BREAKING NEWS: Dan Campbell acknowledges that he erred during the third-and-goal run, squandering a timeout.

The most crucial error made by Lions coach Dan Campbell in his team’s disastrous second-half performance against the 49ers was squandering an offensive timeout in the final minutes of the game instead of using all three defensive timeouts to prevent the 49ers from running out the clock. Campbell acknowledges that during the series of events that preceded that timeout, he erred.

When the Lions stopped a rushing play on third-and-goal, the clock continued to run, and they squandered a timeout. Campbell admits that it would have been much better to force an incomplete pass and use their timeout if they hadn’t expected to score a touchdown there.

Campbell stated, according to MLive.com, “Yeah, look, throwing it is the easy thing to do.” “I wanted to run it, even though it probably should have been the correct thing to do.” I assumed we would simply pop it. They were in a four-down front, and we had just [run the 2-minute offense] all the way down the field while tossing the football, so I thought we would score easily. We also almost missed a block. That being said, I must use a timeout. In retrospect, toss it four times. However, I thought at the time that it would be a walk-and-run, and things didn’t work out. So I took a chance and lost.

Campbell is still mistaken when he says that following the unsuccessful run, he “got to use a timeout.” After a number of rule changes that make onside kicks more difficult for the kicking team, the Lions’ offense still ought to have raced to the line for fourth down instead of wasting a timeout. This effectively meant that the Lions couldn’t win the game without recovering an onside kick, which is practically impossible in the modern NFL.

The Lions would have recovered possession of the ball without even needing to onside kick if they had preserved all three of their timeouts. Instead, they would have just needed to force a 49ers three-and-out. The 49ers were able to run out the entire game’s time with just two timeouts left, winning on a fourth down kneeldown. That missed timeout cost us a lot of money.