Lions Need To Play With Controlled Fury To Get Over the Hump
Credit: Matt Krohn-Imagn Images
One year ago, Dan Campbell had an axe to grind. The Detroit Lions had just lost a game to the Dallas Cowboys. Whether you believe Taylor Decker reported eligible on a potential go-ahead two-point conversion pass from Jared Goff to Dan Skipper, the refs’ opinion was the only one that mattered. What was sheer jubilation turned into disgust as the play was called back and the Lions lost 20-19 in front of a national audience.
Had the Lions won, they would have earned home-field advantage in the NFC playoffs. Instead, they entered their final game feeling like they were screwed, and even Campbell didn’t want to talk about it until a few days later when the Lions were preparing for their final regular season game against the Minnesota Vikings.
“I’ve got controlled fury and I’m ready to go,” Campbell said. “I am absolutely ready to go. I don’t go the other way, so the team won’t either. We’re on a mission and we’re not going to feel sorry for ourselves and wallow in everything. We had plays to make, we didn’t make them and it’s a tight game, a good opponent, a playoff-type atmosphere and you’ve got to make that extra play that we didn’t. And so we will use this as fuel. I’ve got pure octane right now. I woke up. I’m ready. So we’re moving forward.”
As the calendar flipped to 2025, the Lions found themselves in a similar situation. They dispatched the San Francisco 49ers in a game deemed meaningless by everyone outside of Campbell’s locker room. But they find themselves with home-field advantage on the line again as they host the Vikings on Sunday night.
A battle between two elite teams leaves a slim margin for error, but if the Lions are going to grab the brass ring this time around, they’ll need to channel some of the “controlled fury” that Campbell had a year ago.
Look at the last two months of Lions football. Detroit got into this position by slamming the pedal to the floor. While that strategy made light work of teams like the Jacksonville Jaguars and Tennessee Titans, it has forced the normally aggressive Campbell and Ben Johnson into fight-or-flight mode coming into the home stretch.
In some cases, it worked. Campbell’s decision to go for a fourth-down conversion late helped Detroit earn a 34-31 win over the Green Bay Packers on Dec. 5. A week later Campbell’s decision for an onside kick with 10 minutes remaining but the Lions in a 48-42 loss to the Buffalo Bills.
Even the next two games felt like track meets. The Lions jumped out to a 20-0 lead in the first 17:11 on the way to a 34-17 win over the Bears. Then Detroit didn’t force a single punt while outlasting the 49ers 40-34 on Monday night.
Lack of defensive stops be damned, this is the way Campbell likes his team to play. When the Lions had a meaningless game against the Green Bay Packers in 2022, it was Campbell who emptied the bag and put an end to the Aaron Rodgers Era at Lambeau Field. Even in 2023, Campbell had the second-most fourth-down conversion attempts in football, with his 40 attempts trailing the Carolina Panthers’ 48 attempts.
In a lot of ways, Campbell is a mobster who has made a killing by playing Russian Roulette. But there’s a subtle difference between last year’s team and this year’s team at this point of the season.
The Lions played a similar style last January but it felt calculated and never out of control. The methodical approach worked in a razor-thin 24-23 victory over the Los Angeles Rams in the Wild Card round and allowed the Lions to take care of business in a 31-23 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Even in the NFC Championship Game, the Lions built a 24-7 lead at halftime before the 49ers came back for a 34-31 victory. Yes, Campbell’s fourth-down decisions came under the microscope in that game, but they were sound decisions that would have made him a hero if a couple of passes hadn’t clanked off of Josh Reynolds’s hands.
This year, it feels like the Lions are making the same decisions, but doing so like a Mortal Kombat player who doesn’t know the buttons: hook-and-ladders, passes to offensive linemen, passes BY offensive linemen. Sure, the plays are working, but what happens when they don’t, and how do they explain them?
Things like this work against dumpster fires like Tennessee and Jacksonville. But they may not work against a team like the Vikings.
You can nitpick the Vikings season if you want. They beat the Colts, Jaguars, Bears, Arizona Cardinals, and Seattle Seahawks by one possession while the Lions defeated those opponents by an average of 20 points per game. But they feel like they have the controlled fury that Campbell’s team played with a year ago.
Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores is similar to Johnson in that he owns a league-high 38% blitz rate, according to Pro Football Reference. But he is also tied with the Lions with a 25.7% pressure rate this season. Outside of Flores’s “fight fire with fire” comments last October, Flores is a stoic, calculated coach, which is the same attitude Kevin O’Connell shows with his team.
It’s why even if Lions fans want to downplay Minnesota’s wins, they still matter because it’s a consistent bullet-proof approach that helps them come out on top more often than not. Even the Lions had this approach when they overcame an early 10-0 deficit in a 31-29 win in Minneapolis in Week 7. They make the right play at the right time, and that’s what Campbell meant by referring to that “controlled fury” one year ago.
The NFL waiting for Campbell to find the bullet in the chamber may be an overblown narrative, but the calculated aspect of making the right play at the right time can’t be understated. The Lions need to find the controlled fury that Campbell discussed one year ago. If they do, it could help them do what last year’s team couldn’t and make teams come to Detroit on their way to the Super Bowl.
Up Next