ALLEN PARK — Of course, Dan Campbell is not happy about the 20-16 loss to the Buccaneers but the Lions coach is far from despondent.
“There’s a lot of little things that we have to clean up, I’m telling you it’s details. It may not look like it now but we’re so close, we are so close,’’ Campbell said on Monday. “And so that’s what I told the guys as long as we go back to work and let’s clean up those little errors, those details to that, in particular the red zone we will improve and get better.’’
The Lions (1-1) hit the road to the Arizona Cardinals (1-1) on Sunday.
“We’re getting better, we improved from last week in a number of areas significantly,’’ Campbell said on Monday. “The error I made (at end of half) was significant when you’re in that type of game every point matters and cleaning up the red zone offensively are the biggest takeaways.’’
The Lions were just 1 of 7 (14 percent) in the red zone. Not at all acceptable. In comparison, in the overtime win over the Rams in the opener they were 2 of 4 in red zone territory.
Campbell said against the Bucs it was not one person’s fault.
“We moved the football, third and fourth down we were pretty efficient,’’ Campbell said. “It was the red zone. It wasn’t one person – we got down there and it’s details of the route, it’s a MA (missed assignment), it’s a missed block, it’s a missed read, the call Ben (Johnson) didn’t like that he wanted back. It wasn’t one person, it kind of snowballed in there. We’ll clean all that up. All we have to do is get a little better from this week and we move forward.’’
Running back Jahmyr Gibbs couldn’t pinpoint reasons for the red zone woes either. “We just weren’t clicking in there,’’ Gibbs said on Monday.
The Lions were 7 of 17 (41.2 percent) on third downs and 3 of 5 (60 percent) on fourth downs.
“I felt like we were much more efficient moving the ball 20 to 20, if you will. I thought we were more efficient on third down. … I mentioned last week – we had so many three and outs last week, when you have back-to-back three-and-outs, you can never find any rhythm,’’ Campbell said.
INJURY UPDATE: WR Amon-Ra St. Brown suffered a soft tissue injury late in the game. Campbell said he’ll be fine. … LB Alex Anzalone felt pretty good on Monday, per Campbell. He suffered a concussion and is day to day. … CB Terrion Arnold missed a few plays with a finger injury but got back in the game and Campbell said it’s nothing significant.
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