# Lions LB Jack Campbell took cleat to mouth; had hole big enough to stick his tongue through
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Neither player realized what happened at first. Branch said he didn’t know he slashed Campbell’s face with his cleat until Campbell told him on the plane ride home. While Campbell felt the kick immediately, he thought he bit his lip or the inside of his mouth.
“And then it like kept bleeding and then I got over to the sideline and the trainer’s like, ‘Let’s go to the (medical) tent,’ and I’m like, ‘Ah, that’s not good,’” Campbell said. "And then I’m in the tent and then I felt them like pushing the skin together and it felt really weird.
“And then I got in the locker room and I saw, like I looked in the mirror. I’m like, ‘This is not going to be that bad. It’s just a scratch.’ And it kind of opened up.”
Trainers glued the laceration together on the sideline and Campbell finished the game with a white bandage on his lip covering a hole so big he said he could stick his tongue through it.
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He had eight tackles, he didn’t miss a snap and he delivered one of the game’s key plays midway through the second quarter when he sacked Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson and forced a fumble on fourth-and-2 as part of the Lions’ goal-line stand.
“That goes to show you he’s a gritty ass mother(bleeper),” cornerback Amik Robertson said. "I liked it. Me, when I saw it, I didn’t react to it cause I’m like, 'You know what, that’s what the (bleep) it’s going to take. That’s what it’s going to take for us to (pull out a win).
“He was just calling the call like he was good. Like Jack, I heard people saying, ‘Jack, you good?’ He was just calling the play, I’m like, ‘Hey, (bleep) it.’ If he’s good, we’re good.”
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He said he didn’t feel any pain from the kick because of the adrenaline of the night.
“People try to make it seem like it’s super tough. I feel like a lot of people if they put their mind to it can do it,” he said. “All you got to do is be able to breathe. Be able to say the call and breathe and you’re all good.”
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And he joked he was a disappointment to his family because he had to visit a plastic surgeon Tuesday to get another round of stitches.
“I feel embarrassed because I’m the first person probably in the Campbell lineage to get a plastic surgery, go to a plastic surgeon,” Campbell said. “I’m not going to be able to live that down with my brothers.”