If the football gods are real, the Lions will get another crack at the Cowboys.
"Screw it," Aidan Hutchinson told reporters after the Lions' controversial loss Saturday night in Dallas. "I'd rather beat them in the playoffs anyway."
The Lions thought they had the Cowboys beat Saturday night, until a gaffe by official Brad Allen took a go-ahead two-point conversion pass to Taylor Decker with 23 seconds to go off the board. Dallas escaped with a 20-19 win, costing Detroit the inside track to the No. 2 seed in the NFC playoffs.
Dan Campbell was fuming in the immediate aftermath. He was also already looking ahead. While his players will get two days to recover, Campbell said in his postgame interview on 97.1 The Ticket that he and his staff will be in the building Sunday "to break this game down and grade it out where we need to improve, because we'll see this team again."
"I hope we see this team again," he said.
If they do, it will likely be in Detroit. The Lions will enter the playoffs as the 3 seed and the Cowboys as the 5 seed, assuming the Eagles, who are currently the 2 seed, win their final two games (versus Cardinals, at Giants). Of course, thanks to Saturday night's result, there's a chance a potential grudge match could come in Dallas, where the Lions would be facing all kinds of demons. What better way to vanquish them?
As the playoff picture stands now, the Lions would host Matthew Stafford and the Rams -- speaking of demons -- on wild card weekend, while the Cowboys would visit the Bucs, who lead the NFC South at 8-7. A rematch between Dallas and Detroit the next weekend at Ford Field would require the Eagles losing in the first round. Otherwise, the Lions would be visiting Philadelphia.
That's what hung in the balance when Campbell opted to go for two and the win Saturday night, leaving his offense on the field even after Allen's phantom call had pushed the Lions back to the seven-yard line. Detroit got a second and third chance after an offsides penalty on the Cowboys, but Jared Goff couldn't connect with tight end James Mitchell near the goal line on the decisive play.
It was a bold, arguably stubborn decision by Campbell, likely clouded in the moment by anger. He was understandably furious with the officials, having explained to them "to a tee" before the game what was going to happen on the wrongly-penalized play. In his commitment to going for two, Campbell said he was following through on what he had promised his players ahead of the potential game-winning drive.
"I told them, 'We’re driving the length of the field, we’re going to score and we’re going for two.' I stuck by that and I didn’t give a sh*t what happened, we were going to win that game, and we did. We just got an L," he said.
Campbell is nothing if not accountable. He wasn't pinning the loss on the officials, knowing the Lions had several chances to win the game before the final drive. They did play well enough to overcome a good team on the road, just not quite well enough to overcome a bad call at the finish. Don't allow the call to matter, right? Don't depend on the officials to get it right.
"It’s like I say, man, we can never let this thing come down to — don’t let it come down to anybody else but us," he said. "We had our opportunities in that game, before any of that happened, and we weren’t able to capitalize. We gave up too much.
"And look, we got that team’s very best shot on the road. They’re very good at home, and we didn’t play our best ball and we right right there at the end, and we got an L."
They'll also get a chance to avenge it, if the football gods grant Campbell and the Lions their wish.