Lions' Dan Campbell not happy with sloppy performance in HOF Game loss to Chargers: 'We have to get significantly better'

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The Detroit Lions struggled to take care of the ball in Thursday night’s 34-7 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers in the 2025 Hall of Fame Game.

Dan Campbell’s crew turned the ball over five times, twice on special teams, including fumbling the opening kickoff, and threw three interceptions. Despite it being a preseason game with backups, the coach was clearly unhappy with the performance.

“You want to win the game. You also want to play really well, you know, and we didn’t do that,” Campbell said. 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.”

Backups or not, Campbell was clear that giving the ball away can’t be tolerated at any level of the organization.

“We turned it over five times, and then we didn’t get any takeaways,” Campbell 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.”

Detroit is breaking in new play callers on each side of the ball. In terms of those operations, particularly on offense, with new coordinator John Morton — from flow of the game to getting plays in swiftly — Campbell said it went better than he expected out of the gate. However, the struggles between the whistles overshadowed any positives.

“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 take on the Atlanta Falcons on Friday, Aug. 8.

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