For the second time this season, the Lions lost Sunday on a last-second field goal from more than 50 yards away. For the first time, Dan Campbell bowed his head and wiped tears from his eyes during his postgame presser. It was that kind of ending in Minnesota, amid that kind of start to the year.
"That was tough," said Campbell, his eyes red, his voice hoarse, his hat pushed high above his brow. "A heartbreaker. I was proud of the way our guys fought, man. That was the the first thing I told them. It's tough to be 0-5, it’s tough to lose like that again, but I was proud of them, man. You don't get yourself back in a game and get to where we were at if you don’t believe and give all that you have."
The Lions were trailing the Vikings 16-6 when Jared Goff was sacked on fourth down on Detroit's 34-yard line with under four minutes to play. Game over, right? Not quite. The Lions' defense forced a three-and-out and a missed field goal, their offense pulled within seven and then LB Jalen Reeves-Maybin ripped the ball away from Alexander Mattison on the Vikings' ensuing drive to give Detroit possession on Minnesota's 20 with just under two minutes to play.
Game on.
Three plays later, D'Andre Swift was in the end zone. And instead of taking the extra point for the tie, Campbell went for the win.
"I wanted to win that game, I wanted to finish it out and I felt the best way to win that game was to go for the two points and be done with it," he said. "And I trusted our guys. That was an easy decision for me to make."
It paid off when Goff found WR Khadarel Hodge, a Browns castoff who signed with the Lions last month, in the back of the end zone for a 17-16 lead with 37 seconds left. Game over ... right?
Nope.
With two timeouts and two long passes to Adam Thielen, Kirk Cousins drove the Vikings into Detroit territory to set up Greg Joseph for a 54-yard field goal with three seconds on the clock. And just like Justin Tucker two weeks ago, Joseph sunk a knife in the Lions' hearts.
"When you see your players give all that they have and you lose that way, it’s tough," Campbell said, and now his voice started to crack and his eyes started to water. "You don’t want that for them. But we’ll be better for it."
Campbell wiped away tears and said, "Credit Minnesota."
The Lions lost this game before they won it. And then they lost it all over again, just like they did against the Ravens in Week 3. That one burned. This one stung, like salt in the wound. Campbell will have to wait at least another week for his first win as Lions head coach.
"You want to earn one, and we’re this close," Campbell said, holding his fingers less than an inch apart. "We haven’t done it, so we’re not quite there. We haven’t quite got over the hump. But I do think in the long run this is going to pay dividends for us. As ugly as it is right now and hard to swallow, I do think we're building something special here that’s going to serve us well in the long term."
Campbell won't sleep Sunday night, even if he wanted to. He stays up after games and watches the tape. He looks for every mistake, every missed opportunity, every moment in time that turned a win into a loss. Whenever he does close his eyes, likely sometime Monday evening, Campbell will dream about the day these losses become wins.
"Here’s what I try to keep picturing in my head, because I know it's coming: we’re going be on the winning side of these before long, hopefully sooner than later," he said. "It’s coming. I don’t know when, but it’s coming. When you play that way and fight that way and clean up a couple of these mishaps, our days of being on the winning side of that are coming."
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