Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell has been criticized over several decisions he made in his team’s NFC Championship Game loss to the San Francisco 49ers, and it sounds like there is at least one he would like to have back.
The Lions were trailing 34-24 when they got the ball back after a 49ers touchdown with just over three minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. They had all three timeouts remaining and were able to quickly move down the field without using any of them. Detroit got all the way to the San Francisco one-yard line and called a run play on 3rd-and-goal with 1:05 remaining. David Montgomery was stuffed for a two-yard loss.
Because they were trailing by two scores, the Lions had to use a timeout to stop the clock after Montgomery was stopped. They went for it on fourth down rather than kicking the field goal, and Jared Goff threw a touchdown pass to Jameson Williams.
Detroit then attempted an unsuccessful onside kick that was recovered by the 49ers. The Lions only would have been able to get the ball back with three stops if they had all of their timeouts left, but they used one on the previous possession.
On Monday, Campbell admitted that he “probably should have” called a third-down pass play on Detroit’s previous possession rather than running it.
“The easy thing to do is to throw it,” Campbell said, via Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. “Probably should’ve been the right thing, but for me, I wanted to run it. I thought we would just pop it. We had just…two-minute all the way down the field, throwing the football and they were in a four-down front and I believed we’d walk right in and we just missed a block, so then yeah, I’ve got to use a timeout. So, hindsight, throw it four times, but I believed in that moment it was going to be a walk-in run. And it didn’t work out. So, I gambled and lost.”
Campbell thought the he would catch the 49ers off-guard by running, but the defense was ready. That was not the only decision the coach made that did not pay off.
Campbell was also criticized for going for it on fourth down earlier in the game when the Lions could have potentially taken a three-score lead with a field goal. He had a very stern response when asked about that decision. He may regret the late-game run at the goal line more than being aggressive on fourth down.
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