It’s hard to blame the Detroit Lions if they are still soaking up their first victory of the season. After an 0-10-1 start, a winless season had started seeming like a grim possibility. But they put those nightmare scenarios to rest with their win over the Minnesota Vikings, and the biggest swing play of that game was one they didn’t convert.
Dan Campbell tops the charts when it comes to aggressive play-calling on fourth down. In his first year as a head coach, no team has gone for it on fourth down more than the Lions. That trend continued against the Vikings. Detroit went for it on three different fourth downs last Sunday, two for a roll of the dice and one out of necessity on the final drive of the game. The one on the final drive was the only one they converted.
Holding a 23-21 lead with four minutes left in the game, Campbell went full riverboat gambler from his own 28-yard line on a 4th and 1. Campbell wanted to shower the final layer of dirt over the Vikings’ grave. Instead, quarterback Jared Goff rolled right, was immediately pressured, fumbled, and the Vikings recovered. Disaster had struck again. However, it was that choice that changed the game for another reason.
On Thanksgiving, the Lions led the Chicago Bears 14-13 with a little less than nine minutes to go. They punted the ball back to Andy Dalton, who promptly led the Bears on an 18-play, 69-yard drive that melted away the remaining eight minutes and thirty seconds. Cairo Santos would waltz out for a 28-yard field goal, punch it through the uprights, and that was all she wrote. The Lions never got the ball back.
The week before that, the Lions took on the Cleveland Browns in Northeast Ohio. Trailing 13-10 and facing a 4th and 9 from their 41-yard line with a little over two minutes to go, Campbell punted. Again, the Lions would never get the ball back.
Campbell’s decision to go for it against the Vikings with a late lead from his 28-yard line backfired because Detroit didn’t convert. But it workout out because it almost guaranteed the Lions would see the rock again, even if Minnesota scored.
Nobody would’ve blamed him if Campbell opted to punt the ball away. It’s what everyone wanted after seeing the result of the play itself. Punting would’ve set up the Vikings with a chance to run the clock down, get into field goal range, and boot one through for a walk-off victory. While the Lions’ defense could’ve gotten a stop, knowing that there was a possibility of them losing at the wire without touching the ball yet again loomed. Whether that was in the back of Campbell’s mind or not is up for debate, but the head coach didn’t regret the gutsy move, per the Detroit Free Press.
“If I could have a play over in that game, it wouldn’t have been the fourth-and-one, it would have been the third-and-two right before it,” Campbell said Monday. “That’s the one I regret. Cause I wish that I’d given a better play to Jamaal Williams there and we wouldn’t even have been sitting in a fourth-and-one.”
“As far as the fourth-and-one, look, did I love it? No,” Campbell said. “However, if we would have — we can be so much better on how we should have done that play. Just the little details to it, we would have outflanked the defense, so there again, a couple of little things there procedurally in the way that we needed to function on that play and it would have been there. So it didn’t work out, but more than anything I regret the third-and-two that put us into that.”
While Minnesota did score a touchdown, the Lions still had life — and time — left, even if they needed to go 75 yards in less than two minutes. They took what the Vikings gave them in soft coverage, moved methodically down the field, and Goff found rookie Amon-Ra St. Brown from 11 yards out as time expired. This time, the Lions got the final say.
Campbell’s aggressive decision-making has been under a microscope on a few occasions this year. It has paired strangely with his conservative play calling. While the Lions kept their foot on the gas with fourth-down decisions against the Vikings, they also did well in unleashing Goff and letting him sling passes all over the field. For this one game, it worked.
This was one of many Lions games this year with a whacky finish. Detroit may not have known it at the time, but going for that fourth down and not getting it was better than punting it away to the Vikings. The play they didn’t convert turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
