Lions head coach Dan Campbell made one thing clear in his press conference on Monday: he believed in his defense at the end of Sunday’s loss to the Baltimore Ravens.
Campbell was asked about why he opted to play conservatively on offense and score a field goal instead of trying to get a touchdown and possibly get a bigger lead. The coach believed in his defense.
“I loved where our defense was at,” Campbell said. “I loved the way they were playing, and I wanted to put it in their hands. I felt like we were going to shut them down.”
The Lions defense had been playing well, forcing an interception on a bad decision by Lamar Jackson on the prior drive. Detroit’s defense had nicely bottled up any Jackson scrambling attempts.
Campbell also explained why he called a timeout before the 4th-and-19 play by the Ravens. Jackson credited the timeout by Campbell with helping the Ravens concoct a better play, and it worked for Baltimore. Jackson found WR Sammy Watkins for a big gain to convert and set up Justin Tucker’s improbable 66-yard field goal.
“What I was hoping to gain was to get everybody settled and get everybody on the same page,” Campbell told reporters. “And we did. We had everybody on the same page but one person and it hurt us.”
Campbell refused to say who the one player was. The coverage on the play was unusually passive, with safety Will Harris the closest player to Watkins. Detroit had another safety well deeper than any route the Ravens ran, too. The linebackers on the play crept up in an apparent “spy” position to keep Jackson from using his legs to pick up the fourth down, but it left a huge hole between the LBs and the safeties, and the Ravens struck paydirt.
“It’s not the scheme, it’s the communication between our players, between our back end and our linebackers that we have to, man, we’ve got to clean it up,” Campbell said. “That was the errors that showed.”
The errors contributed to Tucker’s NFL-record game-winner. Campbell alter added that cleaning up the communication issues and process will be a big point of emphasis throughout the practices this week.
