year ago.

“We were average in my eyes,” said Kelvin Sheppard, who is no longer a rookie coordinator on the job. “We have to get back to playing elite run defense here, because to me it starts there. And it starts with the front seven.”

Not coincidentally, when you ask Ratledge if he’s noticed anything different about Lions’ defense thus far in camp, he’ll start right in the middle of it all.

“Yeah, Alim,” he laughed.

That’d be Alim McNeill, of course, the defensive tackle who seems to have rediscovered the Pro Bowl-caliber form he was showing before he suffered a torn ACL in late in the 2024 season. Last year’s midseason return was a welcome sight for the Lions’ defense, but McNeill will be the first to tell you there’s a “night-and-day” difference between then and now. And watching him explode off the ball in team drills this week, it’s as obvious to the fans in the stands as it is to the guys lined up across from him.

“I told somebody the other day how excited I am to get a full camp against him when he's 100% because he's really good,” Ratledge said. “Obviously, what I saw from him last year in practice … he's a completely different player now. He's so explosive and strong. We're going to go back and forth. But me going against him every day gets me better.”

The same is true on the edge, where Aidan Hutchinson gets reps against another All-Pro in Sewell, who says, “If I'm able to block that guy, I'm able to block anyone."

That’s true up and down the line, really. Or on the depth chart, for that matter. Tyler Lacy’s showing signs he’ll be a force, the same way Ahmed Hassanein’s reminding coaches he can’t be overlooked. Christian Mahogany’s doing his part to lock up the starting job at left guard, while Miles Frazier’s flashing the versatility that could be his ticket to a roster spot. And so on.

But the bottom line is, they all know it has to be better.

"That’s how we’re practicing right now," McNeill said. "And we’re gonna go into the season thinking that same way."

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