The Lions just beat a first-place team on the road to push their record to 9-3, their best start since 1962. Great, says Dan Campbell. They need to be better.
"It’s a good win by the guys, but it’s not good enough," Campbell said Monday. "It’s not good enough and our guys know that. There’s more out there and we want more."
It's the right tone to strike as the Lions enter the final five games of the season with a three-game lead in the NFC North. They cannot be satisfied with what they've done. It's also an honest self-assessment on the part of Campbell after watching Sunday's film.
Campbell has stressed the need for his team to be playing its best football of the season in December and into January. Detroit played two strong quarters of football against the Saints, and two suspect ones. It escaped New Orleans, which was only a first-place team by virtue of playing in the NFC South, with a 33-28 win.
For one, the Lions continued a troubling trend of falling flat out of halftime. A 24-7 lead at the break was down to 27-21 entering the fourth quarter. The third quarter has been a stumbling block for the Lions for most of the season, to the point that Campbell is running out of ways to address it. What he won't do is ignore it.
"Man, we just keep tinkering with it," he said. "I think we continue to say, ‘Alright, what is going to be best to get us going on offense? Defensively, do we need to calm things down, or maybe we need to just pressure it a little bit more coming out after halftime.' So, listen, believe it or not, we just continue to try to do a little bit of everything, but we’re not going to lose sight of it."
One of the positives for the defense last week was generating 23 quarterback pressures. One of the negatives was allowing a slew of explosive plays, many of them on third down. Detroit yielded conversions on third and 17, third and 16, third and 13, third and 12 and third and 9; all of them sustained drives that ended in touchdowns. Four of them came on passes of 20-plus yards.
Campbell said the Lions' "first and foremost" focus was stopping running back Alvin Kamara: "We could not let AK take the game over."
"And I thought, for the most part, we handled him well," said Campbell. "Now, when you do that, you open up a couple of other areas, so he got us a couple of times. There’s probably two or three of those that were self-induced, and we’ve got to clean up our own issues. But I believe we will and we can."
With Alex Anzalone sidelined by a hand injury last week, Jalen Reeves-Maybin played a bigger role at linebacker. The Lions liked what he showed them, particularly in coverage: "We have to find a way to get him out there a little bit (more)," said Campbell. They also got a solid performance out of Bruce Irvin in his Lions debut. The veteran pass rusher had a sack and another quarterback hit that knocked Derek Carr out of the game and will see more snaps moving forward.
Offensively, the Lions left too many big plays behind last week. Jared Goff had Jameson Williams running free on a crosser that could have gone for a long touchdown in the first half and threw incomplete to Josh Reynolds instead. The Lions had to punt. Kalif Raymond later had a path to the end zone on an end-around before a mix-up on the part of his blockers allowed the Saints to take him down. The Lions had to settle for a nine-yard gain and an eventual field goal.
Just two examples of missed opportunities, and the importance of the details on every snap. As Campbell said, "There were a couple things fundamentally that if we were a little bit better on, they go from a yard, two-yard gain, to a 15-yard gain, and it really is that small."
It was still a good win for the Lions, who won't apologize for getting the job done in the Superdome. It was yet another step toward their first division title in 30 years. Their first goal was always winning the NFC North, and they're close to achieving it. But it was never their only goal. The Lions want to do damage in January, which will require cleaner, crisper football in December.
"They’ll be ready to go this week, man," said Campbell. "Chicago, we know what they are and they’re coming off a bye. This’ll be a big week for us.”