In Play Magazine
For Starters
K Jason Hanson has now played in 295 career games, the most in franchise history. Hanson has now tied Hall of Fame CB Darrell Green (Washington Redskins, 1983-2002) for the second-most games played by a player with one team and is now one game behind C Bruce Matthews (Houston Oilers/Tennessee Texans, 1983-2001) for the most games played on by a player on one team.
Hanson’s career 295 career games is second among active players and 11th all-time.
T Jeff Backus made his 152nd consecutive start today at left tackle.He has started every game since he was drafted in the first round of the 2001 NFL Draft. Backus currently holds the mark for the most consecutive starts among active interior (offense and defense) linemen and is currently tied for fifth among all active players with 152 straight starts.
He is second in Lions history for most consecutive games started behind Hall of Fame CB Dick LeBeau (171).
LIONS HEAD COACH JIM SCHWARTZ
Opening statement:
“Obviously a very difficult loss to take, particularly when we had a 10-point lead as the game rolled down the fourth quarter. The end of the game, we failed to execute the way that we needed to and that’s the head coach’s fault. That’s my fault. I didn’t do a good job enough with the players in those situations, not only on defense, but on offense and on special teams. The game came down to one point. We had a missed extra point and there’s no question that Ndamukong is our backup field goal kicker. He’s done it in practice. We have a lot of confidence that he could kick it. It put him in a difficult situation because he went out without any warm-ups, where a kicker that’s not playing a position generally has time to take his time. Probably should have called a timeout, given him time to get ready. At the time, when Jason got roughed on the play, it looked like it was a big advantage for us, because it put us at first and goal at the 1. We were able to get a touchdown rather than a field goal. But in the long haul, that actually hurt us worse than it helped us, with the missed extra point, then also our kickoffs and the way the field goal team was at the end of the game.”
On QB Matthew Stafford’s condition:
“He’s very sore. He hurt his shoulder and wasn’t able to finish the game. You guys know how tough he is. If he could have he would’ve. We’re going to take a pretty serious look at it.”
On if he re-injured the same separation he had before:
“It’s his right shoulder. I don’t know if it’s even related. We took enough time with it that we thought that any re-injury would be a new injury. We’ll see where he is with that. That was a tough situation because he had green grass in front of him and had his chance to break out of there and run. But some of those plays we just need to throw it away. We didn’t want to throw incomplete passes in those situations. He ran it.”
On if there is a reason that the errors happened at the end of the game and if it’s due to having young guys on the field:
“There’s no excuses there. Even if you’re a younger player, if you’re not a younger player we need to be able to execute at the end of the game. We’re eight games into the season. There are no rookies anymore, there are no young players. We need to be able to execute. There were breakdowns at the wrong time at the end of the game.”
On if K Jason Hanson’s injury is long term:
“Well, he was able to go back in and kick an extra point, after getting his knee taped up and a bunch of other things. He couldn’t have gone from very much farther than that.”
On how they will regroup after such a loss:
“I think our players take a lot of confidence in the way 54 minutes of that game went. I think when we look at the final 6 minutes; we can see a lot of reasons we weren’t able to close that out. Like I said, big plays allowed on defense – that had nothing to do with keeping their clock going. There were some big chunks that were there at the end of the game. We failed to execute: missed tackles, letting guys out of bounds, personal fouls moving them into field goal range, and then us failing to keep the clock going at the end there. There were a lot of situations. And then the missed extra point, that makes it a touchdown at the end rather than a field goal.”
On if he thought of putting Hill in, had the Lions received the ball in overtime:
“He was active only to hand the ball off. He couldn’t have done anything other than take a snap and hand the ball off, so there was no consideration. A little bit like Matt a couple weeks ago. It was only up in case of a dire emergency.”
On if QB Shaun Hill could be ready next week:
“We’ll see. That will close in right around the time that he’d be healing. We’ll have to just wait and see and see where he is and his ability to be able to handle the football and also throw and take a hit and do everything you need to do in an NFL football game.”
LIONS QB DREW STANTON
On the third-down play after the two-minute warning:
“A lot of things happened on that play, and I thought whether to go down and keep the clock running or to put a good ball on him and try to get a first down. So, we’ll look at the film, but it’s not sitting well right now.”
LIONS DT NDAMUKONG SUH
On attempting the extra point:
“I need to be ready at all times. I practice it, (I) just didn’t execute.”
LIONS S LOUIS DELMAS
On what’s been happening to the Lions late in the fourth quarter:
“Nothing. Nothing’s happening in the fourth quarter. If we want to be a good team, good offense and defense, a whole unit, you have to be able make it out of the fourth quarter. We haven’t been doing that throughout the year, we have to change it around.”
LIONS CB ALPHONSO SMITH
On how the Lions made mistakes to lose the game:
“Yeah, (that) just summed it up. We did have them bottled up all day, but it’s all about finishing. I’ve seen games where an offense has 100 yards going into two minutes left in the fourth quarter and they end up winning the game. It’s all about finishing; it’s really unfortunate that we didn’t finish. So to a sense, we did shoot ourselves in the foot.”
