The Field Goal That Will Live in Infamy

Dan Campbell has been under fire for his fourth down choices, but I think we're talking about the wrong one.

Did the Lions getting too conservative cost them a place in the Super Bowl?

I know. Not a question I figured I'd be asking either come Monday morning, but here we are.

We all know it by now. Fourth down is the Lions' thing. They're better at it than almost anybody else. Just look at the beneath graph, showing how good every team is at going for it when doing so would benefit them:

As you can see, most teams can't even break the 50 percent mark. The list of teams that are extremely bad at this includes very good ones, like the Ravens and Rams all the way at the far right of this graph, so keep in mind that not being good at fourth down decision making doesn't make somebody a bad coach or their team a bad team. It's just a potentially exploitable weakness, but one that the Lions didn't have this season. They have no difficulty breaking the 50 percent mark as far as correct fourth down decisions, and are way left, at the good end of the graph.

I personally think this lack of fear on fourth down is a big factor in why Detroit overachieved so much this season. For reference, my Expected Wins model thinks Detroit should've won about ten games this season. That's approximately on par with Los Angeles (Rams) and Green Bay, and a world away from the 12 they actually got to clinch the division with time to spare.

To perform this much better than your raw offensive and defensive metrics say you should have means you need an advantage somewhere else. This advantage normally comes in the form of special teams (like it did for Philadelphia and the New York Jets this season), but not for Detroit. Their special teams did not help or hinder, generating precisely zero value for them according to FTN Fantasy, so what is it?

Could it be that perhaps having so much less fear than everybody else is an advantage after all?

I wrote an article just last month about how Detroit's daring almost snookered them a win on the road in Dallas that they absolutely positively did not deserve (and in the end didn't get because of referee stuff, but I'll leave that there). How effective do you think it is against the Chicagos and the Minnesotas and all the other teams that ought to lose to Detroit, when we see how effective it is in the big games?

In summary, I've heard the phrase 'over aggression' all the time with regards to the Lions, and every time I've thought it's junk. That's not changed, and in fact I think that if Detroit had only stuck to their guns, they could have won last night.

We all know what I'm talking about. Here is the scenario:

San Francisco has one of the worst rush defences in the NFL, and Detroit has been exploiting it to no end for the entire first half. Their first drive saw three rushes for 61 yards and a score. Their second saw much more Jared Goff, but still, five rushes for 25 yards and the touchdown isn't bad at all. Their third is no worse, but results in a very out of character punt from the 46 yard line that fortunately for Detroit goes unpunished as Brock Purdy throws an interception and the Lions score another touchdown to go up 21-7.

Once again the Niners don't respond, and Detroit gets the ball with 5 minutes left in the half. They do a wonderful job with this touch (aside from Goff missing a wide open Jahmyr Gibbs in the end zone), getting all the way to first and goal at the seven at the 28 second mark, and this is where we stop.

The Lions throw a pass that goes over Sam LaPorta's head, a run that gets stuffed, and then a screen that gets the Lions to the three yard line with ten seconds left in the half. The offence does not move, obviously expecting to go for the touchdown here, but we see Dan Campbell on the sideline calling field goal, and here I ask you a simple question:

Why?

I'll begin with the positives: A field goal here is three guaranteed points, and a guaranteed three possession lead over the San Francisco 49ers. This field goal takes Detroit's estimated Win Probability all the way up to 77 percent once it's made (according to NFLFastR). It's a nice thing to have a few possessions to play with, especially against this 49er defence, who can end your possession with a splash play in a heartbeat at any time in the coming half.

This is where the positives end, and we get into the negatives. First and foremost, this is a stunning lack of faith in an offence that's had such an easy time in the first half. I know people love to be conservative, especially in the playoffs, but to those conservative fans, I'll ask you this: why do you even need a three possession lead when your offence is playing this well?

We know what's going to happen in the second half. Detroit is going to score zero meaningful points, but we didn't know that at the ten second mark of the first half. This is my first question for the Lions' decision makers. A three score lead is great, but what does it actually get you?

I'll tell you what it gets you.

Nothing.

Wait. What? How can a three possession lead be completely meaningless?

Had Detroit gone into half with merely a two touchdown lead, they would've gone into half with a 77 percent chance of winning. Doing what they did, they went into half with a 77 percent chance of winning.

Yup. In terms of their chances of winning the game, this field goal netted them absolutely nothing, and I'll explain to you why.

Through this entire process, you mustn't forget that the opponent here is the San Francisco 49ers. No matter what you do they are going to score on you. Unless you're Cleveland defensively (not even close Detroit, sorry), you must accept this and play accordingly in order to beat them. Conservatism has no place in a game like this. When you're playing a team that's as much better than you as the 49ers are over Detroit, your mentality must be to keep the foot on the throat at all times, because if you give them an inch to breathe they are going to beat you. It makes no difference how far you're ahead.

Think of all those Patriots playoff games from a bygone era. 14 point lead, 18 point lead, 28-3 lead, all immaterial. One inch of breathing space, and they beat you. These 49ers are no different.

Therefore, a three score lead is meaningless. In the eyes of the Win Probability model, that sentence is literal. Not even a one percent increase in the chance of winning results from a change from a 14 to a 17 point lead.

What did the Lions give up for this meaningless change in the game state? Well, if they would've scored a touchdown on this fourth down play, they would've gone into half leading 28-7, giving them a hearty 91 chance to win, meaning the Niners would've essentially needed a miracle to win from that point. None of this changes what I said above. The Lions still would've needed to keep the foot on the throat mentality throughout the second half, but a 21 point lead is much, much easier to hold onto than a 17 point one, because adding one more touchdown to the requirements just means a lot more than adding one more field goal. Contrast this with the chance of failure, which as noted above is literally nothing, and this becomes one of the most obvious go for it situations the Lions have seen all season.

If you need any more evidence, here are the numbers according to Ben Baldwin's fourth down decision calculator. Notice in particular the lack of any difference at all between failing the touchdown try and succeeding at the field goal try:

Aside from obligatory fourth quarter ones, plus 4.5 expected Win Probability makes this one of the most obvious fourth down tries you will ever see, and yet, somehow, the team that made their identity on not missing things like this blew it big time in the most important moment. I would say this is typical Lions, but it's not typical of Detroit to be particularly good at anything, so I'm not really sure what to call this.

It's the worst moment of Dan Campbell's coaching tenure. That is for sure, but even that phrasing doesn't seem grand enough for a failure of this magnitude.

What makes this so disappointing is that the Detroit Lions are the very last team in the league I would have expected to make a mistake of this nature. They of all teams have figured out that sometimes you have to embrace the idea that you're not the better team in order to win. Just last month in that game against Dallas we saw them fully lean into the idea that they were not the better team and would have to do some out of the box things in order to win because talent was not going to be enough, and by hook or by crook they nearly got there.

It's not fun to embrace that your opponents are just better than you, but football isn't about being the better team. It's about winning. These two concepts often overlap, but are absolutely not the same. Detroit seems to be the only team in the league at the moment that can get their head around this concept, and I love them for that, which explains why I feel like a spurned lover right now. They're willing embrace the mentality against Dallas of all teams, but they're too high and mighty to just accept that they can't beat San Francisco by playing conventionally?

I don't get this.

That is the crux of the disconnect here, and it's what I just don't understand about this. Detroit spent the whole season getting it right, playing conventionally when they could afford to (against Atlanta, Carolina, Las Vegas, Tampa Bay, etc.), and playing out of the box when they understood they had to in order to win, and we get to the final hurdle and they seemingly forget who they're playing.

This field goal makes sense against Chicago or Minnesota or Atlanta, but against San Francisco it's horrendous, and there's a real chance it cost the Detroit Lions one of the bigger upsets in NFC Championship history (they came in as eight point underdogs) and the NFC's place in the Super Bowl.

Of course this is not singlehandedly what lost Detroit this game. A single stop in the fourth quarter would've helped, but again, we have to exercise some situational awareness here. This is not just any opponent. This is the league's best offence, and not by a little bit either, with the league's best QB, the league's best RB, the league's best receivers (I'm not apologising Dolphins fans), and the confidence that comes with it. It's a top 25 offence in NFL history. There was always going to be a real chance they scored on every touch in a half against Detroit's 25th ranked pass defence. To think anything else would be foolish.

Under normal circumstances, Dan Campbell is the furthest thing from a fool you can find amongst NFL coaches, yet here we are. This field goal try only makes sense if you believe you can stop San Francisco from getting to 24 by the end of the game, because if you still thought you were going to have to outscore them you would've just gone for the touchdown. To think the Detroit Lions were going to be able to hold the 49ers to just 17 points in the second half doesn't make sense to me. It feels borderline unrealistic, and for a man who's made a good living by selectively taking away and giving back faith to his players at the perfect times, I fundamentally disagree with him this time.

Attempting to say this without insulting anybody, to be the coach of the Detroit Lions and to decide to put your faith in your defence when you're playing against the San Francisco 49ers is a bad idea.

I'm not a results-oriented person, and this isn't a results based article, or I would've mentioned anything about the second half at all, so I'll leave it at this:

You see how it worked out for them.

We know that going into the half up 14 instead of 17 wouldn't have changed anything. We knew that before the second half started, so I'm going to leave that one alone, but perhaps if the Lions had gone into the half up 21 instead of 17 it would've changed the calculus on the second half fourth down conversions they tried. As it stands, they were both good calls that just didn't work out, especially with their purported lack of faith in their kicker, but perhaps if the lead was bigger it could've been advantageous to kick a field goal to go up nine instead of six or something similar somewhere down the line. We just don't know.

What I do know is that before the first half ended, the Lions decided against a chance at a 21 point lead in favour of a 17 point one, which meant that they went into the final drive trailing by ten instead of six.

Just a thought.

In summary, the Detroit Lions were a super fun team in 2023. They were overachievers, and they went far further than they should've. Perhaps with just one final push they could've ended up in the Super Bowl against Kansas City. We've already seen how evenly matched those squads are. At the ten second mark of the first half of the NFC Championship game in San Francisco, there was a real chance of the unthinkable happening for Detroit, but that was when they (and they alone) sewed the seeds that led to their own eventual destruction.

Out of fear of jinx (Lion fans have been jinxed long enough), I'm not going to verbalise what the unthinkable is, but we all know. We all know Kansas City is a beatable opponent, even for Detroit. The chance was right in front of our eyes, and it slipped through our fingers.

Don't forget this field goal Lions fans. I know I'm never going to. I know it's tempting to just retreat into the coping period of the offseason and say 'we'll get them next year,' but don't, because sometimes you only get one chance. I (being a Jaguars fan) know this better than anybody. A great young core is only as good as it's playing this season. Never assume anything about the future, or you may just end up like the 2018 Jaguars. I never go more than a few months without going back and watching a game from 2017. Don't let the 2023 Lions turn into that squad. Make sure you get more than one chance. Ask Ryan Tannehill and the Titans how many chances you get. Ask Alex Smith and his version of the Chiefs. Ask Nick Foles and the 2010s Philadelphia Eagles.

Just because you convert on your one chance doesn't mean you got more than one chance. The only way to ensure that you get more chances is to remember the mistakes you made, and learn from them. For this reason, I hope this choice to kick this field goal is eating Dan Campbell alive right now. I hope he can't sleep and dreams about it all night all offseason. Ditto for all the Lions fans. That's how you make sure mistakes like this never happen again.

If you've ever been to a Lions game, you'll have seen a sign or a shirt or heard a human yelling 'please just win before I die.' I sincerely hope this wasn't their best chance to see that happen, but you never know about these things. I wish I knew one of those people, so I could ask them if they'd rather see this again or if they'd rather just go back to being 6-10 every year, because it just feels so Detroit to get this close to the unthinkable and fall short again.

I think it's very possible that you guys will be back soon, but remember this mistake. Ensure that it never happens again.