Lions head coach Dan Campbell took responsibility for a major blunder that cost his team a chance to put points on the board before the end of the first half of Sunday’s home loss to the Buccaneers.
With 18 seconds left in the half, the Lions completed a pass to Amon-Ra St. Brown and ran to spike the ball to set up a field goal. Members of the field goal team began coming on the field before that happened, however, and the Lions were penalized for too many men on the field. That led to a 10-second runoff that left no time on the clock.
After the 20-16 loss, Campbell said all blame for the mistake goes to him.
“I asked for improvement from last week. That was the story,” Campbell said, via the team’s website. “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. . . . There was no way to justify this. 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 had six red zone drives that ended without a touchdown on Sunday, so the loss can’t be boiled down to one mistake even if it was a particularly costly one in Detroit.