Dan Campbell defends Lions' curious clock management in Packers loss

When Devonte Wyatt went down with an ankle injury and had to be carted off the field with 3:15 left in the fourth quarter, the Detroit Lions seemed to catch a break in their Thanksgiving comeback attempt against the Green Bay Packers. The clock stopped as Packers trainers tended to Wyatt and the Lions didn't have to use one of their three timeouts.

But rather than maximize the clock stoppage and be ready to kick a field goal as soon as referee Ron Torbert ran the clock, Lions kicker Jake Bates waited till after the clock started to walk off his 31-yard attempt.

The Lions snapped the ball 13 seconds later, and Bates' kick sailed through the uprights with 2:59 to play.

After the game, Lions coach Dan Campbell said his team was playing with exactly the kind of urgency he wanted on its final drive, when it ran 13 plays, took 6 minutes and 3 seconds to get on the scoreboard and often appeared in no rush to get out of the huddle.

"Yes," Campbell said. "I know. I know that’s frustrating when you’re a fan watching, but I know how we needed to play against that defensive front and it was about playing for the last possession."

LIONS GRADES VS PACKERS: Debating 4th-down decisions

The Packers picked up two first downs on their final possession and held on for a 31-24 win, never giving the Lions a chance to tie the game.

Bates kicked a touchback on his kickoff after the field goal, preserving time on the clock, and the Lions took their first two timeouts after Green Bay's first two plays. On third-and-5, Packers quarterback Jordan Love completed an 8-yard pass to Christian Watson for a first down – but ran out of bounds to stop the clock with 2:43 left.

The Lions took their final timeout after the next play, and the Packers faced a third-and-3 from the Lions' 45-yard line at the two-minute warning. Love threw incomplete on third down, then completed a fourth-and-3 heave to Dontayvion Wicks to clinch the victory.

Lions cornerback D.J. Reed said he wasn't surprised the Packers tried to convert on fourth-and-3 rather than punt and give the ball back to the Lions with a chance to tie or win the game.

"Smart move by them," he said. "I feel like if we were in that situation we would have did the same thing."

And Campbell did not express any regret about his clock management on the final series.

"We were going to (play for the last possession)," he said. "Defense was going to get the stop, we were going to use our timeouts, get one more shot to go win the game and that’s how we were playing it. I wanted to play it just like that. So I wanted to keep it in our hands and not turn it into a pin-your-ears-back-and-start-flying-up-the-field with Micah Parsons and those guys."

Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Dan Campbell defends Lions' curious clock management in Packers loss