When Detroit Lions head coach Jim Schwartz chatted with the media on Thursday, he made it sound like the team was going to file an appeal over being found guilty of tampering with the Kansas City Chiefs. In fact, he flat out said the decision by the NFL was the wrong one.
"As far as commenting on that, probably too much has been said already. It's something that should be confidential and I'm a little bit disappointed that as much has come out as it has,'' Schwartz said today at the scouting combine. "We have received that notification. I believe firmly in our case and I think we've reached the wrong conclusion in that. We still have some more options that we can pursue in that case.''
All Schwartz said to follow that up is that the Lions would consider appealing the charge. Earlier today, Lions general manager Martin Mayhew said that a decision about whether or not to file an appeal had not been made, but his comments certainly made it sound like the Lions just want to move on and put this behind them.
You win some, you lose some," Mayhew said, during a 45-minute interview with the beat writers. "As of right now, we lost that one. I take the blame for that. That's my fault."
"When this kind of thing happens, you have to go back and reevaluate what you did, what you didn't do and things you can do differently," he said. "Then you have to move on. We're moving on.
"We haven't made a final determination on what the next step is, but from our standpoint, there are so many positive things going on with our franchise and it doesn't make a lot of sense to wallow around in something negative."
Whatever ends up happening, the Lions can take the weekend to make a final decision, as the deadline to file an appeal isn't until Monday.