DETROIT — An emotional Dan Campbell briefly held back tears when addressing the Lions’ 20-16 upset loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday.
Detroit’s head coach made no excuses, instead blaming himself for the team’s 1-1 start despite entering the Week 2 matchup at Ford Field as a 7.5-point favorite, per ESPN BET.
“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. “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.”
In a rematch of the NFC divisional round playoff matchup, Detroit’s offense scored just one touchdown on seven red zone trips against the Buccaneers.
Their six red zone drives without a touchdown were the most by a Lions team in a game since 1981, per ESPN Research. However, Campbell pinpointed the drive that ended the first half where they were flagged for having too many offensive men on the field as a major blunder.
The Lions trailed 13-6 at that point and could have scored on third and 2 at the Buccaneers’ 9-yard line, but the clock expired due to a 10-second runoff because of the penalty.
Quarterback Jared Goff and the offense spiked the ball to stop the clock, but the field goal unit started running onto the field with a few seconds remaining as the time was mismanaged.
“Look, it was nothing that’s going to make any sense to anybody. There’s no way to justify this. It’s a massive error on my part, no one else’s,” Campbell said. “It was just between hurry-up field goal and clocking and it was 100 percent my fault. 100 percent.
“That’s why we have guys on the field who try and clock it and it’s just one of those things we work over and over on and we’ve been good, we do everything and then I mess it up,” he said.
Goff, who was 3-0 against quarterback Baker Mayfield throughout his career, went 34-for-55 with 307 yards against the Buccaneers’ defense. He also threw two interceptions and no touchdowns, but Campbell is confident that Goff will rebound against Arizona next week to help get back on track.
“They’re a good team, we’re a good team, it’s early in the season, it’ll be definitely a learning experience for sure for us to look at and go, ‘OK, what went wrong and how can we fix it?,'” Goff said. “I think if I remember correctly, we started 1-1 last year and we were able to respond from that pretty well. So, it’s early in the year, but it’s a good learning experience and a chance for us to dive in to what went wrong and how to not let that stuff happen again.”
All-Pro offensive tackle Penei Sewell was also frustrated with the loss while exiting the locker room, but appreciative of Campbell being willing to take accountability in defeat, particularly with the clock mismanagement.
Sewell views the loss as somewhat of a wakeup call amid expectations for this squad to make a deep postseason run.
“It kind of just reflects what kind of people we have in this building,” Sewell said of Campbell. “I know that he said that but this is a team sport, team effort, so everyone has a role that plays into this loss. So definitely hard to swallow but we have to be able to bounce back and be better for the next games.”