PHILADELPHIA — Dan Campbell looked like a man with regrets, even if he wouldn’t allow himself to fully go there. It’s fair to second-guess, to play moments over in your head, to look at different aspects of a game with the knowledge of hindsight.
Hard not to after a game like that.
“There’s some things I wish I would’ve done differently,” Campbell said, after the Lions’ 16-9 loss to the Eagles. “But also that’s who we are. It’s who I am and it bit us today.”
The Lions under Campbell have an identity. It’s taken them far, but not as far as they’ve hoped to go. That’s why, in years past, Campbell has quietly graded Lions’ victories by asking himself if their performance was good enough to beat organizations like the Eagles — the one the Lions faced Sunday evening. There aren’t many coaches who’d share a perspective like that so openly, but Campbell didn’t shy away from it this past week. It’s what makes him one of one in this league.
Coming from Campbell, it’s a sign of respect above all else. The Eagles are the barometer of success for a Lions franchise trying to accomplish what Philadelphia has. The Lions kept tabs on the Eagles each of the past two seasons, thinking there was a chance they might face off in January. Coaches and players thought they were on a collision course last year, destined to meet in the NFC Championship Game.
They wanted the matchup then. They received it Sunday night. Campbell, meanwhile, received the clarity he so often seeks — this time, by facing the Eagles directly.
“Defense I thought really, really played their tails off,” Campbell said. “I thought they showed up, played championship-style defense.”
And … the offense?
“We gotta be better — especially on a day like today where you’re playing that kind of defense, that kind of team, you know the margin for error is so small, man,” Campbell said. “We get in the red zone, we have to score touchdowns, man. We can’t come away not scoring seven there. We have to convert at least two or three of those fourth downs. You have to, and we just — we were a little off.”
Those are both telling quotes, for different reasons. We’ll start with Campbell’s area of expertise. He stood on the sideline, reading glasses on, calling plays for the second consecutive week. But DC wasn’t in D.C. The Washington Commanders weren’t running out of the Lincoln Financial tunnel. The defending champs were.
It seemed to factor into Campbell’s thought process. At least, his postgame comments appeared to suggest it. Campbell said the Lions had to score touchdowns, not field goals, in the red zone. He said the Lions had to convert at least two or three of their five fourth-down attempts.
But did they?
Campbell’s aggression is usually a strength. Five years of data back that up, as his never-ending belief in his offense is typically rewarded with touchdowns. But the week-to-week consistency we’ve come to expect from this unit has been MIA this season. It’s one of the reasons Campbell took the play-calling reins from OC John Morton — to find a spark. But on Sunday night, he extinguished the one his defense provided.
Many assumed this would be a get-right game for the Eagles. They were going to feed A.J. Brown against a secondary down three starters, leading to his best game of the season. They were going to move the ball regularly against a defense that plays a high rate of man coverage, with a quarterback known to punish man coverage. Kinda like the last time these teams met in 2022 — a 38-35 Eagles win.
Dan Campbell’s offense was 3 for 13 on third down and 0 for 5 on fourth down Sunday night. (Junfu Han / Imagn Images)
Back then, this defense was one of the worst in football. Campbell needed to run fake punts in the second quarter. He needed to go for it as often as he did. He needed touchdowns — not field goals — to give his team a fighting chance. Over time, it became a staple of what he and these Lions would become.
But times have changed. This defense has changed, playing its best football of the Campbell era. Defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard has picked up where Aaron Glenn left off — elevating the talent he inherited. Next on the schedule was a talented-but-flawed Eagles offense. They entered Week 11 23rd in yards per game (303.2), 25th in yards per rush (4.0), 26th in offensive success rate and 27th in third-down conversion rate (34.9 percent).
It was more of the same vs. a Detroit defense that played lights out.
The Eagles had 12 completed possessions, excluding the final one to end the game. The Lions forced a punt or turnover on downs on eight of those. Three of the remaining four ended with field goals on drives that began in Detroit territory — off either a turnover or turnover on downs by Detroit’s offense. Only one touchdown was scored on those 12 possessions, and the Lions held an Eagles team scoring red zone touchdowns 81 percent of the time entering Week 11 to just 1-of-3 Sunday night. The Eagles recorded their fourth-worst EPA per drive of the Nick Sirianni era (-1.30), and their lowest in a game since Saquon Barkley joined the team.
A championship-style effort, as Campbell described.
“As a defense, those are situations you want, that you kind of dream about,” defensive tackle Alim McNeill said. “‘OK, what type of defense are we? Let’s stop this, put the fire out.’ You don’t really want those situations, but you want those situations as a defense so they can test you and challenge you and see where you are. That’s just our mentality right there. I don’t care if you put the ball at the 1-yard line, let’s stop it. Let’s put this fire out.”
Detroit’s defense put out a number of fires Sunday, in part, because Campbell’s coaching decisions seemed hellbent on making things as difficult as possible for them.
Maybe Campbell went into this game seeing the secondary a bit shorthanded and wanted to lean on his offense, like he’s done so often in the past. You can see the logic behind it, and his words clearly suggest he thought they could do more than they did. You don’t go into a game thinking you’re going 0-for-5 on fourth downs. But this mentality came at the expense of a defense that was ready to meet the moment.
Instead of leaning into his defense as a strength and putting it in advantageous situations — like backing Philadelphia deep in its own territory or kicking field goals rather than hunting touchdowns in a low-scoring game — Campbell coached like a man stuck in 2022. The Lions found themselves trailing by 10 points in the fourth quarter of a game that could’ve been within one score, with a chance to win late. The trickle-down effect led to a high-volume pass game, minimal touches for David Montgomery and wasted drives despite Detroit moving the ball well at times.
At the end of the day, an offensive-minded script doesn’t work when you go 3-of-13 on third down. It doesn’t work when you go 0-for-5 on fourth down. It doesn’t work when Jared Goff — inaccurate and perhaps a bit rattled against a stout defensive front — completes just 14 of his 37 pass attempts. It doesn’t work when Amon-Ra St. Brown catches two of his 12 targets. It doesn’t work when you run for just 74 yards on 21 attempts.
Campbell’s offense didn’t have it. His defense did. Instead of realizing that and adjusting, his insistence on winning this game with his offense was a factor in this loss.
“That’s just kind of who we are and when it doesn’t work, it’s going to get questioned by you guys and when it works, it’s going to get praised by you guys and it didn’t work today,” Goff said. “I understand the question, but part of me says once you commit to it, you have to keep doing it. At some point you’re going to convert them. Tonight wasn’t our night on fourth down and it sucks.”
“Look, the bottom line is you obviously, if you go totally conservative in the way this game played out and the way it was, you got a better chance of winning that game than some of those decisions I made,” Campbell said. “I understand that.”
The Lions have lost two out of their last three games. They’re now third in the NFC North, 11 weeks into the season. With a chance to alleviate some lingering concerns about his team’s ability to hold its own against top competition, in a game billed as a potential NFC Championship preview, the night ended with one team in pole position for the conference’s No. 1 seed, and the other on the outside looking in on the playoff race.
Campbell isn’t going to change this philosophy — nor should he entirely. You can’t get away from what got you here. This game feels like an anomaly in some ways, considering the Lions have had success on fourth-down conversions this season. They’ll get the New York Giants next for a chance to bounce back, before a much-anticipated Thanksgiving matchup vs. the Green Bay Packers.
But there was a persistence that lingered far longer than it needed to Sunday evening, and that falls on the head coach.
Perhaps it’s time for Campbell to lean into what he has on the other side, as his offense figures things out.
