By Blessing 
The Detroit Lions didn’t get off to the start they hoped for in Thursday night’s Hall of Fame Game, falling hard to the Los Angeles Chargers in a 34-7 loss that left plenty to be desired—especially in ball security.
Turnovers were the main story of the night. The Lions gave the ball away five times, including a costly fumble on the opening kickoff and three interceptions through the air. Two of those turnovers came on special teams—an area that’s typically a Dan Campbell staple.
Although it was a preseason game mostly featuring second- and third-stringers, Campbell wasn’t letting the performance slide.
“You want to win the game. You also want to play really well, you know, and we didn’t do that,” Campbell said after the game. “So that’s the frustrating part of it, but like I said, we’re going to learn from it. We’re going to be able to coach off of this tape and help some of these guys get better, and that’ll serve us well. And I would expect us to play much better next week, these guys that played in this game.”
For Campbell, it doesn’t matter who’s on the field—turnovers simply can’t happen.
“We turned it over five times, and then we didn’t get any takeaways,” he said. “So that’s hard just from that standpoint when you put your defense in that kind of position… You’re wearing Lions gear, you’ve got to take care of the ball, or it’s going to be hard to keep you around.”
This was also the debut for Detroit’s new coordinators, including offensive play-caller John Morton. Despite the scoreboard, Campbell noted the operation itself wasn’t the problem.
“In terms of flow of the game to getting plays in swiftly,” he said, “it went better than he expected out of the gate.”
Still, the execution between whistles left a lot to clean up.
“The message is, when you get an opportunity to make your plays, you’ve got to make your plays,” Campbell said. “…And now you got one on tape. We’ve got to clean this up. We have to get significantly better. We’ve got to coach them better and they’ve got to play better next week.”
The Lions will try to bounce back against the Falcons on Friday, August 8.