November 16, 2022
Opening Statement: “Just obviously getting ready for this team. It’s a well-coached team, they don’t make mistakes. They’re getting turnovers on defense, playing really good third down redzone defense, and offensively, (Giants RB Saquon) Barkley is an exceptional player. They’re doing a good job with their run schemes, and quarterback’s playing well, and they’re not turning the ball over. So, it’s a good team.”
On how big of a threat Giants DL Dexter Lawrence is and his production despite being an interior defensive lineman: “Yeah, it’s tough. I mean he doesn’t come off the field. That’s one thing. It’s rare that you get a player that is that type of ‘nose’ if you will, but that shows how productive he is and versatile. So, he can play with leverage. He does play with leverage, he’s stout, he’s strong, he can push the pocket, he can get an edge and get around you, and so yeah, it certainly helps you because he can play the run and he can push the pocket in the pass game.”
On Lions C Frank Ragnow’s injury status: “He was just out there. The boot now is on the other foot, so that’s good news.”
On if Lions C Frank Ragnow’s boot around his foot is extra caution to protect his foot from further complications: “Yeah, so we’ll see where he goes. He’s not going to practice today, but I know he feels a little bit better.”
On Giants QB Daniel Jones’ run ability: “Yeah, I mean we can’t lose sight of him. I mean I’ve got some clips that I’ve pulled up where they’ll have some quarterback driven runs that will pop up every once in a while. They don’t do a ton of it, but there’s enough of it to pay attention to because he’s got speed, and he can run. And then there’s a couple times on third down where he’ll take off if it’s not there, and he’ll get the first down with his feet. Yeah, I mean that’s part of it. I mean they’re running the ball well, and most of it is (Giants RB Saquon) Barkley, and that’s where the explosive plays are coming from, from him, but the quarterback – that’s helping the quarterback play well too. And they’re playing good football right now. They’re very efficient.”
On if he thought the defense did a good job of containing Bears QB Justin Fields outside of a handful of plays: “Yeah, I thought we did very well. I mean I thought relative to – since they revamped their offense over there, we played them about as good as you’re going to play them, take away two of those runs. We did what we needed to do, and I just bring it back up again, it’s not an easy thing to do is to rush with patience and knowing that it’s going to be five seconds at a minimum is how long it’s going to play. And then those guys in the backend to cover that long. So yeah, I thought all in all we did a good job. We knew what we had to do, and those guys attacked it, and Thursday I came away from practice, I was really excited about how we handled it, and just because you could see the emphasis in our guys working through it, and it showed up on Sunday.”
On the defensive emphasis when facing a conservative offense that does not turn the ball over much: “For us defensively? Yeah well, here’s the thing, (Giants RB Saquon) Barkley, man, they’re going to give him the ball. I mean he had 32 carries last week, and they’ll give it to him over and over and over. I mean he’ll get six in a row, and he doesn’t lose any steam, and so – I mean that’s the other thing. You’ll see runs even from last week, three-yard run, one-yard run, two-yard run, 27, 17, two-yard run, and then it’s 25-yard run. So, he is dangerous. He can run between the tackles, but if he finds a crease, and those guys push on him enough upfront, they’ll bang away at you, but he’s got enough patience, and if he can find that crease, he’s got breakaway speed. He’s got strength to get through the hole, and he can turn a routine run into an explosive run like that. You see him on the perimeter, and he gets an edge, he’s gone. So, that’s where he’s just different. He’s got this dynamic speed about him among other things. So we say it all week, but I mean gap responsibility, and everybody’s got to do your job, and we can’t have one error, one bust, one guy out of position because that’s all it’ll take for them to get something big out of it, turn it into points. And look, we need a takeaway. This team’s not doing it, but we have to get a takeaway. That’s something we’ve been good at the last four or five weeks. We need it. It’s helped us.”
On Lions DL Aidan Hutchinson’s development after nine games: “I would say he’s coming along nicely. Every week he gets a little bit better, and he makes a few more plays. He learns pretty quickly. Look, there’s still things that happened to him, but he doesn’t make those same mistakes twice, which is what you’re looking for. And one of the things that we appreciate about him, not only is he growing, but he is an asset in the run game and the pass game. He’s all encompassing. I mean he plays with a high motor, he plays with technique, he’s relentless. I mean, hell, he got a critical holding penalty the other day just trying to violently shed the block, and that’s a 10-yard penalty against them and knocks them back to second-and-18, which turns into (Lions CB Jeff) Okudah’s touchdown, so everything – there’s things that you see all the time, and then there’s indirect production that we’re getting out of him that’s good, but he’s growing. He’s getting better. I mean he’s still – he’s got a long ways to go, but every week, he gets a little better.”
On if Lions DL Aidan Hutchinson staying home on the screen that helped produce Lions CB Jeff Okudah’s interception touchdown is an example of his indirect production: “Sure, that’s where it all started. I mean he sniffed out the screen and (Bears QB Justin) Fields wanted to throw it up and then realized he was right there, so then he held it. And then since he held it, here comes (Lions DL Isaiah) Buggs and (Lions CB Will) Harris, and it forced him to get rid of it, ill-advised throw, and we capitalized off of it, but it started with him.”
On the factors that go into a low-turnover offense: “Look, they’re obviously emphasizing it like most teams do, but they’re capitalizing. I mean they’re not – (Giants RB Saquon) Barkley who carries a heavy, heavy load is doing a good job of securing the football because they are so run heavy, and the other thing is the passes that they are throwing are very high-percentage passes, so that’s why you’re not seeing the interceptions. They’re really not in too bad a position. You don’t ever see them having to – they haven’t really got in a spot where they’ve had to play from behind or anything like that and start forcing some passes. And so, it’s kind of all encompassing. They’ve been in every game and found a way to come away with them at the end. They’re just playing pretty clean football, and that’s credit to (Giants Head Coach Brian) Daboll. He’s coaching them well.”
On how he has seen Giants Head Coach Brian Daboll evolve as a coach from their time working together in Miami: “Yeah, he just – look he was – from the time that I’ve worked with him he was always, man, I always real impressed with him. He’s very smart, high energy, he’s got a real good personality about him. He can mesh with just about anybody and he was – man, he was fun to work with. I mean, he really was, but he had – at that time, he’d come straight from New England. And so, they had everything that they were doing offensively and what they were doing with (Buccaneers QB Tom) Brady. So, that’s a lot of what we implemented, but then you’ve just seen – from afar I’ve seen his growth as a coordinator and what he was able to take just at Kansas City and Cleveland, then he goes to Alabama, he comes back, he’s a position coach, pass game coordinator. And then, at Buffalo, and now the head coach. And so, he’s got a ton of experience with a lot of good coaches, a lot of different places, he’s met a lot of different people. He wasn’t – I think just being able to kind of be around and get a vantage point of different – a little bit of everything, players, coaches, schemes, I think has helped him. So, I’ve got a lot of respect for him. I think he’s a hell of a coach.”
On if Lions WR DJ Chark will start practicing soon: “Yeah, we’re going to let him run around today. We’ll start his clock and just let him do some individual work today and see how he feels.”
On if there is a target date for when Lions WR Jameson Williams will come back: “Not really, I just – I would say probably after Thanksgiving sometime would be the best way to – I think that’s tentatively what we’re looking at. I don’t know if that would be the Jacksonville week or the week after. It could be next week, it’s just we’re not doing a ton, but he’s close. It certainly won’t be this week and I don’t see, there again, him playing for Thanksgiving, but we’ll see where it goes. He’s progressing, there’s no setbacks.”
On how winning has created momentum for him as the head coach: “Winning helps everything, but I have not – I don’t lose – I haven’t lost confidence. I didn’t lose confidence when we were losing. I mean, I know how close we are, so winning helps everything and that gives everybody a pep in their step. You’re able to recover just a little bit sooner, getting ready for the next opponent. But I’m not – nothing that we’ve done has surprised me to this point over these last two weeks. We’ve made more plays than the opponent to win the game and we didn’t do things that ultimately cost us the game. So, we’ve got to continue to trend that way, and then really I think the focus has got to be how do we stay out of the position we were in, in the fourth quarter early? How do we get out of that? We’ve got eliminate – we had a bust, we didn’t fit a gap right, (Bears QB Justin) Fields breaks it. Offensively, we don’t ID our protection correctly, and now we’re second-and-18. So, those are the little things that are next to correct so that we can continue to get better from here because that’s the key. Yeah, we’ve won two now, but we have to get better, we have to be even better if we want to continue this.”
LIONS QB JARED GOFF QUOTE SHEET
November 16, 2022
On being one of the few quarterbacks in the NFL to not wear a wristband with the play-calls during games: “Yeah, everyone does a different way. There’s some teams who do it just for redzone because it gets installed later in the week, you don’t have as much time to kind of get through it. We do a good job here keeping it short and trying to condense things, and I’ve always just taken a lot of pride in just trying to remember everything, and for better or for worse, that’s just the way I’ve done it. And I’ve had wristbands at times, so I’ve gone back and forth certainly when the plays get long. I’ve done it, so just right now, I don’t. You said I’m one of three? Nine? OK, so yeah, I just haven’t done it.”
On if he wore a wristband with the plays last year: “Last year we did it a little bit, early in the year.”
On his evaluation of Giants OLB Kayvon Thibodeaux: “Yeah, looks good. Looks good. Does a lot of stuff, does a good job in pass rush, also drops into coverage, does a good job. He’s an athletic player, moves around, he’s a good player.”
On what it would mean to win back-to-back games on the road: “Yeah, it’d be big. It’d be really big, man. It’d be our third in a row, and certainly be against a good team in the Giants, and it would feel good, man. It would really good, and one we want to get.”
On finding offensive success despite injuries to the wide receiver room: “Yeah, we’ve had guys step up. I think I might have mentioned it last week, but I’m kind of used to that at this point. We’ve had a lot of guys kind of in and out of the lineup. You kind of stop asking who’s up this week. You just kind of get used to whoever’s going to be in there. We’ll be ready and fill in, and you saw (Lions WR) Tom Kennedy last week do a good job and making a big play there at the end, so we have confidence in those guys, but to be honest, whatever happens, happens. I’m somewhat used to there being just kind of a shuffled deck.”
On how winning games last season with injuries to the wide receiver corps helped prepare him for a similar situation this season: “Sure, yeah, similar, right? Last year we had those moments where we had to have those guys fill in and again, I’ve had a lot of reps with those guys, so there is some continuity there.”
On not turning over the ball against a team like the Giants that tries to force turnovers: “Yeah, very clean. That’s part of their game, and that’s part of (Giants Defensive Coordinator Don Martindale) Wink’s personality since he’s spent time in Baltimore is they want to turn the ball over, they want to get after the ball, so we’re aware of that, but you’re aware of that every week, and they seem to do a good job of it anyways. So yeah, we’ll be hyper aware and making sure we’re taking care of the ball.”
On why the Giants defense excels at third down stops and red zone defense: “Their scheme’s really good. It’s the whole Baltimore Ravens thing for the last 10 or however many years that (Giants Defensive Coordinator) Coach (Don) Martindale’s been there. And he’s doing it here in New York now, and it’s a really good, tough scheme, and it provides a lot of challenges, but nothing that we can’t handle, but yeah, they’re good. They’re certainly good on third down, so we’ll be ready to take advantage of situations when they’re there, and make sure we’re on our P’s and Q’s.”
On if facing the Ravens defense last season manned by Giants Defensive Coordinator Don Martindale helps him prepare to go against the Giants: “Maybe a little bit. Yeah, maybe a little bit, maybe just from some reps we had that we can kind of draw some memory from, but they’ve got a different personnel this year, and they do a bunch of different stuff. He’s so multiple. He can do so many things that you never really know what you’re going to get.” |
