The buck stops with Dan Campbell. The Lions coach is taking all the blame after his team committed a major gaffe at the end of the first half on Sunday that cost Detroit a chance to score three points.
With just under 20 seconds left to play in the second quarter, Jared Goff completed a pass to Amon-Ra St. Brown that took Detroit down to Tampa Bay’s 9-yard line.
St. Brown was tackled with 17 seconds left to play, but the Lions didn’t have any timeouts, so they needed to spike the ball to stop the clock, which should have been simple, but there was some confusion on the sideline. Before the spike happened, the field goal team started to head out onto the field to try a hurry-up field goal.
By the time Goff took the snap to spike it, the field goal team was still on the field and the officials responded by throwing the easiest “too many men on the field” penalty that they’ll ever call (There were roughly 20 guys on the field when Goof took the snap). Getting hit with a five-yard penalty isn’t a big deal, but it was a big deal that the Lions had to take a 10-second runoff. Since there were only nine seconds left and the Lions had no timeouts, the first half ended and the Lions came away with zero points on the drive.
The Buccaneers led 13-6 at the half in a game that they would eventually win 20-16, so it was huge that the Lions missed out on those points. After the game, Cambell took all the blame for the blunder.
“There was no way to justify this,” Cambell said, via the team’s official website. “It’s a massive error on my part and no one else’s. It was just between hurry-up field goal and clocking it and it was 100 percent my fault.”
The Lions coach, who was emotional after the game, came down hard on himself during his postgame interview.
“I asked for improvement from last week was the story, and we did improve. And their coach cost them — their head coach cost them this one,” Campbell said, via ESPN. “So, critical error to end the half, and 100 percent on me. We improved. There’s areas we’ve got to continue to improve on, but it’s not OK.”
The drive at the end of the half was part of a nightmare day that the Lions had in the red zone. Detroit got inside of Tampa Bay’s 20-yard line a total of seven times in the game, but the Lions were only able to score one touchdown. According to ESPN, it was the first time since 1981 that the Lions had at least six red zone possessions without a TD.
The Lions outgained the Buccaneers by 247 yards (463-216), but they didn’t come away with the win because they couldn’t finish their drives.
