It’s been hard for Lions fans to let go of the season-ending loss to the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game. A great halftime lead faded in the second half, and many fans, not to mention pundits and analysts, point to some questionable coaching decisions by Detroit head coach Dan Campbell.
During his Tuesday morning media session at the NFL Scouting Combine, Campbell was once again asked if he had any regrets or second guesses about how he managed the game down the stretch. Just as he did in the more immediate aftermath, Campbell didn’t shy away from believing he did the right things.
“My job is,” Campbell stated, “if I can alleviate pressure, where do I do that? How do I give our team the best chance to win?”
He then looked back at the loss to the 49ers and did bring up one thing he would do differently.
“If I could go back that I felt greedy on was at the very end of the game. And instead of just deciding what we’re going to do on fourth down, to hold the timeout and you can run it. But we did it on third down, and I should have waited until fourth (down),” Campbell said.
He’s referring to the third-and-goal run with exactly one minute remaining that was stopped short and forced the Lions to burn a precious timeout in order to get the touchdown on the next play. Burning the timeout meant the 49ers could effectively run out the clock and the Lions wouldn’t have enough timeouts to stop it.
“I thought we were just going to pop the run,” Campbell declared. “But, hindsight.”
There was zero mention of any wishing to try and make some different decisions on whether to kick a field goal or go for it. Campbell was given time to expand on the answer, but he once again stood by the decisions he made in the loss — except the third-down run play that got snuffed out.