Last month, which at this point in the Detroit Lions season seems like a few years ago, Dan Campbell asked an important question. It was a rhetorical question, but a valid one.
After the Lions narrowly lost the season opener to the Philadelphia Eagles, 38-35, Campbell asked: “Now if we just take this whole approach where every week it’s like ‘we lost by three, we lost by three, we lost by three,’ then what are we doing?”
Well, the Lions took a different tack Sunday and lost by four, 31-27, to the Miami Dolphins at Ford Field. It was different because the Lions had failed to score a touchdown in the past two games, when they lost by a combined score of 53-6.
So maybe returning to close losses qualifies as progress by the loosest of definitions?
But it didn’t feel that way. Even though the offensive was reignited by the return of Amon-Ra St. Brown and D’Andre Swift, even though the Lions led at halftime, 27-17, it felt like they were powerless to stop the Dolphins’ dynamic and explosive offense led by Tua Tagovailoa. In the second half, the defense imploded and the offense seized up, generating only 67 yards and getting shut out.
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Indeed, Campbell would have been right to ask, “What are we doing?”
Instead, he chose to deliver an affirming message about another close loss.
“My thought is as frustrating as it is, I know how close we are because we are still talking about one play,” he said. “And the hard thing is to just keep doing your job and staying in the thick of the storm. And the easy thing is to go down below and get under the blanket, eat all the food and whatever.
“Guys who are going on the deck and just continue to do their part because they know the sun’s coming, those are the guys we’re looking for.”
That one play could have been several moments in the game Sunday, though you could most obviously point to Jared Goff’s missing on a deep pass to Josh Reynolds that would have given the Lions the lead in the final three minutes.
One person’s frustration can be another person’s reason for faith, and Campbell seems to be experiencing both at the same time while leading his team to a 1-6 record that is probably on the brink of turning into 1-8, or possibly 1-10, with tough matchups looming against the Packers, at Chicago, at the Giants, then against the Bills on Thanksgiving.
Things aren’t going well. And even owner Sheila Ford Hamp found it necessary to have an impromptu news conference last week with about a dozen reporters to affirm her belief in Campbell and general manager Brad Holmes.
So Campbell’s message was about keeping faith in the team, himself and his process, even when a reporter brought it to his attention that we’ve been hearing about being close for a while now.
“Two years, two years,” said the coach who is 4-19-1 in those two years. “You keep going. That’s how you do it. You keep going. You keep going. You deliver another message, a different message. You change a couple of things up.”
Give Campbell credit for doing exactly that. He changed offensive coordinators this year. He changed the defensive scheme. He put Aidan Hutchinson in a two-point stance. He brought back padded practices.
It’s all added up to one victory and a five-game losing streak.
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“It’s exhausting,” left tackle Taylor Decker said quietly in the locker room after the game. “But there’s nothing I can do other than go back to work. There’s nothing this team can do other than show up and practice on Wednesday with a with a good attitude and try and get this thing right.”
Decker is a seven-year veteran and a leader on the team. But he’s also a bellwether who gives us an indication of the players’ mental state. Decker was as disappointed as I’ve seen him in a long time. He knows the Lions could have and should have won the game, but to lose again by such a narrow margin while being ineffective on both sides of the ball is gut-wrenching.
But Decker wasn’t hopeless.
“I would say we definitely believe in the plan,” he said of the offensive resurgence. “We believe in the playmakers we’re putting the ball in the hands of and we just literally have to just keep doing what we’re doing early in the game.”
It’s safe to say we know who the Lions are by this point in the season. They are a mess on defense, which likely won’t change until there’s new leadership on that side of the ball. They’re a talented offensive team that can be explosive but doesn’t have the luxury of overcoming too many penalties.
There’s only so much salvation you can expect for a team like this. Campbell called the difficulties “all-encompassing” and cited Bill Parcells’ tautology of “the only way to win close games is win close games.”
“Hey, it’s frustrating,” Campbell said, “but I know everybody’s tired of hearing it’s close. But I do know we’re close, and you just don’t know when it’s going to turn. But if we don’t keep swinging away at it, it’ll only get worse.”
He’s right. Things could get worse, because it isn’t hard to imagine the Lions losing games that aren’t so close in the near future. If that happens, fans might find themselves looking back wistfully at these close losses and asking themselves their own rhetorical question: “What were they doing to keep it so close?”
Contact Carlos Monarrez: cmonarrez@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @cmonarrez.