Despite Dan Campbell owning 100% of the blame, Lions ST coordinator Dave Fipp says he has ownership over Detroit’s end-of-half error vs. the Bucs, too.
We still don’t know exactly what caused the communication breakdown for the Detroit Lions at the end of the first half that cost them a chance at a short field goal, and we likely never will. But on Thursday, Lions special teams coordinator Dave Fipp took some of the blame upon his own shoulders.
“Situations like that, there’s a lot that go into it,” Fipp said. “They’re all critical, they come at critical moments in the game, that one certainly was for us, and the only thing I will say is any time I’m a part of something. I definitely feel a responsibility for not getting the job done so I take a lot of the responsibility for that also. I know for a fact there’s a lot of things that I could have done different and would do different if I could do it again today, so I feel like I need to take my share of the ownership and responsibility also, certainly.”
As a quick reminder of what happened, time was running out in the half and the Lions had no timeouts. After running a play that ended inbounds with about 11 seconds left and the clock running, Detroit had to either rush the field goal team onto the field or spike the football on offense. The obvious decision was to spike the football, but someone had instructed the field goal unit onto the field. So when the ball was snapped to spike the ball, the Lions had about 15 players on the field. The ensuing too-many-men penalty resulted in a 10-second runoff, ending the half without a field goal attempt.
The all-22 of the Lions’ spike play/(way) too many men on the field penalty pic.twitter.com/RZ9VkoE0rJ
— Dave Birkett (@davebirkett) September 16, 2024
At the end of the game—which the Lions lost by a score of 20-16—an emotional Dan Campbell took the blame entirely.
“There’s no way to justify this. It’s a massive error on my part, no one else’s, and it was just between hurry-up field goal and clocking it. And it was 100 percent my fault,” Campbell said.
Fipp was asked if he is normally the one who communicates when the special teams unit should take the field, but he declined to give insight into their process.
“I won’t get into all of that, but it kind of depends on the situation,” Fipp said. “I would just say it like that.”
