Is Dan Campbell Too Risky?
Photo Credit: The33rdTeam
Dan Campbell also known as MC/DC has been a hot name in the coaching talks since he took over the head coaching job two years ago from Matt Patricia.
Since his first media interview, he has shown his no holds barred personality as well as his out of the box coaching style that has brought many eyes to the Lions during his tenure. He is a coach who is not afraid to take risks in big situations with the Lions having the most fourth down attempts this season with 27.
However, is that risk taking mentality starting to come back to bite Campell in the butt. This season alone there have been many instances where his risks have cost the Lions key games.
It begs the question is Dan Campbell too risky for his own good, and is it hurting the team in the long run?
There are two instances from this season in games that we lost mostly due to bad decisions late in the game by Dan Campbell.
The first was during the Week 2 game at home against the Seattle Seahawks. The game was exactly like last year with the two teams being in an offensive shootout the entire game. It was a game where the first team to make just one mistake would come out the loser of this matchup.
That one mistake came on a fourth down at the end of the third quarter where the Lions went for a fourth and short around midfield. They failed to convert and gave the Seahawks offense prime field position to go down and score. The worst part is that the Lions were leading by four points at this point in the game and could have easily pinned the Seahawks deep in their own territory.
From that point on the Seahawks would take hold of the momentum completely going down and scoring on the turnover and with the Lions next possession got a pick-six off of a poor throw by Jared Goff. The Lions would take the game to overtime where Seattle got the ball first and the defense who had struggled all game were unable to stop them from scoring the game winning touchdown.
The second instance came this past week in the Thanksgiving game against the Packers. The first half was terrible for the team, but in the second half the Lions clawed their way back to a two-possession game with five minutes left in the third quarter. After failing on third down, the Lions decided to go for a fake punt on their own 23-yard line and failed miserably. Watching back the play, it was obvious the Packers had countermeasures in place against a fake punt which should have called for an audible out of the fake and instead made the play a standard punt. The Lions were once again unable to recover from this blunder and lost the game by one possession, that one possession being the possession where the Packers scored after they stopped the fake punt.
It is ok to be a risktaker in this league, but there is a time and a place for those risks to be taken. The fake punt against the Packers reminded me of the fake the Lions pulled against the Chiefs in Week One. The difference is that they faked a punt in the first quarter against the Chiefs where you have three quarters to make up for the mistake. In the Packers game it was in the third quarter in a game where the offense was struggling to move the ball on a battered defense.
As a Lions fan myself, Dan Campbell is the best coach the team has had since Jim Caldwell, but his continued gameplan of taking risks on fourth down has come to lose the Lions two out of the three games they have lost this season.
This isn’t to say that Dan Campbell is on the hotseat, but instead pointing out that he still has things to learn that in time will help this team become legitimate contenders rather than a team constantly on fraud watch for their poor performances.
