Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell is facing a lot of criticism following his team’s 31-24 loss to the Green Bay Packers. In particular, Campbell is under heat for continuing to go for it on fourth down, passing up another field goal late in the game. Additionally, some believe the Lions offense didn’t show enough urgency in the fourth quarter, bleeding too much time off the clock while the team was still down two scores.
In his post-game press conference, Campbell addressed it all. He admitted some mistakes, but also stood by some of his other decisions. Here’s a breakdown of his postgame comments:
Campbell defends fourth down aggression, admits to poor play-calling
The Lions have now failed to convert seven fourth downs in a row over the past three games, including two critical misses on Thursday against the Packers. Despite the recent failure, it hasn’t discouraged Campbell from keeping the aggression high.
“Going into it we liked those plays. So no, I wouldn’t say necessarily that’s going to have an effect on me,” Campbell said. “You always want to convert them, and we’ve had a lot of conversions here. It just didn’t work out here today.”
That said, Campbell did admit that on Detroit’s first fourth-down attempt—and run play on fourth-and-3 from midfield—was a poor play call.
“I didn’t like one of those fourth-down calls. I don’t know how good of an opportunity we really gave our guys on that first one,” Campbell said.
Some believe that because of the Lions’ offensive situation—down top tight end Sam LaPorta and No. 1 receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown—Detroit should tone down the aggressiveness. But Campbell disagrees, saying he believes in the weapons they have, like Jameson Williams, Tom Kennedy, Isaac TeSlaa, and Jahmyr Gibbs.
“I certainly don’t want to say that it doesn’t influence you or affect you. But yet, I do have a lot of trust in Tom Kennedy. I do have a lot of trust in Jamo, especially when we know what the coverage is and we’ve got him running. We’ve still got Gibbs,” Campbell said. “And so, if you like the players and you like the play, there’ll be sometimes you may not like the coverages you think you may get. Or if it’s you know the ball’s going to go to this player and it’s this route that you’re going to have to win them, maybe you don’t like it. But in the moment it felt like the right thing to do today.”
To Campbell’s credit, the Lions’ second fourth down conversion was nearly a game-changing play in the positive. Down 10 points early in the fourth quarter, the Lions passed up a 38-yard field goal attempt to go for it on fourth-and-3. The play was there. Jared Goff scrambled to his right and tried to throw to Jameson Williams while on the run, but the throw was behind him and Williams couldn’t catch it despite getting both hands on it. Goff believes Williams would’ve scored with a better pass.
“I’ve got to give him a better throw, and he makes the catch. He might score right there and the drive might be over. That’s the one that will hurt me for a while,” Goff said.
Williams, too, took the blame for the play.
“I dropped it. That’s all,” Williams said. “I catch that, we get a first down, we keep going.”
Slow fourth-down possession was intentional
One of the other big criticism from Campbell’s game management was how the offense handled their final possession. The Lions were trailing 31-21 when the offense got the ball with 9:02 remaining in the game. What followed was a 13-play, 67-yard drive that bled over six minutes off the clock. Several times throughout the drive, the Lions went in to a full huddle and used most of the play clock. Fans at Ford Field were so antsy that you could hear them urge the team show more urgency.
Campbell knew how it looked, but he defended the strategy, noting that he wanted to make sure that if they got the ball back, they could run out the remainder of the clock on a potential game-tying drive.
“I know that’s frustrating when you’re a fan watching. But I know how we needed to play against that defensive front. And it was about playing for the last possession,” Campbell said. “We were going to do that. (The) defense was going to get the stop, we were going to use our timeouts, get one more shot to go win the game and that’s how we were playing it. I wanted to play it just like that.”
While it’s certainly unconventional to potentially shrink your chances to get the ball back by dwindling the clock, it’s worth pointing out his strategy almost worked. Had Dontayvion Wicks not made a spectacular grab on fourth-and-3, the Lions would have gotten the ball back with about 1:50 left at their own 45-yard line. That’s plenty of time to score. And with the Packers only having one timeout remaining, Green Bay wouldn’t have been able to do much to stop the Lions from draining most of the remaining clock.
Ultimately, though, the strategy didn’t work because the Lions never got the ball back.