The Detroit Lions return home to Ford Field Sunday in Week 8 as they battle the Seattle Seahawks with kickoff set for 1 pm ET. Both teams will be looking to avenge narrow defeats in Week 7 as the Lions are coming off a 13-7 loss at Chicago on Monday Night Football, while the Seahawks fell to San Francisco 13-6 in aThursday night matchup.
LIONS HEAD COACH JIM SCHWARTZ:
On the offensive struggles: “I think the No. 1 thing that we failed to do on offense was fail to score and that was directly related to turnovers, particularly turnovers in the red zone. We had three non-scores in the red zone. If you face a tough opponent on the road, that’s not a very good recipe to score. That game could look a lot different if we capitalize on those plays. I mean, the interception late, that’s a fourth down play where it’s not a bad decision as much as it is almost to have to try to make a play there. You can’t throw an incompletion there, you’ve got to try to at least do something. But the two fumbles were critical breakdowns and you can’t afford to do that.”
On the change at receiver without WR Nate Burleson: “Well, Broyles plays in the slot, Tony Scheffler plays in the slot. Titus Young moves up and all those guys get more opportunities. I think one of the encouraging thing about our loss last night was to see guys like Titus Young and Ryan Broyles step up and make plays. Titus has been working hard to get there this year and I think that was a big step for him and Broyles has been doing the same. I think both of those guys stepped up and made some plays and I think those guys can help fill in the loss of Nate Burleson. We’ll be able to replace Nate as a player, but Nate brings more than just his physical abilities to the field. Nate’s a very good leader, a very good guy in the locker room. He’ll still be around but we need also to pick that up on the practice field and in the locker room.”
On where WR Ryan Broyles is physically: “I think after the bye week we never really even consider him an injured guy anymore. We haven’t limited his practice time. He very rarely even wears a sleeve out on his knee at practice. We just view him as one of the other guys. He had to work through training camp, just like all our ACL guys, when Pettigrew had his and the other guys have had there’s, we’ve had to sort of get them through training camp. But after we got to the season, particularly when we got that four, five days rest during the bye week, I think that was very beneficial for him.”
On the fumbles by RB Joique Bell and RB Mikel Leshoure: “You never want to tell a guy don’t fight for yardage, but yeah you have to be ball secure. Same thing with Joique. Joique was second and goal I think it was. It was second and goal from the 1 after the incompletion. That’s not fourth and goal. You know, I think that there is a fine line there and you certainly don’t want to slow guys down from being aggressive in a play, particularly in the red zone, ball security ball security is more important than that extra half-yard.”
On having success in an up-tempo offense and implementing that earlier in games going forward: “Well we went to no-huddle a lot earlier in the game. Again, failed to capitalize on the opportunities we had to move the ball. I certainly don’t want to make it seem like we were playing on air. Chicago Bears had a very good defense, played very well last night, so they made it very difficult on us. We could still move the ball. It’s a little bit harder to, but once we do we have to capitalize on the scoring opportunities. Up-tempo, huddle, whatever it was, those didn’t have a lot…we had more physical errors than we had tempo problems.”
On Stafford looking like he has regressed: “I wouldn’t say he’s regressed. I think as an offense we’re working through some things right now. We’re not clicking on all cylinders but we can. We have the firepower to do it and Matt’s certainly capable.”
On addressing different reasons for why the game was lost: “You know, I think you look at things and you say, “Ok, what are the reasons we didn’t come up with a victory and I think that the times we haven’t won this year you can point to very specific reasons. I think if you’re at a loss, if you can’t understand or can’t explain what’s happened and if you don’t have confidence in the guys’ abilities to be able to put stuff like that behind them, then maybe you feel a different way. But we have confidence in our players. We have confidence that, you know, over the course of 16 games that they’ll make those plays. Biggest thing is we have a home game this week against Seattle and we need to get that win. You know, I think we certainly have the capability of doing it as long as we learn from mistakes that we’ve made and we can put them behind us. You know, how many times you see Calvin Johnson drop a pass on the first series of the game? You know, I mean, that was a big one too. You know, he’s got a great chance there to make a play and get free. We’ve all seen him break a tackle and run past the safety. You know, it’s not just the other guys. I mean, there’s a lot of other places. We missed a couple sacks. We had a chance to get Cutler down and Cutler’s a very mobile quarterback. But all of us can play a little better and we can coach better and we can get out of it.”
On if the slow starts to games are of concern: “Well, it’s always a concern. You want to start fast. We certainly don’t plan on going three and out on the opening drive or giving up a touchdown on the opening drive. But we’ve also made some adjustments in the game, you know, put ourselves in scoring position. Also found a way to get some stops. I mean, we came out in the second half, had a real good three and out, forced them to punt. Big momentum change with the fumbled fair catch and they were able to get a field goal off of that. We were able to hold on defense, but they still got a field goal out of it.”
