Addressing America's Dan Campbell Problem
Let's establish a couple of things right off the bat this morning. First, Dan Campbell had his Lions ready to play yesterday. On the road. Against the best team in the conference. The plucky underdog that had virtually everybody you know pulling for them because there have been XLVII Super Bowls and they've been to exactly nulla of them whent into their biggest game in 30 years and the moment wasn't too big for them.
Next, let's state that the opposite was true of Baltimore:
Finally, let's admit that while both these things are true, it's equally true that both Harbaugh and Campbell are the reasons their teams lost.
Campbell can defend his awful, nonsensical decision-making. Lord knows he's getting plenty of help. From Gregg Olsen during the broadcast and NFL writers:
But the argument "That's what the Lions did all year" is not a defensible position. If your kid flunks Trigonometry, you don't say he deserved to pass because "He always uses 69 as the value for pi." You just acknowledge he was being stupid and demand he do better.
And why tie your brain into a pretzel trying to justify Campbell's boneheaded decisions? By twice going for it on 4th down, he took two makeable field goals off the board in a game where he lost by 3. You don't need to tape off the area and wait for Forensics to show up and determine the cause of death. Moreover, that first 4th down stop:
… completely flipped the script. All the emotion and momentum went San Francisco's way. The crowd that was dead since going into the half down 24-7 went into a frenzy. And the Niners fed off that energy. Scoring 17 unanswered points, forcing Detroit mistakes, and making freakish plays:
Had Campbell simply done the sensible, logical thing and made it a 27-10 game halfway through the 3rd quarter, we'd be talking about what incredible job he's done taking the Lions to their first Super Bowl instead of trying to excuse his dumbassery. And dumbass it was. I don't hate analytics. They have their time and place. Situations where they can be helpful. But there's not a stat, a metric, a Win Probability, a DVOA or a Hogwarts spell you can come up with that can convince me it's better to NOT put points on the board when you're playing with a big lead in the 2nd half. Nor could you convince big Take the Points guys like Bill Parcells, Chuck Noll, Tom Landry, or any other coach who understood how winning is done long before the mathletes came up with this stuff 10 minutes ago.
But with Campbell, there's another element than just what the numbers say. It's something that's been bugging me about him since he first got the job in Miami, and it's carried over to Detroit. It's his whole hardo approach. His carefully crafted Apex Predator, Big Speech, "We're not afraid of [whatever]", feet spread wide apart at the podium, Alpha thing he does. The country fell in love with his act during Hard Knocks. And there's been no doubting his team has been responding to it on the way to 12-5. My question has always been if that's conducive to winning in the long run. Because at some point, making stupid, reckless decisions because you're trying to project some badass persona is going to cost you. And yesterday it did.
I'm not claiming Campbell hasn't done great things with that franchise since Matt Patricia ran it into the ground. The record speaks for itself. But the wise old mentor who trains a young apprentice how to fight always says it's about what's up here [points to head] before it's about what's here [holds up fist, sword, gun, football]. From Yoda to Mr. Miyagi to William Wallace's Uncle Argyle to Bill Walsh. All of whom would've taken the two field goals.
Just to bring it back to my own team, here's what I wrote before the Patriots promoted Jerod Mayo:
No Clown Shows
We've all seen the kinds of coaches and executives who read their reviews. By that I mean, who care how they're received by the media and fans. So they play up to the cameras. Try to come up with clever, memorable witticisms. Or bend over backwards to sound profound. Or go out of their way to demonstrate they're tough, non-nonsense hardos. … All the new leadership has to do is be their authentic selves and respect from the fans will be theirs. What we loved about Bill Belichick, besides the success, was that every single utterance he made was designed for one purpose: To keep the focus on winning. There was no other agenda. If the media and the rest of the world hated him for it was irrelevant. Be nice to these people. Treat them like hot garbage. We won't care. Just be yourselves and not some fake image you're trying to project and everything will be fine.