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When Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell was asked what went wrong in Detroit’s heart-wrenching 19-17 loss to the Minnesota Vikings, he had to stop to pull himself together . It was the second time in his post-match press conference that he had to hold back tears. The emotion of another last second loss was too strong.
The Lions valiantly held off a 16-6 deficit. They scored 10 points in the last three minutes of the game, but left 37 seconds on the clock. The Vikings took full advantage of this, pushing the ball into basket territory. For the second time in three weeks, the Lions lost to a career-long kicker – this time Vikings kicker Greg Joseph struck both on 55 and the match winner on 54, eclipsing his long career of 53 . It is the first time in NFL history one team lost twice on goals over 50 yards late in the same season, and the Lions endured it in three weeks.
Campbell obviously wants his first win for himself, but after the game all he could feel was pain for his players.
“You want it for yourself as an organization and for all of us,” Campbell said. “But you want it for the players. They’re out there breaking their asses. It’s hard.”
“When you see your players giving everything they have and you lose that way, it’s hard. You don’t want that for them.
Throughout the press, Campbell praised their courage, their passion and their spirit to never give up. This game seemed lost long before the Vikings’ winning kick, but linebacker Jalen Reeves-Maybin snatched the ball from Alexander Mattison’s hands, giving the Lions a golden opportunity to tie the game just 20 yards away. Vikings end zone. .
“It was exceptional,” Campbell said of Reeves-Maybin’s play. “You saw that last week, and I saw it the week before, the guy takes it out on football. It is not by accident or coincidence. He goes after football. He makes a conscious effort to kick the ball, and it becomes contagious when more than a few guys do that. ”
In the end, Campbell came away inspired by the team’s performance and confident that the team will soon be on the other end of those heartbreaking games.
“We’re going to be on the winning side for a long time, hopefully sooner (rather) than later, but it’s happening. I don’t know when, but it happens. When you play that way and fight that way and clean up a few of those little mishaps that got us in the foot, our days of being on the winning side arrive.
You can watch its presser below. It starts at 5:22 am:
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