Bears quarterback Caleb Williams "didn't appreciate" a hit he took from Lions linebacker Jack Campbell last week, but Dan Campbell cleared such a play ahead of time with the officials.
Jack Campbell drove Williams out of bounds with a lunging shoulder to the hip as the quarterback was approaching the sideline on a scramble early in the second half, which Williams and several of his teammates and coaches objected to after he folded at the waist and landed awkwardly on his knees.
"That play was funky, let’s put it that way," Williams said after the Lions' 23-20 win. "I didn’t really appreciate the play, he just kind of dove straight at my knee, so I didn’t really get that. Definitely kind of frustrated about that one."
The officials deemed the tackle clean. Thanks to Dan Campbell, they knew it might be coming. As Amon-Ra St. Brown explained on the St. Brown Podcast this week, the Lions head coach implored his defense in a pregame meeting to hit Williams near the sidelines rather than assume he would give himself up and told the officiating crew his players would operate with those instructions in mind.
Williams, who's dangerous with his legs, has shown a tendency to run toward the sideline only to cut back inside for extra yards.
"The craziest part is, before the game in our team meeting, Dan was talking to us and showing clips of Caleb going out of bounds, going back in, going out," explained St. Brown. "He said, 'No you don't.' And he goes, 'If he does this, we're going to hit his ass.' He said, 'I already warned the refs, the refs know.'
"So when it happened in the game, I already know there's no flag because he was running out of bounds and came back in and Jack hit his ass."