Dan Campbell has led the Detroit Lions to their first NFC Championship Game in 32 years, but he’s not getting complacent.
At his press conference Monday, Campbell pointed out one area where his team could have been better during Sunday’s 31-23 Divisional Round win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“First of all, we didn’t handle that whole thing well on our end,” Campbell said. “We should have bled it more than we did. Look, I’ll be the first to admit that, and that’s on me. But yeah, we knew he had a timeout left. I could tell he wasn’t going to call it. That’s how it ended.”
The Lions intercepted Tampa Bay’s Baker Mayfield with 1:33 remaining, seemingly putting the finishing touch on the win.
However, if Bucs head coach Todd Bowles had correctly used his timeouts , he could have potentially gotten the ball back with 30 seconds left. Instead, the Lions were able to kill the remaining time.
“They already had the field goal lined up, and there would’ve been about 12 seconds left on the clock to end the ball game,“ Bowles said regarding his decision. “We weren’t going to come back from that.“
Either way, the Lions are on their way to California, where they’ll face the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game at 6:30 p.m. ET Sunday on FOX.