Lions head coach Dan Campbell has showed a fiery passion that isn’t overly common in his first season with the organization, and following Detroit’s first win of the season Sunday — and Campbell’s first of his coaching career — it was more of the same.
“As far as it pertains to us, I was proud of our guys, man,” Campbell said after starting his press conference by paying respect to the victims and families of the Oxford High School shooting, per the team.
“They fought, they’d continue to fight all year and it paid dividends today, and we found a way to win,” Campbell continued, “found a way to win when we needed to.
“It means this: It means I’m proud of our guys, man. I’m happy for them. Of course I’m happy. We’re all happy. I’m happy for the coaches. I’m happy for everybody, but it’s like, you want this so bad for the players, man, because they’re the ones who put in all the hard work and the sweat, the tears and yeah, we all do, and so to the coaches, man. But it’s also that’s what makes us great. Look, when you lose, it hurts. It’s hard. It’s hard. But that’s also why winning is so great in this league. Because it’s not easy to do. And when you get them, man, it’s special. So I’m just proud of those guys. I’m proud of them.”
The Lions were the last team in the NFL to not have a win. They improved to 1-10-1 as quarterback Jared Goff led a game-winning drive with less than two minutes left. Goff found Lions wideout Amon-Ra St. Brown on a 11-yard touchdown as time expired. It prompted quite the celebration from those on the Detroit sideline.
“I’ll tell you what, it takes a weight off because we won. Period. We win. But not we finally got to win, and it’s we’re not, it’s just to be able to win, man,” Campbell said. “If you told me next week, I’d be like, ‘Yeah, ’cause we won.’ And it’s, it’s always gonna be a load off when you win. Every week. It doesn’t matter where you’re at. But, you know, like we did what we had to do to win today. We finally found a way.”
The Vikings held a 27-23 lead with 1:50 left in regulation. Minnesota allowed Detroit to cover 75 yards in 14 plays to win the game.
And while that was bad enough, Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins got dragged on social media following his immediate reaction to the loss.
