Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell said the NFL initially wanted to continue last week’s preseason game with the Atlanta Falcons after Lions safety Morice Norris was taken off the field by ambulance but only relented and suspended the contest after the Falcons took a knee to run the final 14:50 off the clock.

“Don’t do this to me,” Campbell said Monday when asked about the end of the game.

“So (Falcons coach) Raheem (Morris) and I agreed that, that was what we were going to do.

We talked to – (referee) Shawn Hochuli let us know, ‘Hey the game is still on,’ and we communicated with each other, we told Shawn we’ll be taking knees and he said I understand and that’s the way it went. And then the game was called.”

Norris was injured on the first play of the fourth quarter, when he ran in from his deep safety position to tackle Falcons running back Nathan Carter, a rookie out of Michigan State.

Norris’ head snapped back violently when he hit Carter’s leg, and medical personnel from both teams rushed onto the field as his body fell limp to the ground.

Norris was taken off the field by ambulance and stayed overnight at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital, where he was examined for head, neck and spine injuries.

He returned home Saturday and was back at the Lions’ practice facility Sunday but will not practice this week while in concussion protocol.

“He’s doing well,” Campbell said. “It’s good to have him back and he’s good, so obviously he’s in concussion protocol.

We’re going to take it nice and easy here and make sure he’s good over the next call it 10-14 days and reassess. So that’s good news.”

The Lions-Falcons game briefly resumed after Norris’ injury, when quarterback Emory Jones took a snap and players from both sides stood around talking.

Eventually, the 22 players on the field gathered in a circle to pray and after several minutes, with the clock still running, Hochuli announced, “At this point, per (the league office in) New York, this game is suspended.”

The last snap of the game does not appear in the official play-by-play of the game.

Campbell called Morris “the ultimate class act” after the game.

Morris said in his postgame comments he wasn’t concerned with how the league would react to his and Campbell’s decision to play the final 14:50 of the game by taking knees.

“It’s not a lot of times that, that happens,” Morris said.

“You know, I can’t sit here and tell you that I’ve been through a lot of things, or seen a lot of things. I don’t think any of us have.

That was the moment, and the decision was the right thing to do for our football team and the Lions football team.”

An NFL spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on why the league did not suspend the game immediately after Norris’ injury.

Campbell said “everybody was fired up to see” Norris when he retured to the building Sunday.

“That’s a breath of fresh air, man,” he said. “That’s hard when something like that happens and you don’t know.

It’s one thing, we’ve all seen – I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen guys with concussions, knocked out, I’ve had them myself, but when you have these and then you don’t know, you know they’re brething, but you don’t know anything else and they’re gone, and it’s just different.

It’s a little different because you’re trying to block that out but yet it’s still there.

So that makes it a little ore difficult. That’s why that’s out of the norm.

“Most of these, they happen and you go on about your business. OK, he got knocked out, smelling salts, they wake up, take care of them.

Not that that’s any less dramatic, but it’s relative to what that was the other night was different.”

Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Bluesky, X and Instagram at @davebirkett.