Dan Campbell will put the past behind him, but not before learning from it. In the aftermath of the Lions' second-half collapse in the NFC title game last season, he went over the tape with his coaching staff to figure out how it all fell apart.
"We didn't even watch the first half," Campbell said Tuesday at the NFL owners meetings. "We just watched from the third quarter on and kind of charted a little bit of everything on what went wrong, scheme wise, decision wise, player wise."
For the Lions, a 24-7 halftime lead over the 49ers turned into a crushing 34-31 loss. And what Campbell said he realized when he watched it back is that "San Francisco willed that to happen."
"They had players that, man, in critical moments that quarterback made big plays, (Christian) McCaffrey made big plays, made a big catch, (Brandon) Aiyuk made a big catch, 15 (Jauan Jennings) over the middle for a first down, and they willed those things to happen. And that’s the next step for us."
To that end, Campbell plans to "put a tremendous amount of stress on our players before the season" starts, especially in training camp, to "just mold them and shape them and get them there." But first, Campbell will have them rewatch the collapse like he did.
"You gotta swallow that pill, you gotta watch it. We gotta watch it together, which we will," he said. "That’s the one game you don’t get to watch together, so we’re going to watch that. We’re going to digest the whole thing, man."
It took Campbell some time to get over the loss, but he feels hardened by it now. He said that once "you get over licking your wounds and you step back and take a look at where you can improve, you get really excited." He expects the same for his players.
"That experience will play well to us because you’re either going to get better from it or you’ll just get worse because you’re broken. And we’re not going to break," he said, laughing at the very idea. "We’re just not. We got too good of guys."
The Lions went a long way last season, winning their first division title in 30 years and ultimately winning a franchise-best 14 games. That included just their second and third playoff wins in the Super Bowl era. With his fourth season in Detroit approaching, Campbell is "energized because I know what we’re capable of doing, because I know the types of coaches and players we've got."
"And we’ve only added to that, and Brad (Holmes) is only going to continue to add to that through this draft. That’s what’s exciting, too: there’s a chance we draft a lot of guys who don’t come in and start, but they’re quality players. All they've done is raise the floor, man," said Campbell. "The competition goes up because they’re trying to take these starting jobs, these veterans only get better and they push the ceiling."
No, said Campbell, maybe he wasn't quite ready to move forward in the days following the Lions' heartbreak in San Francisco, where their season died on the doorstep of the Super Bowl. But "I feel like every day I’ve gotten more and more energy back and more and more desire."
"And I feel like we’re going to be battle-hardened and ready to go. Like, man, that’s the next one. We gotta get over that hill and we can do it," he said. "And I love that we’ve got something to shoot for and something to go get."