The last time the Detroit Lions faced the Minnesota Vikings, a road victory was in sight for head coach Dan Campbell and the Lions. Detroit led 24-21 and had the ball with under three minutes to play, rolling towards what would have been the first road win in Campbell’s coaching tenure with the Lions.
And then Campbell made a ponderous choice, or really series of choices. With the ball in Minnesota territory and the Vikings out of timeouts, Campbell called two dead-to-rights runs. That set up 4th-and-4 from the Minnesota 36-yard line.
At that point the Lions could have gone for it with the full playbook at their disposal. They could have taken a delay-of-game penalty and given Pro Bowl punter Jack Fox a chance to pin the Vikings deep in their own territory with zero timeouts and about a minute to play. Campbell choice option C: a long field goal attempt that wouldn’t have provided any more help on the scoreboard even if it was successful.
Kicker Austin Seibert missed, and it wasn’t close. That gave the Vikings the ball near midfield and brimming with confidence. Kirk Cousins only needed three plays to lead the Minnesota offense to the go-ahead touchdown.
“It burns me,” Campbell said earnestly when asked about how he feels about the decision over two months later. “Of course it burns me. It’ll be there until the day I die. I mean, that’s not going to go away.”
Then Campbell turned more pensive and thoughtful.
“But I also know I can’t wallow in that and let it pull me down. It is what it is and it happened for a reason. And honestly, I think us losing five (games) in a row is why we’re at where we are right now. So that’s kind of how I look at it — maybe we needed this to happen to get to where we’re at (winning four of five).”
Campbell has grown in his situational football since the Week 3 loss. But he will not forget the mistake he made in that game.
“I let my players down,” Campbell said. “It’s hard enough to have success and to win in this league without your coach doing something that pulls you back. And I felt like that was one of those.”
