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Detroit Lions did get a touch full of themselves, so maybe loss helps them down the road
Shawn Windsor
Detroit Free Press
Sometimes it's best to lean into the clichés. They’re there for a reason. Mostly because they offer truth, and the truth is that what Dan Campbell told his team after a brutal loss to Seattle Sunday is right:
The Detroit Lions didn’t deserve the win.
“I thought he said it great after the game,” said Jared Goff, who agreed with his coach. “We didn’t deserve that one. We might have gotten away with it at the end there … (but) they earned that win and we kind of earned the loss.”
Not a bad way to put it. Or to think about Seattle’s 37-31 overtime win. To think about the space between earning a win and earning a loss in the NFL. The difference is so often minimal.
A dropped pass, or a mistimed route. A hurried throw, perhaps, or a loose angle of pursuit; give a fella like Geno Smith a proper lane and he’ll always know what to do with it.
How about a gamble that doesn’t work, like Campbell’s fourth-down call late in the third when the Lions needed 2 yards from their own 45. They didn’t convert. Seattle scored nine plays later.
Pick up those 2 yards and maybe the march down the field goes the Lions way, and they jump back up by 11 points, and that changes how the fourth quarter unfolds — a single play can do that.
A few single plays can do a lot more. This is the narrow margin, the tight spaces where games are won or lost. Lose those few plays or, worse, lose the ball a couple times, and your fans are walking out quietly.
“We’re not good enough to turn the ball over,” said Campbell.
This is true for most teams, except for the most talented teams, and the Lions aren’t there yet. Sunday was another reminder.
Now, you might argue that they played sloppily and still had a chance to win. If someone is making that argument, do they have a point?
Sure, if you’ve loved a normal NFL franchise all your life.
If you loved the Lions?
It's easier to swap that ski mask for a paper bag. Though I don’t think anyone is at that level of despair just yet, other than the few outliers who want a regime change because of the failed fourth down conversion.
Somewhere in between should be the realization that these Lions have lots of good players. Just not lots of star players. And that Seattle’s players, especially offensively, are on par, if not a little better, than what the Lions have.
Again, they look like a good team. A solid team. And to get where they want, they’ll have to win their share of games against good-to-solid teams.
Like Atlanta, a team that’s 2-0 and looks better, too. That won’t be easy this Sunday. It’ll be a game won — or lost — in the margins, like usual.
And the best way to win in the margins is to — brace for another cliché — focus. And the best way to focus is to forget about what everyone else is saying.
“I know it stings and those guys are disappointed,” said Campbell. “I’m disappointed, the staff is, but my gosh man, this is good. We’ll get a little humble pie here and we’ve got a real good opponent coming in next week and they run it as good if not better than those guys and they have better weapons just all around.”
Did he just take a shot at Seattle?
Or is he just giving early props to Atlanta?
Sounds like both, to me. But the most important words in his last sentence are these: “humble pie.”
Who on earth thought we’d be talking about the Lions needing humble pie so quickly? Well, they got it Sunday on the field, and then got it again after the game when a Seahawk donned a ski mask as his teammates whooped and hollered in the locker room.
The Lions deserved the troll, and they deserve their coach talking about humble pie.
Is it just another cliché?
Yes, but Campbell meant it, and surely sensed it in the runup to the game the last 10 days. Remember, his guys knocked off the defending champs, on the road, at night, and they did it not playing their best ball.
That’s what the players said, anyway, which tells us they were feeling it a little bit. This doesn’t mean they weren’t focused or preparing with enthusiasm and professionalism, not at all.
It just means when you start feeling yourself a little bit, the peripheral vision can narrow, and something sneaks in and disrupts things in a way you might normally catch.
In that sense, Campbell wasn’t crushed by the loss. In fact, he thinks he can use it to the team’s benefit.
“Inadvertently it always — it gets your focus back on,” he said. “We’re on one track now. Here’s what it is: it’s Atlanta, it’s getting back to what we do, it’s cleaning up all the little things, and forget everything else because if we’re not all collectively — me included — all of us just focused on what’s right in front of us, then we’re not all on the same page and I just think that’s what happens with a loss. It stinks, it stinks to lose, it does, but this is not a sprint. It’s a marathon, and I know this … we’ve got to get cleaned up in a hurry. We’ve got some good opponents we’ve got ready to face coming in.”
Ah, the good old getting things cleaned up. Another cliché. But also, the fundamental truth of football. As Campbell said, from here forth it's about the single track, which is really just coach speak for remembering your identity.
The Lions got a tad full of themselves this past week. Perhaps not consciously, but it was lurking in the subconscious all last week, causing a touch of trouble.
That shouldn’t be a problem in the runup this week. The Lions know they are good, but they also know they aren’t so good that they can make the kind of mistakes they made and beat a solid team.
After Sunday, they won’t have a hard time remembering their margin for error is thin, and that most NFL games are won in the margins.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@shawnwindsor
Shawn Windsor
Detroit Free Press
Sometimes it's best to lean into the clichés. They’re there for a reason. Mostly because they offer truth, and the truth is that what Dan Campbell told his team after a brutal loss to Seattle Sunday is right:
The Detroit Lions didn’t deserve the win.
“I thought he said it great after the game,” said Jared Goff, who agreed with his coach. “We didn’t deserve that one. We might have gotten away with it at the end there … (but) they earned that win and we kind of earned the loss.”
Not a bad way to put it. Or to think about Seattle’s 37-31 overtime win. To think about the space between earning a win and earning a loss in the NFL. The difference is so often minimal.
A dropped pass, or a mistimed route. A hurried throw, perhaps, or a loose angle of pursuit; give a fella like Geno Smith a proper lane and he’ll always know what to do with it.
How about a gamble that doesn’t work, like Campbell’s fourth-down call late in the third when the Lions needed 2 yards from their own 45. They didn’t convert. Seattle scored nine plays later.
Pick up those 2 yards and maybe the march down the field goes the Lions way, and they jump back up by 11 points, and that changes how the fourth quarter unfolds — a single play can do that.
A few single plays can do a lot more. This is the narrow margin, the tight spaces where games are won or lost. Lose those few plays or, worse, lose the ball a couple times, and your fans are walking out quietly.
“We’re not good enough to turn the ball over,” said Campbell.
This is true for most teams, except for the most talented teams, and the Lions aren’t there yet. Sunday was another reminder.
Now, you might argue that they played sloppily and still had a chance to win. If someone is making that argument, do they have a point?
Sure, if you’ve loved a normal NFL franchise all your life.
If you loved the Lions?
It's easier to swap that ski mask for a paper bag. Though I don’t think anyone is at that level of despair just yet, other than the few outliers who want a regime change because of the failed fourth down conversion.
Somewhere in between should be the realization that these Lions have lots of good players. Just not lots of star players. And that Seattle’s players, especially offensively, are on par, if not a little better, than what the Lions have.
Again, they look like a good team. A solid team. And to get where they want, they’ll have to win their share of games against good-to-solid teams.
Like Atlanta, a team that’s 2-0 and looks better, too. That won’t be easy this Sunday. It’ll be a game won — or lost — in the margins, like usual.
And the best way to win in the margins is to — brace for another cliché — focus. And the best way to focus is to forget about what everyone else is saying.
“I know it stings and those guys are disappointed,” said Campbell. “I’m disappointed, the staff is, but my gosh man, this is good. We’ll get a little humble pie here and we’ve got a real good opponent coming in next week and they run it as good if not better than those guys and they have better weapons just all around.”
Did he just take a shot at Seattle?
Or is he just giving early props to Atlanta?
Sounds like both, to me. But the most important words in his last sentence are these: “humble pie.”
Who on earth thought we’d be talking about the Lions needing humble pie so quickly? Well, they got it Sunday on the field, and then got it again after the game when a Seahawk donned a ski mask as his teammates whooped and hollered in the locker room.
The Lions deserved the troll, and they deserve their coach talking about humble pie.
Is it just another cliché?
Yes, but Campbell meant it, and surely sensed it in the runup to the game the last 10 days. Remember, his guys knocked off the defending champs, on the road, at night, and they did it not playing their best ball.
That’s what the players said, anyway, which tells us they were feeling it a little bit. This doesn’t mean they weren’t focused or preparing with enthusiasm and professionalism, not at all.
It just means when you start feeling yourself a little bit, the peripheral vision can narrow, and something sneaks in and disrupts things in a way you might normally catch.
In that sense, Campbell wasn’t crushed by the loss. In fact, he thinks he can use it to the team’s benefit.
“Inadvertently it always — it gets your focus back on,” he said. “We’re on one track now. Here’s what it is: it’s Atlanta, it’s getting back to what we do, it’s cleaning up all the little things, and forget everything else because if we’re not all collectively — me included — all of us just focused on what’s right in front of us, then we’re not all on the same page and I just think that’s what happens with a loss. It stinks, it stinks to lose, it does, but this is not a sprint. It’s a marathon, and I know this … we’ve got to get cleaned up in a hurry. We’ve got some good opponents we’ve got ready to face coming in.”
Ah, the good old getting things cleaned up. Another cliché. But also, the fundamental truth of football. As Campbell said, from here forth it's about the single track, which is really just coach speak for remembering your identity.
The Lions got a tad full of themselves this past week. Perhaps not consciously, but it was lurking in the subconscious all last week, causing a touch of trouble.
That shouldn’t be a problem in the runup this week. The Lions know they are good, but they also know they aren’t so good that they can make the kind of mistakes they made and beat a solid team.
After Sunday, they won’t have a hard time remembering their margin for error is thin, and that most NFL games are won in the margins.
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@shawnwindsor
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