Getty Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell raved about the team's offensive coordinator Ben Johnson in Week 10.
In their late-season run in 2022, the Detroit Lions were masterful at putting pressure on opponents to force turnovers.
Head coach Dan Campbell wants to see the team get back to that mentality this year.
The Lions fell to 8-3 with a Thanksgiving Day loss to the Green Bay Packers where they lost the turnover battle and allowed first-year starter Jordan Love to carve up the defense. After the game, Campbell said the team “desperately” needs to generate more turnovers.
“Here’s what we got to do, we have to get takeaways. We have to, that’s something that we desperately got to work on,” Campbell said, via SI.com. “That’s one of the things we did a really good job of this time last year, once we hit that last call it 10, eight to 10 games, we were getting takeaways. We were playing tough, man. We were pressuring the quarterback, affecting him, but then, man, we were getting these. You’re getting two a game, you’re getting – and that’s where we’re not getting those enough right now.”
With the Lions losing ground in the race for the top overall seed in the NFC, Campbell said it is time for a mindset shift for the defense.
Defense Needs More Work
The Lions’ defense has been hit with a number of key injuries, especially in the secondary where safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson and cornerback Emmanuel Moseley were lost to season-ending injuries.
The defense has done enough to keep the Lions atop the NFC North, but Campbell said they need more work on forcing the kind of pressure that creates turnovers.
“And, to me that’s a mindset, and it’s something we got to work on. Have we worked on it? Yeah, but not enough,” Campbell said. “There’s a different way to emphasize it, I believe that. And, we just get one or two of those, we can change the game here and that to me is where the emphasis has got to go for us defensively. We got the guys, we got the coaches, but we got to get better there. We got to find a way to get some takeaways.”
Dan Campbell Takes Blame3
Campbell placed some of the blame on himself after the Lions lost to the Packers 34-20 on November 23. The head coach said it was his decision to call a fake punt while trailing nine points in the third quarter and the team backed up to their own 23-yard line.
The Packers snuffed out the fake punt and stopped the Lions short of the first-down marker, taking over and scoring a touchdown three plays later.
The Lions fake the punt on their own 23-yard line and the Packers stopped it 💪
After the game, Campbell said he was wrong to make the call.
“That’s a bad call on me. It’s a bad call,” Campbell told reporters. “I shouldn’t have done that to those guys. It’s a bad call.”
The Lions have a chance to rebound on a week with extra rest. They travel to New Orleans to take on the 5-5 Saints on December 3, and Heavy projections powered by Quarter4 give the Lions a 51% win probability.