Lions head coach Dan Campbell threw his challenge flag twice on Monday night. Both times, the replay showed he was wrong about the issue that made him challenge. But he won one of the challenges anyway.
Campbell confirmed that when Buccaneers tight end Cade Otton was initially ruled to have picked up a first down on a fourth-and-4 catch, Campbell threw the challenge flag because he didn’t think Otton made the catch. Replays showed Otton did make the catch, and initially the referee announced that the Lions had lost the challenge. But replays also showed Otton was down short of the line to gain for the first down, and after further discussion the ref announced that the Lions would win the challenge for that reason — which was not the reason Campbell had challenged.
Campbell was asked whether the Lions had benefited from the New York officiating office getting involved — in the same way the Lions lost a touchdown against the Chiefs when New York got involved. Campbell said he didn’t know whether that was the case or not.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know if that is or not,” Campbell said. “I know every game there’s different angles, and it took a while to get the angle that they saw that proved he did not get the marker. Normally it doesn’t always go down that way. So I don’t know. I’ll take it. We’ll take it and we’ll move on.”
Campbell said his other challenge, on a Baker Mayfield fumble that was recovered by the Buccaneers, was just a bad decision on his part to throw a challenge flag on a play that the officials on the field got right.
“That was a bad challenge,” Campbell said. “That was just a total mess-up on my part. That was me thinking he was down on the fumble site. That was grasping for straws. I shouldn’t have done that. So if you were totally like, ‘What the hell is he doing?’ you would be correct.”
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