LIONS HEAD COACH DAN CAMPBELL POST-GAME QUOTE SHEET
Opening statement: “Defense played their asses off. Got them out of the end zone, really they did. And that’s back to
back—back to back to back games—where our defense has really stepped up, getting turnovers. I was proud of the way they all played today. I thought they played hard. But the mistakes killed us, particularly offensively.”
On calling consecutive timeouts on the final drive: “Well obviously you can’t do that, but we had a miscommunication. Half of our secondary had one call, half had the other. So—yeah. Took a timeout.”
On why the defensive communication fell apart on the final drive: “It was a check by what they were doing. So you
don’t get it until it’s in the middle of the play, but it’s something that we had talked about. And so you don’t get it pre-snap, it’s a call and it’s got basically a check on it to what they’re going to do and what they line up in offensively is what happened. So we had half in one call and half in another. So the first thing in my head is, ‘Well, we’ve got a blown
coverage and they’re about to score a touchdown, so I do it, which you can’t do and now it’s a penalty. But I know that if he threw it out in a flat it was about to be a touchdown.’ Can’t do it.”
On what other options he had besides taking a second timeout: “Stand there and watch them score, I guess. Score a
touchdown. But no, it’s—anyway.”
On the defense’s struggle to get off the field during the last drive: “They really came out throwing the ball early. They
were going to try and loosen up the front and try and open us up and back us up a little bit. Then they came out in the
second half and started to run it, did a couple of things. And look, a couple of penalties showed up that killed us. They hurt us. I just go back to this in general. Now, we had too many penalties today, but the penalties, some teams can overcome them and some can’t. We can’t overcome the penalties right now that we’re getting. But ultimately, I just—defensively, I felt like they really hung in there again. And I just—when you keep your opponent from scoring 16 points or whatever— which is three weeks in a row—we have to be able to—we need to find a way to win that game. So defensively I know that they’re giving us a chance right now.”
On the offense’s inability to recover from penalties and if the playbook shrinks in long yardage situations: “I
mean it’s tough. Those are tough to find calls for third-and-32 or whatever. You also—I bring it up again—when your
defense is playing like it is, you don’t want to do anything to mess that up either. Now you’re taking the chance of (Robert) Quinn off the edge and you hold it a little long and you get a sack fumble. There’s a little bit of being smart. Now, we did throw it deep a couple of times, too on third down. The bottom line is we put ourselves in those third-and-a-mile situations and that’s on us. It’s just too much man, those things kill you.”
On QB Jared Goff’s performance today: “He made some good throws. The first drive, you come out and he hit the
deep one there to (Josh) Reynolds, that was good. He did some good things. Made some throws. We just—still trying to run it a little bit and establish the run. We had a couple there, but then we get holding calls. And when you’re trying to—it’s one thing you get holding and you’re passing the ball, but when you’re trying to establish the run and then you get these holding calls trying to run it, I don’t know, it gets a little frustrating and you feel like it limits what you can do, certainly. Yes, to your point though, when you get in those types of situations it definitely shrinks your playbook.”
On why the offense was called for so many holding penalties today: “No, I have to look at it. Certainly it’s going to be
the bad body positions. It will be the stuff, we’re lagging behind. Now some of the holds too were—it’s easy on some of this stuff to blame the O-line in the pass game but there’s a couple of these now were (Jared) Goff now is break and
contain and we’re protecting him in here, we’re not protecting you out there and then it gets—so it’s on everybody. It’s not just—everybody’s got a hand in it. But as far as the run game stuff, it’s—I just already know without looking that it’s going to be probably sloppy fundamentals. We didn’t step where we should have stepped, you’re a little tired, you’re a little whatever, so are they. You lag behind and then you get caught holding.”
On if rotating different defensive players into the game on the final drive contributed to communication issues: “I
don’t—you don’t want to believe that. You’d like to think that we get it, we understand it, it had been communicated,
practice leading up to that. It’s just—yeah, we did have a lot of different guys in there, but you’re right, I don’t want to use that as an excuse. We should know that. It’s a part of the game plan.”
On LB Austin Bryant signaling to the sideline before the second consecutive timeout was called: “No, that wasn’t
Austin Bryant. That was—I think he was complaining about a call I think is what was going on. But look, I just—there
again I bring this up—I just feel like defensively those guys are giving us a chance. We just have to do more, man. We’re so close. These guys are fighting their tails off. But until we get out of our own way we won’t quite get over the hump.”
On RB D’Andre Swift’s potential injury: “No, that’s a wait and see. Know it’s a shoulder sprain, so we’ll see where it
goes.”
On if RB D’Andre Swift potentially injured the same shoulder that was injured in the Pittsburgh game: “Yes.”
On if he is concerned that the team had a season-high number of penalties today in Week 12: “Yeah, it’s a concern
because those things are—they get you beat. So it’s something that certainly we have to continue to address because we won’t be able to overcome some of these things if we don’t. I’m not concerned, it certainly aggravates me and frustrates me, but I’m not concerned like, ‘Oh, no, what are we doing?’ We’re coaching them up and we have to get them better and we will.”
On how he will continue to keep the locker room together: “They all want it. It’s not like we don’t all go to work and we just, ‘Well, we’re punching in and punching out and we’ll see what happens.’ We all want to win. We’re playing to win, those guys, you can see that out there. And I know it’s hard to see from afar because everyone wants the wins and the losses, and all of us do. But these guys are like laying it on the line and giving it everything they’ve got right now. It’s just a matter of we have to learn how to win. We have to learn how to win. Once we learn how to win then we can begin to see the fruits of our labor a little bit. But the effort is there. The effort and the fight and the fact that here we are, three games in a row—we’re right there at the very end. And there again, I see improvement. I sit there and watch and I see some of these guys getting better and better. What encourages me is the fact that I know the core of this team. I know the vets we’ve got and some of these young guys. This is a—these guys aren’t going to lay down. They’re not going to—that’s not what these guys are made of. That’s what keeps me hopeful. I know that we are building something.”
On S Will Harris playing in the nickel position today: “We just—Will Harris, we’ll see what he can do at nickel. He’s
been playing there a little bit and we just like how he’s begun to develop. Anybody you feel like has—can multiple roles— really brings a lot of value to your team, to your defense. So the fact that he can play some safety and let him just continue to grow at safety. The other thing is he’s big. He’s athletic, he’s big, he can run. And so there’s a lot of times where you can play nickel to team’s two tight-end sets because he can hold up in there and he can help you in the run game. But yet he’s athletic enough, runs good enough to cover. So that’s kind of what we were—that’s why we like it.”
On if he thinks the offensive play calls were aggressive enough today: “You think I should have thrown more? I saw
you. Throw deeper? I guess I—and I’m not judging what you’re saying—I get it. I get there can be some frustration. But
it’s also I’m mindful of how do you keep yourself in this game, continue to move the football. There were so many things that we did early in this year to where disaster happens. It’s sack fumble, it’s all this because we’re trying to be a little more aggressive. So maybe we could have, but I feel like at the end of the day—we threw it more than we ran it. You’re trying to do a few things and it’s just once you get in those holding calls and they’re just standing there looking at you, you’re trying to be smart about how you’re going to do it. You want to get yourself at that point in a third-and manageable—just let’s find a way to get to third-and-seven and then when you don’t, now you’re sitting there, it’s third and-a mile and it’s hard. I don’t regret that. I still want to be able to run the football because I think it starts that way. I like that we threw it deep a little bit. We could push the ball down the field, we got a big touchdown. I think there again you just—take it where it goes. Give yourself a chance. We had a chance at the end, it wasn’t good enough. But I equate that not to throwing it more, I equate that to the penalties.”
LIONS LB ALEX ANZALONE POST-GAME QUOTE SHEET
On how frustrating Chicago’s last offensive drive was: “It’s frustrating. I feel like defensively we’ve got to stop them.
We had the lead and we’ve got to figure out a way to get them off the field, and not score points. That’s really it.”
On what happened when they tried to call back-to-back timeouts: “We were kind of in cover zero, and they went to
max pro. We checked to two high, cover two. And that’s kind of why I was trying to relay the call. After that, I’m not really sure what happened. I think that we called timeout, and I’m not sure if everyone was on the same page. It was still, I think, third down after that. Either way, the five-yard penalty wasn’t that huge of a deal. Rather than a touchdown, that really put the game out of arm’s reach.”
On if he knew calling consecutive timeouts results in a delay of game penalty: “I know in basketball it’s a technical
foul, so that’s really all I knew. I guess that’s a rule.”
On if he thinks the Bears would have scored if the second timeout had not been called: “If we’re in a cover two
defense and some were laying cover zero man, there’s going to be a void and that’s what would probably happen.”
On the miscommunication on defense today particularly during the late-game situations: “That’s just getting lined
up, get the call, line up, get your cleats set. It’s just experience. I think guys are just learning and figuring things out on the go just because we have such a young team. It happens in the game and in that situation it killed us. I think across the League it happens a lot more than you think. It was one of the situations that hurt us.”
On if inexperience with some players led to miscommunication on defense: “I don’t know if it’s inexperience or
because it was just the situation. If it happens one time, it happens and we’ve got to do out best to just get lined up, get our cleats set and play ball.”
LIONS T TAYLOR DECKER POST-GAME QUOTE SHEET
On if he has ever been penalized for offensive holding that frequently in a game: “I can’t say I’ve been a part of it,
but they called them and that’s what matters. They were calling it on both teams, both sides of the ball. It just is what it is. If they interpret it a certain way and they call it, like, we held. It is what it is. It killed us, it was killer.”
On how difficult it is to move on mentally from a negative play to the next play when negative plays are occurring
so frequently: “It’s frustrating, but I mean, that’s a good way to put it, you can’t lose your stinger because football is an
aggressive sport. As an o-lineman, you do everything you can to get your hands inside, and try to drive the guy, and have awareness of where the ball carrier is, where the quarterback is, but yeah, you’ve got to keep playing aggressive. You’ve just got to try and play with good technique and good awareness, and if they call it, they call it. But we’re not going to go out there and play tentatively. I think that would be the wrong way to go about it. Obviously, I haven’t seen every single replay of what was called, so we’ll have to check the tape and see how we can improve upon that.”
On the losing streak that dates back to last season: “It’s frustrating, and it’s emotional, 100 percent. All the work that
we put into it, being competitive with really good teams, it hurts, it hurts. But you don’t want to go numb to that and then think that you’re not doing it for anything because then you’re going to be out there and you’re going to be hopeless. I know I’ve said it a million times, I want to see Detroit be a winner. God, we’ve been so close, so many games, but close isn’t good enough, and that’s just the fact. We’ve just got to keep working. We can’t shoot ourselves in the foot, offensively. I mean, the defense was flying all over the field today, getting turnovers, they played great. So, we have to do our part. We have to avoid those penalties because I thought we came out of the gates really well. We were moving the ball. So we’ve just got to play smart football.”
LIONS QB JARED GOFF POST-GAME QUOTE SHEET
On the Bears’ final drive that lasted 8-and-a-half minutes: “It’s tough. I think I said this after the game, I don’t think
there was a scenario when we left the field that last time that we wouldn’t be back out there for a four-minute drive or to go win the game. So yeah, it’s tough. But credit to them, credit to Andy (Dalton), credit that offense.”
On how his oblique felt before the game: “I’m good.”
On how his oblique felt during the game: “Good, yeah. I felt good. There was discomfort at times, but nothing
significant.”
On how he settled down the offense after committing penalties throughout the game: “I think that’s part of my job
obviously is to make sure those guys don’t – we say, ‘Lose their stinger.’ They were getting these holding calls. The false starts are absolutely on us. Those can’t happen, but you can call holding on every single play. It’s no excuse. We’ve done it too much and I know those guys are hard on themselves front, but back there they can throw that flag every play. To me, it seemed like it was a little too often on that call. Now, false starts are absolutely on us and putting ourselves in those situations is on us regardless, but before even seeing the film, the frequency of that I think is not fair.”
On the chemistry between him and WR Josh Reynolds: “I do have trust with him. I’ve got trust, we’ve got a good thing going. He understands me, I understand him, I know his body language. So, hopefully we can build off that. That was a fun one to hit there early on and would be a whole lot more fun to talk about now if we had won. But it was a good one.”
On if the team has to learn how to win in close-game situations: “First you have to learn how not to lose and it’s
something that we’ve had a hard time doing obviously, especially in these close games. How do you take care of the
football late in the game? How do you make stops on defense? How do you move the ball efficiently later in the game and not hurt yourself? For me, how do I stay in the pocket and not let those guys get moved off my spot and allow a holding call there in some instances? It’s little things like that, that the good teams do and do consistently and something we’re working towards, something we’re on our way to I believe. But it’s something that we’re working towards.”
On how losing RB D’Andre Swift to a shoulder injury affects play calling: “I don’t know if it changed it much. There
may have been some stuff that we wanted for him that we weren’t able to call obviously. I thought Godwin (Igwebuike)
filled in and did a great job and Jamaal (Williams) has obviously been reliable all year. Swift is as explosive as a guy that
I’ve ever been around. So, having him on the field whenever is helpful.”
On how he and the offense can execute better in long-yardage situations: “I think like you mentioned, first of all, like
(Head Coach) Dan (Campbell) says, we’re not quite built right now to not be efficient. We need to be efficient. We need to stay on track. We can’t allow these penalties to stack up on us. At the same time though, like you mentioned, when we get into second-and-15 and second-and-12, the series isn’t over and I think guys get a little bit down on themselves sometimes when you get in those situations. And again, that’s all on me really just making sure that I’m not getting down on myself and not letting them get down on their selves, making sure that we still have that ability to overcome those and that mindset that we will overcome them really is the bottom line.”
On if the offense is being too conservative in long-yardage situations: “It’s putting ourselves with our back against
the wall in – I don’t know, was it third-and-30? There is no play call for that. There isn’t a play call for second-and-25.
What you want to do at least in my eyes is get yourself into a third-and-manageable. If you happen to be in first-and-20, a lot of teams do, you get a holding call on first down, you just snap the next ball and hopefully you get to second-and-10 or second-and-12 and then you snap the next one and get try to get to like third-and-7, third-and-6, and then you have a play to extend the drive. Like you said though and like we’ve been doing, we’ve kind of stacked them. And when you get a couple back-to-back, then you are in even farther territory and it’s tough. All self-inflicted stuff and that’s the hard part, and also the encouraging part. It’s stuff that we can fix and stuff that we have fixed before and stuff that we need to continue to stay on. Also, they didn’t do much to stop us. We just kept kicking ourselves and putting ourselves behind the chains.”
On if he was surprised by the amount of holding calls called on running plays: “Listen, they’ve got a job to do.
Holding is a subjective call. We were getting them at a frequency I’ve never been a part of. I could be wrong. I could go
look at the film right now and be like, ‘That’s a hold. That’s a hold. That’s a hold.’ I don’t know. For the same guy to call it for both ways, I’ve never been a part of that.”
On if WR Josh Reynolds will help the team execute in long-yardage situations going forward: “I don’t think
anyone’s built for third-and-20. I think that’s something that we – it’s not like we’re not built for it, no one’s built for that. Now, there are teams that can push the ball with certain things to gain an advantage there on third-and-15 or whatever it might be, but Josh does help in those scenarios being able to have a bigger body and a guy that can go up and get some things and you saw him on the touchdown. Obviously, catch something over the top and that is his skillset and that should help. But, at the same time, if we have back-to-back penalties and we’re third-and-30 or second-and-30, whatever it might be, it’s tough sledding for anybody.”
On his fumble in the second quarter: “Got to hold on to it. Yeah, got to hold on to it. He hit it perfect. Inexcusable, can’t do it in their territory, make sure I go down with the ball. It’s inexcusable.”
LIONS CB AMANI ORUWARIYE POST-GAME QUOTE SHEET
On what happened when they tried to call back-to-back timeouts: “We’ve got to communicate man. There were a
couple substitution errors, couple like I said, miscommunication. We just can’t have it, man. Especially the type of season we’re having, we have to eliminate any errors, or any kind of miscommunication. So, we’ll get that cleaned up.”
On what he saw on his interception: “I just knew when it got to a certain part in the red zone—they run a lot of inbreaking routes. I know you can’t run past the end zone so I just kind of cut under it.”
On how frustrating the Bears’ last long drive was to not get the defense off the field: “Super. You know we work all
week to be able to get that last stop and give our offense another chance. We didn’t come through for them. That’s on us and we’ve got to be better. So, we will.”
On if he knew about the double timeout rule: “I didn’t even know what the flag was at the time. I was like, ‘I thought we called a timeout, what happened?’ What’s the rule?”
LIONS WR JOSH REYNOLDS POST-GAME QUOTE SHEET
On making an immediate impact today with his first-quarter touchdown: “I knew we were going to have to take shots eventually and it was awesome to be able to kind of get in my groove again and deliver that first one.”
On if today reminded him of playing with QB Jared Goff on the Los Angeles Rams: “For sure, for sure. That
chemistry is going to come back, just give it some time.”
On his perspective on the team’s losing streak as a late-season addition: “Every loss hurts but that’s what I love
about this team. Yeah we have to go over the film and find things that we have to fix. There’s a lot but ultimately, we just have to stop shooting ourselves in the foot because there are not too many teams actually stopping us right now. We’re stopping ourselves and once we get that cleaned up, you’ll see a different offense and a different team.”
On how losing RB D’Andre Swift affected the offense today: “Losing a guy like that, it’s always tough. With him in our
running game—you know, next man up. Other guys stepped up, made some plays and that’s just how it has to be.”
