In the aftermath of a disheartening Detroit loss that brought more than a few cries of “Same Old Lions” from a lot of fans and media members (both local and national), head coach Dan Campbell offered up some words of encouragement.
During his press conference back at the team headquarters in Allen Park on Monday, Campbell was asked if he had anything to say to the long-suffering fans. Campbell played in Detroit during the Matt Millen era, so he’s acutely aware of the agony of defeat.
Here’s what Campbell had to say,
“Yeah, listen, I get the road that everybody’s been down. Listen, I’m not sweating it. I’m not sweating it, this team’s not sweating it. We’ve got a long season. You look out throughout this League, and it happens this way every year, and I feel like what happens to you early in the season is – it really molds who you’re going to be as the season goes on and late in the season. Those ones that can endure the adversity of the season, the ups and downs and just stay in the race are the ones that have success. And that’s all we’ve got to worry about is our own – we’ve just got to – let’s clean up all the little errors.
And I told them, I said, ‘Look, failing isn’t failure unless you don’t learn from it.’ And so, that was a tough one. We were up two scores. Should have won that game, but you know what, we didn’t earn the right to win that game. Minnesota did, and we’ve got to look long and hard in the mirror to ourselves, and we’ve got to clean up these errors. And it’s not an excuse, but we are still young, and we’ve got some guys that even though they’re not old players, they haven’t played a lot of football, or they’re not young players, they haven’t played a lot of football.
So, we’ve got to learn from it, and we’ve got to move on and be better the next time it comes up, but I’m not – listen this is not time to go into panic mode. This is not the time to worry. This is time to do just what we did from Philly to Washington. Let’s just get better. Let’s just focus on the little details, so that’s what it’s about.”
Let’s focus on the second paragraph for a second. Campbell dished out a critical statement,
“Failing isn’t failure unless you don’t learn from it.”
This has been where previous regimes in Detroit have dropped the ball. The failures are painful to deal with, as Campbell well knows. But the ability to build from the failures and learn from the mistakes, implementing changes that will help prevent more losses down the road, that’s where Campbell can be a difference-maker for the Lions. It starts with the coach himself and his in-game decision-making failures.
