Dan Campbell wisely declined the Vikings' intentional offsides

Posted by Admin November 2, 2026 NFL

With 2:00 left in the fourth quarter on Sunday in Detroit, the Lions had a 19-15 lead and the ball, facing second-and-2. Vikings linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel jumped offside, and fans in Detroit cheered, thinking the Vikings had made a mistake. But Lions coach Dan Campbell knew better.

Campbell declined the penalty because he knew the Vikings had jumped offside on purpose, wanting to concede a first down while the clock was stopped so that they could then use their three timeouts after the Lions’ first, second and third-down plays and then get the ball back with time left for a comeback drive.

Tom Brady, calling the game on Fox, immediately recognized what was happening.

“They’re not gonna accept that,” Brady said as soon as Van Ginkel jumped. “They’ll decline that penalty.”

It was obvious to Brady, but it wasn’t obvious to Bears coach Ben Johnson when he faced the same situation against the Patriots. Coach Mike Vrabel told his team to jump offside to concede a first down, and Johnson accepted the penalty. That allowed the Patriots to use their three timeouts on the Bears’ next three plays, forcing the Bears to kick on fourth down with 1:38 remaining. The Bears ended up winning when kicker Cairo Santos made it a two-possession game with a 58-yard field goal, but if the Bears had missed, Johnson’s decision to accept the penalty could have proven costly.

It’s a situation that doesn’t arise in most games, but it happens often enough that every coach should understand it as well as Vrabel, Campbell and Brady do: Sometimes, the smart thing for one team is to commit a penalty on purpose, and the smart thing for the other team is to decline the penalty.

In theory, if the defensive team continued to jump offside and the offense continued to decline the penalties, it could reach the point where the referee would have to warn the defensive team’s head coach that he could invoke the “palpably unfair act” rule, which gives the referee wide leeway to use his own discretion to enforce penalties. The referee could, for instance, charge the defensive team a timeout if it refused to stop committing intentional penalties.

It didn’t reach that point on Sunday, as Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell realized that Campbell was on to the intentional offside. Campbell is a smart in-game coach who recognized on Sunday what the right strategic decision was in the final two minutes.