The Detroit Lions suffered a brutal loss to the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship game on Sunday night in a game that the team led 24-7 in the third quarter and ultimately lost by a score of 34-31. And head coach Dan Campbell was not shy about expressing just how much the loss hurt him and his team.
During his postgame press conference, Dan Campbell admitted an uncomfortable truth that the game could have realistically been the only chance these players ever get at winning a Super Bowl.
“I told those guys, this may have been our only shot,” Campbell told reporters after the game. “Do I think that? No. Do I believe that? No. However, I know how hard it is to get here. I’m well aware. And it’s gonna be twice as hard to get back to this point next year than it was this year. That’s the reality. And if we don’t have the same hunger and the same work — which is a whole ‘nother thing once we get to the offseason — then we got no shot of getting back here.
“I don’t care how much better we get or what we add or what we draft. It’s irrelevant. It’s gonna be tough. Everybody in our division’s gonna be loaded back up. And, you know, you’re not hiding from anybody anymore. Everybody’s gonna want a piece of you. Which is fine, you know. Which is fine.
“So it’s hard. You wanna make the most of every opportunity. And we had an opportunity and we couldn’t close it out.”
It’s clear that it’s a loss that’s going to sting for a while.
