Looking at Dan Campbell’s three big risks that led to the loss of the NFC Championship Game
During the 2023 NFL season, the Detroit Lions always played with an edge, going for the kill every week. The plan worked for Dan Campbell or the Lions. They won 12 games and made it to the championship game of the NFC for the first time in 1991.
ESPN says that the Lions went for it 34% of the time on fourth down during the regular season. That’s more than any other team this century. It worked until Sunday afternoon in Santa Clara, CA, when it stopped.
The Lions lost the game against the San Francisco 49ers after being ahead by 17 points at halftime and missed out on making it to the Super Bowl for the first time in the team’s history.
The 2023 season will be remembered by fans as a huge success, but fans will still play the “what would happen if” game all off-season.
Let us look at three important choices Campbell made that led to the fall of Detroit. Campbell’s first questionable call happened in 49ers territory in the middle of the third quarter.
Campbell opted to attempt a field goal at the Oakland four-yard line on fourth-and-goal before halftime. Detroit led by three possessions (17 points) going into halftime because of the call.
The 49ers got the first kickoff in the second quarter and went 50 yards on nine plays, setting up a field goal that cut their lead to 14. San Francisco could only score three points, which was good defense on Detroit’s part.
With 11:02 left in the third quarter, the Lions took over and marched down the field to the 49ers’ 28-yard line. “We didn’t connect,” Goff told the Detroit Detroit Press. “I’ll throw a more accurate ball next time.”
Campbell chose to run for it on 4th-and-2 instead of making the field goal, which could have given them back a 17-point lead.
Josh Reynolds’ pass from Jared Goff wasn’t caught, and the Warriors took over. After 1:41, they cut their deficit to seven points.
The media talked about Dan Campbell’s decisions on fourth down on Monday after the Detroit Lions lost 34–31 to the San Francisco 49ers and missed a chance to play in their first Super Bowl.
It’s fair to look at Campbell’s choices about skipping two field goal attempts in favor of fourth-down tries, but the coach has always been more aggressive in those situations. It’s part of who he is and what the club is at this point.
The way the Lions thought helped them get to the NFC Championship Game only two years after having a three-win season.
It doesn’t matter what you think about the fourth-down calls; the worst coaching mistake on Sunday night happened when the Lions were down 10 points and had third-and-goal at their 1-yard line. David Montgomery tried to run, but he was stopped for a loss of two yards.
Campbell proceeded to call the first break for the Lions. Once again, bad calls put the Lions in a position where they had to recover an onside kick, which is a very unlikely play, to tie the game. Jameson Williams scored upon the next play.
Campbell told the news conference on Monday, “The easy thing for me is to throw it.” “I think what I should have done was right, but I wanted to get out of it.” I thought we’d just pop it.
We had two minutes to throw the ball all across down the field, and they had been in a four-down front. I thought we’d be able to walk right in, but we missed a block. In that play, the Lions should have run the ball on fourth down if they were going to do so.
That’s why I need to use a timeout. Now that we can see it, throw it four times. At that moment, though, I thought it would just be a walk-in run. It didn’t work out. I took a chance and lost.
To begin, he did need to pass the ball on third down. A run at that point might have caught the Niners off guard, and Montgomery might have gotten in if Williams had made a better block. But the risk wasn’t worth being stuffed.
Second, the Lions did not need to use time-outs after being stopped. It was better to keep the timeout than to use it to stop the clock at that very moment.
Together with the third-down run play, a fourth-down call should been made. Campbell should have enjoyed the players ready to rush the quarterback if the run was stopped.
Let’s say 20 seconds are taken off the clock. Having three timeouts or 40 seconds left is better than having two timeouts and 56 seconds left. You could say that the Lions still had a chance to get the ball back if they had timed out.
Yes, it’s not likely that they will come back from being down three points with less than a minute to play and no timeouts. Even so, that situation is still better than having to recover an onside kick.