Let’s get this out of the way. Let’s be done with it.
Yes, of course Tevon Diggs did not intercept that ball. You saw it. I saw it. Jim Nantz saw it. Gene Steratore saw it. Millions saw it on television, while 93,487 people saw it at AT&T Stadium.
Unfortunately for the Detroit Lions, field judge Mearl Robinson did not see it.
He was positioned so far from Diggs that he was the only one who did not see the play that set the wheels in motion for the Lions’ 24-6 loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday.
After all, Robinson was standing less than 20 feet away — roughly the length of a Brandon Pettigrew, an Anthony Hitchens and a Golden Tate failed stretch across the goal line — with a perfectly unencumbered view of Diggs’ bobbled ball that bounced off the turf so hard that he should have been called for traveling.
So under these circumstance, how could Robinson possibly make an accurate call?
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Poor guy. The NFL referees’ union really should think about bargaining for some vision benefits.
Yes, Lions fans have the right to be upset, even outraged. But maybe fans should take their cue from the guy with the most on the line, because coach Dan Campbell is handling it the right way.
He said he hadn’t heard anything more from the NFL about the botched call and sounded like he didn’t want to dwell on play, even though he’s aware of the Lions’ history in Dallas and the infamous picked-up pass interference call against Hitchens in a 2014 wild-card playoff game.
“Look, it’s hard,” Campbell said Monday. “Look, I came from New Orleans, so we felt the same way there, too.”
If you think a bad call in Week 7 or even during a wild-card game is tough, imagine being a Saints fan, player or coach who was involved in the “NOLA No-Call” game during the 2018 NFC championship, when officials missed a blatant pass-interference call on L.A. Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman.
“So I’m no stranger to any of that stuff,” said Campbell, a Saints tight ends coach at the time. “But I know the best way to handle it is, honestly, you’ve got to look past it.
“You can’t even — if you just dwell on it and you think about it and if you feel like you got screwed, you’re doing nothing. You’re just going to wallow in despair and because you have no control over it. You absolutely have zero control over it and it doesn’t matter. You can complain about it, you can — and you’ll get the ‘well, sorry.’ And it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t change anything. So I think the faster you can get over that and just accept the fact that what’s done is done, the better off you’re going to be.”
Truthfully, NFL players get over these kinds of bad calls pretty easily. They’ve played long enough to know bad calls go both ways. But it doesn’t hurt to have the head coach emphasize the point and provide a good example — perhaps even for fans — because Campbell and everyone else on the team knows they didn’t lose because of one bad call.
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Believe me, I understand the pain and frustration during another bad season that looks like it’s just getting worse. When your team is 1-5 and your coach is 4-18-1 and the offense suddenly can’t find the end zone with the help of Waze, Sacagawea and a divining rod, well, it would appear that a first-round bye in the playoffs is a tad unlikely.
This season was never going to be about being out of the playoff race early or winning significantly more games than last season. It was going to be, and still is, about measuring improvement by increments and through nuance. The Lions have done that by some measure.
Two weeks ago, after a 29-0 loss at New England, Campbell said the team had hit “rock bottom.” So where does he think his team is after the loss to Dallas?
“Climbing back out,” he said.
The instinct might be to laugh at that sentiment after a five-turnover performance. But this is where you have to appreciate the nuance of what the Lions wanted to accomplish during the bye. They wanted to improve the defense, and they did.
The Lions held the Cowboys to 10 points until the final three minutes. Jeff Okudah has played progressively better, had a career-high 15 tackles and is starting to distance himself from the “bust” label. Aidan Hutchinson was moved around and got back to producing, with 1.5 sacks and three quarterback hits.
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“I’m encouraged by our defense, it was encouraging,” Campbell said. “It’s hard to lose, but boy when you watched the way that they played yesterday and I told them, I said this last night, they played exactly the way we practiced. It was high energy, they were intense, they were urgent. We got a ball out, got a turnover.
“You could feel the pressure on third down. We hit the quarterback early, so we challenged on the perimeter. Our secondary was coming down, hitting and tackling. I mean, that was Jeff Okudah’s best game since he’s been here, in my opinion, and he practiced that way.”
Give coordinator Aaron Glenn credit. Three weeks ago, after the Lions gave up 48 points to the Seattle Seahawks, people were starting to call for Glenn’s job. But that talk has quieted down after two straight games of better defensive play.
As for the offense, there should be little concern about its potency after it had to go against one of the NFL’s best defenses without its top two playmakers in D’Andre Swift and Amon-Ra St. Brown. And let’s not forget that talent, no matter how many hours coaches spend in their office scheming each week, matters more than anything.
After Campbell listed key players on defense who returned to contribute, like linemen Josh Paschal and John Cominsky, I asked him if the same might be true for the offense if it’s able to get Swift and St. Brown back.
“I would say this, it wouldn’t hurt,” Campbell said with a big grin. “That’s what I would say.”
That’s such a welcome breath of honesty, instead of the lame “next man up” cliché. We’ve all seen what those players can do to know they make an exponential difference for an offense that was the NFL’s best not so long ago.
Even though the Lions lost in Dallas, they found something important: improvement on defense. If they find a little more health on offense soon, maybe everyone else will be able to get past another bad call in Dallas as easily as the team’s head coach.
Contact Carlos Monarrez: cmonarrez@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.