With the Lions trailing by 13 points midway through the fourth quarter on Saturday night in Seattle, coach Jim Caldwell decided to punt. That punt looked like surrender.
But Caldwell defended the decision after the game.
“It’s a two-score game in that situation,” Caldwell said. “You punt it, you get them stopped. We had our time-outs to utilize in that situation. You’ve still got a chance to get a score if you can stop them and whatever it takes, however much time you have left, onside kick or whatever it might be. But a two-score game I think in that situation, fourth-and-10 is a long way to go, so we just thought our best chance was see if we can get them stopped another way and it just didn’t work out that way.”
Caldwell made several questionable decisions on fourth downs: There was the aforementioned punt, another punt on a fourth-and-1 in Seahawks territory, a field goal on a fourth-and-2 when the Lions probably should have gone for it, and a bizarre play call on a fourth-down conversion attempt.
Those aren’t necessarily the reasons the Lions lost -- when you lose by 20, there’s plenty of blame to go around -- but Caldwell didn’t coach the aggressive game he needed to coach if his team was going to have any chance of pulling an upset.
