You have to go back to the beginning here. You have to go back to Dan Campbell’s opening press conference a few years ago when he was named as something of a surprise choice to coach the Detroit Lions.
You remember, right? Because it’s awfully hard to forget.
“This team is going to kick you in the teeth,” he said that day, Jan. 21, 2021, “and when you knock us down, on the way up we’re going to bite a kneecap off. And we’re going to get up, and if you knock us down again, we’re going to get up and bite off the other kneecap.”
He forgot to mention the fact that if you are a Lions fan, and you have been waiting more than 66 years for a savior to drag you out of the football desert, and you bought in to what Campbell was selling, and you invested every ounce of your being in this fun, ferocious and mostly fearless football team …
Well, thanks to him on the biggest day in Detroit’s football history since the Eisenhower Administration …
He was going to bite YOU on the kneecaps.
He was going to kick YOU in the teeth.
He was going to elbow YOU in the stomach.
He was going to stomp YOU in the … well, every other place where you’d prefer to never get kicked, as the Lions’ dreamscape of a season went straight into the wood chipper Sunday at Levi’s Stadium, the 49ers stunning them, 34-31.
Look, Campbell is probably the biggest reason why the Lions were even playing in this game, because he believed in his team — and demanded it believe in itself — all year long, all the way to 12-5, all the way to first place in the NFC North, all the way to back-to-back home wins in the NFC playoffs, all the way to 24-7 up on the big, bad 49ers at halftime on Sunday. And much of that was embodied by his unconventional approach to the job: taking chances, living on the edge, having faith in his guys.
For 19 ¹/₂ games across 20 ¹/₂ weeks, it was wonderful to watch.
Across the final 30 minutes on Sunday it was like watching a stand-up comedian slowly dying on stage joke after joke, awkward silence after awkward silence.
“We knew they wouldn’t go away and they made the plays today,” Campbell would say when it was over. “They’ve done it, they’ve lived it and they made the plays.
“It’s hard. When you lose they say it’s hard. You feel like you get your heart ripped out. I’m proud of that group and I’ll go anywhere with that group. We did a lot of things today. We didn’t do enough.”
All of that was true. But so was this: In the biggest game of his coaching life, Campbell treated the NFC Championship game like a breezy Week 7 game with the Cardinals. There is a time for boldness and there is a time for wisdom, a time to push the envelope and a time to play close to the vest. And three times Campbell made decisions that helped sabotage his team.
Up 24-10, Campbell could have — should have — ordered a 46-yard field goal on fourth-and-2 to go up three scores; instead he went for it. The 49ers held. Minutes later it was 24-17 and the Niners had life.
Down 27-24, 7 ¹/₂ minutes left in the game, he could have — should have — again went for a 48-yard field goal to tie the game. He went for it again. The 49ers held again. And soon enough it was 34-24.
Desperate to extend the game, Campbell could have — should have — done one of two things as his team drove down the field down 10 with under two minutes to go. He could have gone for a field goal when there were still about 80 seconds left, still armed with all his timeouts. He didn’t. On third-and-goal, he chose a running play, meaning he had to burn a timeout. The Lions scored but couldn’t execute the onside kick.
And that was that.
“I just felt really good about converting. It’s easy — hindsight, I get it,” Campbell said. “But I don’t regret those decisions. I understand the scrutiny I’ll get, but it just didn’t work out.”
And the wait in Detroit goes on. The man who allowed them to dream also extinguished that dream. What a bite to the kneecap. What a kick in the teeth.