November 5, 2025
Opening Statement: “Got the Commanders. Got a lot of respect for what (Commanders Head Coach) Dan Quinn’s done out there. Good program. They’ve gotten some injuries, some things that they’ve been trying to overcome here – and really no different than us though, coming off a loss and getting back on their feet. We’re getting back on our feet and cleaning things up and find a way to be competitive and get the win.”
On how much he heard from Lions Executive Vice President and General Manager Brad Holmes regarding trades throughout the trade deadline day: “Yeah, there were things that popped up, there was. It was really after I talked to you guys, then we started getting some things here and there. It was just there was nothing that was I would say enough to be noteworthy. I mean it was certainly more intriguing, but not – it wasn’t good enough. So, all good. All good. We’re ready to roll.”
On what not making a trade does for the guys that he believes in that people have not really seen on the field yet: “Well, look I go back to you know your own guys. You’ve been around them, you’ve seen them. You know the greatness behind them, you know their warts too. And we’ve all got them – I don’t mean that physically, I mean I don’t know. I maybe have one – but my point is, you know some of the good, you know the strengths, you know some of the weaknesses, you know how they’re made, you know how they react under pressure. You know what they’re like every day in practice when they haven’t gotten an opportunity, but they want one. You see all these things and as long as they’re continuing to grow and get better and get better, then our trust goes up on those guys. And it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be perfect or it’s – but yet, it gives you faith in those guys. And until further notice, they’d have to prove us wrong. They get an opportunity, then fine prove us wrong. If we do, we’ll move on to the next guy. But I just think that helps when you’re around these guys for a long enough time – training camp, here we’ve got these guys on vet squad. I mean we’ve got some guys that have been here for a while now, so they’ve been trained a certain way, they understand what we want, what we’re looking for, how to play the game. And so, I think it gives them confidence, yeah.”
On how he feels knowing that this is the group of players going forward this season: “Yeah, dude I feel good. I’ll say this again, my job is to freaking get these guys ready to play on Sunday. And I’ve got the roster to do it, we’ve got depth, we’ve got the dudes, we’ve got weapons, we’ve got a quarterback. I’ve got to do my part. I’ve got to do my job, and I’ve got to get them ready and I’ve got to make sure we cross all the T’s, dot the I’s. And that we turn over every stone and make sure our guys are ready to roll and we help them get ready to roll. So, I’m good. I feel great, I really do.”
On if he thinks Lions Executive Vice President and General Manager Brad Holmes would ever take the approach of giving multiple draft picks up for high impact players: “I think that if everything about it was right – when you start talking like that like throw all the picks away, that’s a lot. I mean that’s a lot of capital, especially with guys that we’ve got that we’re signing and we want to continue to sign to keep what we have intact. Now you’re not only throwing the picks, you’ve also got to pay that player too, probably. Otherwise why are you throwing all the picks at a guy that you’re buying him for a year? And so then it really kind of – everything that we planned for, you just might as well throw it in the trash. So, I don’t want to say never. There’s not a never. I mean look, Brad and I have had conversations about – this isn’t like we just say, ‘Well, what if we – no, no, we’re not even going to talk about that.’ We talk about everything, we do. We sit there and I mean we’ve thought about that before, ‘What if we did this, this and this?’ I mean these conversations come up. But he and I both agree that this is how we proceed, this is how we go about our business and we have a long-term approach. But I’ll never say never.”
On if Lions OL Miles Frazier and Lions OL Giovanni Manu are a part of the future plans at offensive line: “We’re starting Miles’ clock today, so he’s going to start practicing today. First one back. And he’s – no training camp, no nothing, so this will be a little bit of a baby fawn at the beginning and then he’ll quickly go. It’s a little bit like (Lions OL Christian) Mahogany. It took a while but once we got him, he just quickly grew with practice reps. So, we’ll start him. And then Gio’s still a few weeks out, so I don’t see us starting him within the next week or two. But he is getting better. He will be ready at some point here, I think. We’ll see. But yeah, it’s good to get Frazier back. So, there’s somebody else here in the hopper we get eyes on. We liked him in the Draft process, like the way he is but we don’t know a lot about him yet in the NFL level. He just needs reps in practice.”
On what he is looking to see out of the team this week: “I just want to see us play our brand of football for 60 minutes our style. I want to see us line up, I want to see the urgency, the intensity, I want to see the focus, I want to see the finish on the football – offense, defense. I want to see our playmakers making plays within the scheme, within the system. I want to see our coaches coaching at a high level. I want us playing, coaching on a championship level. And more importantly, I want to play a hell of a lot better than we did last week. We need to amp this thing up and clean this up. Let’s play disciplined football for 60 minutes. Doesn’t have to be perfect, not looking for perfect. I just – let’s clean some of this stuff up.”
On how he plans to try out different combinations of personnel on the offensive line and how he will decide who starts on Sunday: “Well, I think we’ll start right now as usual. (Lions G Kayode Awosika) Yode goes in and then we may start putting (Lions OL Trystan) Colon in some spots here and move these guys around today and tomorrow. So, we’ll start as we kind of ended that game the other day and then maybe we start moving some pieces around. So, that’s kind of where I’m at now. Doesn’t mean that I will do it but I mean I’d like to do it today at least a play or two and see what that looks like, see where we’re at. Maybe some walkthrough reps.”
On what things could be done schematically to assist Lions QB Jared Goff with pass protection: “Well I think some of what happened the other day was – I’m going to bring this up again, this is our own doing. We opened up this can of worms ourselves because we really had a bust and so now you open up pandora’s box. You miss it and they’re like, ‘Oh, well they can’t pick it up.’ Well now all of the sudden, you finally pick one up and now we get edged on one side of it. And then pretty soon, you’re starting to get this interior pressure and so we created this own issue. The protections are sound. Can we do things better? Yes, we can. And there will be a couple of things we tweak. But as far as the – we did a lot of that to ourselves. And Goff’s going to be fine. He can see it, he knows it, he studies. He knows what he’s getting when he’s getting it. Doesn’t mean they’re not going to change it up – if I’m them, I’d change some stuff up for sure. But we’ll be prepared, and it’ll be good.”
On if he has considered moving Lions OL Graham Glasgow to guard and playing Lions OL Trystan Colon at center: “I’ve considered everything, yeah. I’ve considered everything.”
On if moving Lions OL Graham Glasgow to guard and playing Lions OL Trystan Colon at center is something that he might look at this week in practice: “Yeah, could.”
On if the price or the personnel was not good enough for the players that Lions Executive Vice President and General Manager Brad Holmes brought to him before the trade deadline: “Look, these are solid players. But when we make a move, you’ve got to check all the boxes. So, I can sit there and say, ‘Yeah, I like him. He’s a solid player.’ But I told him, I don’t even want that getting to me if it doesn’t make sense from a financial, from a values standpoint, from what we’re looking for, that I don’t even want to. So, that thing gets filtered, which I appreciate. I don’t want to deal with all of that until we know we’re serious about it. And the rest, then we – he checks all the boxes. He checks that box and then we start watching, we look at the type of person – will he fit in this locker room – type of player. What does he look like next to this player? Does he elevate this player? Or is it really not – yeah, he’s a little better, but is it really worth that for what you’re giving up versus the next guy we have ready to go as the backup that’s coming off of vet squad. Those most of the time are the ones that we are like, ‘Well, no I don’t think so.’ And we’ve been pretty good so far. Doesn’t mean it’s perfect, but that’s just how we feel.”
On what he liked most about Lions OL Miles Frazier in the Draft process and if he is someone that could step in to help the offensive line when he is ready: “Well he’s versatile. He can play the guard, he can play tackle – he did both of those at LSU. He was the guy – he can sustain blocks, he’s got power, he’s pretty tenacious, he finishes. He was kind of the guy that just you look around, you’re like, ‘This guy just always makes blocks.’ He’s just always on his guy and he’s just always finishing down the field. And if he does get beat, it’s never fast. Guy has got to try to freaking bowl him, finally get an edge, quarterback’s holding onto the ball and it’s a late, something late. Those are the things you want to see. He takes good angles at the second level. So, there’s a lot of things that we like about him. He’s going to need reps.”
On if Lions CB Terrion Arnold’s first pick is a step forward for him: “It was good to see the coverage aspect. That was good, that was encouraging. I thought he played with confidence, I thought he challenged. I thought he was to that point, playing the ball in the air, going after the football. So, covering the man, playing the football, playing sticky coverage, challenging. And that aspect was good. That aspect of it was good.”
On if there is something else that Lions CB Terrion Arnold still needs to work on: “No – that aspect was awesome.”
On if he feels for Commanders Head Coach Dan Quinn being upset over not taking Commanders QB Jayden Daniels out of their last game before getting injured: “Yeah, I do. You can’t second-guess that. That’s me, you can’t. He just got back and I’m sure get him in a rhythm, a flow. So, I think it’s hard to second-guess that. And I know hindsight, all this and that. But yeah, I do feel for him. But I don’t feel like he should have to feel that way. Try to get your guy going back in a rhythm and it’s unfortunate. I hate that for JD, man. That’s tough. But it’s not his fault.”
LIONS QB JARED GOFF QUOTE SHEET
November 5, 2025
On if the team’s efficiency climbs when the team stops playing against themselves: “Of course, yeah. If we’re able to not beat ourselves, absolutely, he’s right. Shot ourselves in the foot a few times there, and ended up not doing enough to win, for sure.”
On what gives the team confidence in their ability to bounce back from losses: “Just kind of who we are, just finding a way to bounce back and being resilient and playing well after losing a game, or not playing well and responding the right way, practicing the right way today like we did today. It’s all kind of who we are and what we’re built for. Now again, this is another team that’s coming off a loss and they probably pride themselves in being built that way as well, so we’ve got our hands full.”
On Lions Passing Game Coordinator David Shaw comparing the offense to basketball and the team not being able to hit their midrange shot: “That’s a good way to put it. It’s kind of like the fundamentals. We are getting explosive at times, and we are getting some of the dinks and dunks here and there, but it’s the fundamentals of some of the middle of the road stuff that has been lacking.”
On being on pace for a career high in sacks and how much of that comes from the offensive line: “Yeah, you don’t want to have that. You want to limit that as much as you can, and I think the last two weeks are not indicative of who we are. I’ll try to get rid of the ball a little bit faster, that’ll help those guys. And I know they want to play better, too.”
On the difficulty of mixing and matching offensive linemen: “Yeah, it can be a challenge, but we like those guys that’ll be filling in and we’ll be just fine.”
On how much he expects Washington to capitalize off of the middle pressure similar to what Minnesota did: “I’m sure teams will do it. These guys may do it, they may not, they may have something else for us. We’ll find out. But yeah, if you don’t show you can stop that, or anything for that matter, teams are going to keep trying you until you do show you can stop it. And it’s no different for us offensively. If we see something on defense that teams are having a hard time with, you try it again and see if they’ve fixed it. And if they haven’t, then you keep exploiting it.”
On the difficulty of improving on offense when there are many little things to improve rather than one big thing to pinpoint: “I don’t think it’s very difficult. I think it’s just everybody to themselves doing their job the way they’re supposed to do it. Every one of us has our hand in it, getting a little bit better every week trying to solve those issues, and I think a season, there are ebbs and flows. It comes and goes. You fight adversity, you get over adversity. A few weeks ago we were the greatest thing since sliced bread, and now we are a horrible offense apparently. It comes and goes. We try to get better, and we try to fix it, certainly there are things to fix in this game. I can go back a few weeks where there’s been things we need to get better at. Yeah, it’s not missing us. We know that, we’re not naïve to it, and planning to get things fixed.”
On if losses are sometimes a good team having a bad day: “It can be. I don’t believe that was the case against Minnesota. I thought they played well, I thought we didn’t. I don’t think we had a bad day, we just didn’t play well. Again, there were plays that were good, we just didn’t play well enough times.”
On Washington’s linebacker group: “Yeah, good. (Commanders LB) Bobby (Wagner)’s been playing for a long time now, got as much respect for him as anyone in our League. (Commanders LB Frankie) Luvu is a hell of a player as well. They do a hell of a job, man., they do. They’re really well-coached over there, their front seven is a problem and their backend is doing a good job, too. So yeah, it’s a really good defense and we’ll have our hands full.”
On how much motivation there is to beat the Commanders after losing to them in the playoffs last year: “That’s definitely a part of it, absolutely. I think more than that, we want to get off of a losing streak here and get a W. Certainly, you’re thinking about that, but I think it’s nine games ago now. So yeah, we’re trying to get a win this year and maybe use that as a little added motivation if we need it.”
On if there is a schematic workaround for the pressure the offensive line faces: “No. You’ve got to block it.”
On how the screen passing game can get more consistent: “Practice. Getting better at it, working on it, reps. It’s timing. Screens are hard to get. It is hard to practice those because it’s hard to do it on a full-speed defense. But when you do get those reps in practice, making sure that the timing between the O-line and my throw and our running backs and their landmarks, all that matters a whole lot, and we’ve just got to keep working.”
On being ranked third in scoring but 25th in third down and the simplest way to answer the third down issues: “To answer your first question, yeah, it’s bizarre that’s the way it is. I don’t know why that is. Those numbers are so different. And to fix the third down issues, I know I’ve said it a gazillion times now, but it’s just executing better. I know that’s not the answer that you guys want to hear, anyone wants to hear, but it’s really the truth. Knowing what our problems are, knowing our answers, our solutions, running good routes, protecting well, and then me being accurate with the ball. And I certainly have my hand in that and putting the ball where it needs to be at the right time and getting rid of it.”
