Detroit Lions don't need to say it, but they aren't afraid to: It's all about Super Bowl.

And so it begins. Again.

Though that’s not quite right, either.

Another Detroit Lions ’ season is upon us, but no season’s beginning has ever felt like this. Not in tone or expectation, not when so many so casually toss around the phrase “Super Bowl” ... and actually mean it.

Or, more improbably, believe it.

Believe that this team, these Lions, can find one more win in late January and finally reach a place that has felt like a fever dream around here for decades.

Spend a little time in Allen Park, as I did Wednesday — the first day of training camp — and you’ll hear the phrase again and again. You’ll also feel it implied, not because it’s an unmentionable — this isn’t a ghostly fable, and it’s time to let go of curses anyway — but because it doesn’t need to be said.

Every coach, trainer, scout, manager and player know what the goal is and believes this organization has what it needs to meet it.

“I think we’re really confident,” said wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, the team’s spiritual leader and its proxy for the way espoused by Dan Campbell and Brad Holmes.

“Each year, you get into that meeting on the first day (and you lay out goals),” he said.

For the first time since Brown arrived in 2021 — and let’s be real, for the first time in franchise history — the players and coaches in that meeting didn’t need to talk about the playoffs or getting the No. 1 seed.

“No,” St. Brown said, “it’s the Super Bowl.  That's the feeling of everyone in the room. Truly as a team, we all feel the same way. We know we can win a Super Bowl. We have the team; we have the coaches.”

A year ago, St. Brown and his teammates were talking about winning the division, hosting a playoff game, maybe making a run. They were talking about their chance on the first big stage of the season, on a Thursday night in Kansas City with the NFL world to themselves.

They’d come off a 9-8 record and a heater of a finish and missed the postseason on the final day. They had belief, but not like they have belief now.

There is a difference. They know this year must be different, too.

Not in identity or vibes. Not even that much in foundational strategy. No, it must be different in increments, or inches even, to paraphrase an Al Pacino character .

Said St. Brown:

“I think for us, I mean, to do the same thing and expect different results is crazy, right? So, we gotta do more than we did last year. Whatever we did last year wasn't enough, obviously. Learn from our mistakes. That's a big thing. Going harder, whether that’s in the meeting room, the weight room, out on the field, special teams, offense, everything, we’ve got to do more.”

Let’s not take for granted what St. Brown is saying here, nor chalk it up to some empty platitude. He and his teammates got within four points of a Super Bowl berth six months ago. Now it’s time to go find those points.

How?

Well, part of it starts with St. Brown, and not just what the All-Pro slot receiver can do on the field. Remember, he arrived in Detroit in 2021 as a fourth-round pick, and Holmes’ fifth pick ever as a general manager.

He was, and remains, the best example of Holmes’ ability to find talent tucked away in the draft, and his persona and effort remain the ideal for what Campbell means when he says “grit.” The word was emblazoned on Campbell’s baseball cap Wednesday morning when he met the media to kick off training camp.

Around here, the word is synonymous with the coach now. And St. Brown exemplifies it as well as anyone the Lions have drafted or signed since.

Yet when Campbell uses the word to describe “Saint,” as he calls him, he is talking about what the receiver means off the field, too. St. Brown was a pioneer in this Lions renaissance. An “O.G.,” if you will.

He and a handful of others are charged with making sure the team finds a way to build on last season.

“Look,” said Campbell, “this is their team. We’re in Year 4 now. Those guys have all been here, (Penei) Sewell ... Frank (Ragnow), (Taylor) Decker, Alex (Anzalone), Alim (McNeill). (It’s) like, here we go, man ... those guys aren’t pups anymore, you know?"

This is their team, he was explaining as he included safety Ifeatu Melifonwu and linebacker Derrick Barnes. The core set the standards.

Standards, he said, that were originally set by him and his coaching staff and front office “a long time ago.”

Now?

“(The core players) control it. So, if it’s not up to (their) standards, well, it needs to be said and let’s do it again. We shouldn’t have to worry about that anymore. That’s on them. That’s what I want, that’s what I expect.”

Ah, there’s that word: expect . Setting an expectation, and one that has never been higher than it is at this moment. To meet expectation, Campbell said, his team must forget about what happened last season.

Not the loss to San Francisco in the NFC title game. That is fuel.

But the kudos and hosannas that came with the run to that title game. To the darling label. To the “reputation” the Lions built.

Campbell told his team as much Tuesday night, when they all met to kick off training camp. It’s about the work, he told them, as he’s always told them. And nothing more.

“We don’t live off reputation,” he told them. The work, he said, is “what’s gotten us where we’re at. It’s been a long, hard road to get to where we're at right now, and there’s a price to be paid, and so we’ve got to go pay it again. That’s the message, and it’ll always be the message.”

St. Brown heard it, though he already knew it. So did Sewell and Ragnow and Decker and Anzalone and McNeill and Jared Goff, the leaders of this team. None of them are shy about where they want to go, or how they want to get there.

As their coach said when he stepped to the podium Wednesday morning to meet the press:

“And so it begins.”

Contact Shawn Windsor: swindsor@freepress.com . Follow him @shawnwindsor .

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions don't need to say it, but they aren't afraid to: It's all about Super Bowl.