Lions head coach Dan Campbell has taken some pointed criticism for how he handled the clock at the end of Detroit’s preseason opener against Buffalo. The Lions scored on a go-ahead late field goal but left time for the Bills to rally in a two-minute drill for a game-winning field goal.
Campbell explained that winning the meaningless exhibition game was not important. Instead, he wanted to see how certain players could operate in situational football. He addressed the controversy in his Monday press confernece.
“To me, that was about getting (QB David) Blough a couple of throws or see if we could, see if we could score a touchdown in a tight red (zone),” Campbell said. “Ordinarily, would have milked those timeouts out of our opponent. It was kind of one of those – that was my first inclination and I was like, ‘Hey, man, Blough’s going pretty good here, we’re moving the ball a little bit. Let’s see if we can find a way to get it in the end zone or get some throws.’ Certainly, you’d rather not get a throw to where it goes out of bounds, even if you are trying to be more aggressive. That’s on me. That’s not them.”
Campbell continued,
“It was, ‘I’m trying to get a look on these guys,’ all of us. The benefit is if you don’t get it, then your defense is in a two-minute, which is what happened at the end and you get another look at those guys under a high-stress situation, some of those young players. It’s tough because you are, you want to win the game, but you are also trying to evaluate these guys under certain circumstances. That’s really what the focus was, I guess, if you will.”
Campbell’s focus on seeing what his players can do rightly trumps the final score of a game that doesn’t count. And if his defense had come up with the stop in the final minute, many of the critics who are slamming Campbell’s clock management would be praising his strategy for getting a good look at the two-minute defense.