FIRST DOWN: ACCOUNTABILITY
The Detroit Lions have very specific processes in place for when they spike the ball or try to rush the field goal team on the field when the clock is running late in a half or at the end of a game.
For whatever reason, they didn’t follow those rules at the end of the first half Sunday and it ended up costing them in a 20-16 loss to Tampa Bay.
With 18 seconds left on the clock at the Tampa Bay 17-yard line, Detroit faced a 2nd & 10. They completed a pass to wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown at the Tampa Bay 9-yard line and rushed to spike the ball. As they lined up and snapped it with four seconds left, the field goal team had inexplicably run out. The Lions were flagged for too many men on the field. They didn’t have a timeout left and that meant a 10-second runoff to end the the half.
“I asked for improvement from last week. That was the story,” Lions head coach Dan Campbell said after the game. “And we did improve, and the coach cost them. Their head coach cost them. Critical error at the end of the half 100 percent on me.”
Pre-snap, Campbell said if the clock is at 18 seconds, they’d have time to clock it, which the clock was at. They can push it to 14 seconds. There was enough time on the clock to snap and spike it and that’s what they should have done and finished the half with a chip-shot field goal. Bringing the field goal team on was a massive error because they were never going to get set up and get the snap off with that little time left anyway.
That play ended up changing the complexity of the game late. Had Detroit just needed a field goal to take the lead, the game might play out differently.
“There was no way to justify this,” Campbell said. “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.”
Though you never want those kind of mistakes to factor into the final outcome, it does go a long way with the players that Campbell stood behind the podium and took accountability.
“He’s at the top of the pyramid here and when the guy at the top takes accountability like he has throughout his career – even today, it makes it a little easier for everyone else to take accountability when they’re at fault,” quarterback Jared Goff said.
“I know he did take accountability for that, but we had plenty of opportunities to overcome that and make the plays to win the game and I know he’s going to be hard on himself. As players, we got to be better, I got to be better. I have got to pick him up, I have got to pick up other guys, the other guys got to pick up me, that’s how we win. Unfortunately, we couldn’t overcome too many mistakes today.”