To me, my thought was, 'Hey, man, if we can, for three hours, just ease their suffering a little bit, that's worth it.' So, that's kinda how I thought of this and we did a great job, players responded and played well." Some of our players know of someone that was affected. "The shirts, the hats, the decals, the people that are affected. "I just wanted them to know exactly what we were going to represent today," said Campbell. A long-yearned shot of euphoria and a landmark day in his head coaching career, and his mind was there. On Sunday he elected to open his post-game presser by dedicating Detroit's first victory of the year to the victims of the mass shooting at the local Oxford High School, reading off the names of the four students that sadly lost their lives along with that of the six others and the teacher that were wounded.
Jobs in the NFL don't come much tougher than that which greeted him at a Ford Field sucked of any real substantial optimism. Three months of rehearsing his winner's speech in the mirror (he probably, likely certainly didn't do this) culminated in the real deal, the big dance when the Lions snapped their 15-game, 364-day winless streak with a walk-off touchdown as time expired against the Vikings.ĭetroit's 'onions have layers, Dan Campbells have layers' leader talked a tough game when he promised the biting of opposition knee-caps upon his appointment, he peaked ridicule-hungry intrigue with the revelation his morning routine entails two 40-ounce coffees with two shots of espresso each, and he drew sympathy while breaking down in tears after October's late defeat to Minnesota. We did and it made a difference.The Detroit Lions picked up with their first win of 2021 with a last-second touchdown against the Minnesota Vikings.ĭan Campbell has had some time to think about what he might say after his first win as an NFL head coach, more time than he would have wished for, more time than he would have envisioned. You can’t prepare them for every look you’re going to get, you just have to play the odds by personnel and looks that you get and hope that they play their roles. On the third, after Minnesota took a 27-23 lead with 1:50 to play, Kirk Cousins threw incomplete toward a mass of players.ĬARLOS MONARREZ: How in the world did Lions get their first win of season? Thank Jared GoffĬampbell said Lions defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn "had a good beat on what" the Vikings were trying to do. So those weren’t the best."Īlex Anzalone stopped Nwangwu on an inside handoff on the Vikings' first two-point attempt, and Derrick Barnes tackled Alexander Mattison short of the goal line on the second. Then we tried to hand the ball off to Kene (Nwangwu). "They weren’t very good, I didn’t think," Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said of his team's two-point tries. "We tried to run it and smash it down their throats from the 1-yard line. Brown said Sunday's touchdown - the first of his career - came on a play the Lions have repped every Friday in practice since training camp. LIONS GRADES: Jared Goff playing B-level football, which is an improvement I didn’t want to get back into the field of play, I wanted to stay in the end zone." So I was looking at Jared, I was like, 'Oh, please just throw it.' And the ball was in the air, I was like, 'This can’t take any longer.' Cause I know the (defensive back is) coming from behind, so I was just sitting there waiting, cause I couldn’t really attack it. "As I broke in, I was wide open, actually," St. Brown, the Detroit Lions' rookie receiver, capped a career day by catching the game-winning touchdown pass from Goff as time expired Sunday to give the Lions their first win of the season, 29-27, over the Minnesota Vikings at Ford Field. It took a split-second for the ball to travel from Jared Goff's right hand to Amon-Ra St.