Lions head coach Dan Campbell knew heading into Monday night’s game against the 49ers that it effectively made no sense to his team’s ultimate goal of winning the Super Bowl: Win or lose in San Francisco, the number one spot in the NFC will come down to Sunday. night against Minnesota. So why did Campbell risk injuring his most important players?
Campbell said he thought playing to win was the right thing to do and felt his team came out unscathed.
“I just don’t think it’s fair to put a guy in who’s not ready to play. And then you can only sit six guys, so who are those six? And the other guys who aren’t ready, is it fair to them? Aren’t we using everything we have, Campbell said. “Fingers crossed no one gets hurt and we were lucky.”
Campbell admitted he was thinking about whether he should leave some players out right before the game, but ultimately said he prepared his team all week to win and that’s what he wanted to give his team a chance to do.
“I thought about it a lot,” Campbell said. “I ended up deciding the right thing to do was play against these guys, because we owed it to the team.”
And now the Lions will focus on what matters: beating the Vikings on Sunday night.