clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Lions quotes: Jim Schwartz comments on Sunday's win over Seahawks

A look at Sunday's comments from Detroit Lions head coach Jim Schwartz.

Leon Halip

Below is a look at what Jim Schwartz had to say on Sunday following the Detroit Lions' win over the Seattle Seahawks. (Quotes provided by the Lions.)

Opening statement: "TY (WR Titus Young) filled you in on everything? I guess not. (laughter)"

On the game never being boring at the end: "Nope. I don't know what else to say. Seattle is the same kind of team. They have one game where they beat Dallas I think by 20, every one of their games has gone to single score. Last drive of the game, they're used to playing games like that, we're used to playing games like that, and we ended up making one more play. The times that they've won they've made the play, the times that we won we've made the play.

"Titus...it was more than just Titus though. Ryan Broyles made a couple of really big plays. Tony Scheffler got a big chunk of yards. (Brandon) Pettigrew moved the chains a few times at the end; Joique Bell made some big plays. (Matthew) Stafford, Calvin (Johnson). It was a team effort to be able to mount that last drive."

On having confidence that Stafford was capable of turning things around: "It's easy to be confident in him when you see him every day in meetings and you see him every day on the practice field and the talent that he has. Honestly, you look at the games. You evaluate exactly how we came short in a game or how we were able to get the victory. We know that over the course of time Matt's going to make the plays and he's got players around him to make the plays. It's easy to have confidence in Matt. That's certainly not a leap of faith by me and I'm not going out on a limb having confidence in him."

On sitting at 3-4 instead of at 2-5: "That's life in the NFL. Every week it's week-to-week. You have to live in the moment. You have to win that game. I think this team does a pretty good job of that. You have to persevere through things. We've all seen the NFL and we've all seen situations that come up that you have to persevere over the course of 16 games. It's not just a 60 minute game, it's a 16 game season. Teams that do well over 16 games persevere through some tough times or adversity. Teams that do well over a 60 minute game persevere through some tough times or some adversity. That's just life in the NFL."

On the 16-play, game-winning touchdown drive being classic Stafford: "It had the side benefit also of just chewing the rest of the clock off so we could just put prevent defense out and they could try to razzle-dazzle at the end.

"No. 1 getting the score, whether it was a field goal or a touchdown, but after getting the score, getting the touchdown, and after that sucking up all the time and putting our defense in an easy to win situation at the end."

On S Louis Delmas and RB Mikel Leshoure not finishing: "Leshoure really wasn't an injury situation. Joique was doing some good things for us and we were rotating our backs too. Kevin Smith played a lot on third downs and then Joique was playing. Joique was on that last series. Mikel I thought ran the ball well today too.

"Delmas left with, I don't want to call it a re-injury to his knee, but an injury to his knee. He wasn't able to return. We'll have some tests tomorrow and see where it is but he wasn't able to return."

On the secondary: "Jonte settled down after the PI. That's something again, he's a young player and sort of panicked when the ball was up in the air. We have to do a better job of defending in that situation. But we knew we needed to take big plays away. That was a big part of their offense. When they did try to make a big play over the top and got aggressive to throw it, (S Ricardo) Silva made a great play over there. He's a very talented player. He's young, he's been inexperienced and he's worked his way up from the practice squad. But when he's played this year he's done a nice job. Erik Coleman came in for Delmas, did a nice job. There's things that we can do better, but there's a lot of guys playing. Alphonso Smith is out there playing the nickel, Justin Miller was even in on our prevent at the end; Just working hard to keep them off the scoreboard."

On RB Joique Bell being the closer: "He's strong. One thing with Joique is very rarely does the first guy get him down. He's got good balance, very strong. Gives us a little different dimension. All those guys are a little bit different style. (Offensive Coordinator) Scott's done a good job, as has (Running Backs Coach) Sam Gash with the mixing and matching of those guys and being productive; having them all in different roles."

On seeing something different in WR Titus Young this week: "You guys that are around Titus; he's never lacked for self-confidence. Titus is always positive and his role has changed a little bit now. But he's always upbeat and has a lot confidence in his ability to make plays. The biggest thing he's been dealing with this year is just the troublesome knee. That's made it difficult for him to practice full speed at times. But didn't look like it today. Ran past those guys on the third and long play for a touchdown. Matt ripped one into him. But he had a couple other short throws, some wide receiver screens that he did a good job of either getting positive yards or picked up first downs for us. Those were as important as his touchdown catches today."

On it seeming a little dicey to run short runs in the red zone: "Yeah, we ran it last week and fumbled it. Scored this week. I like scoring. We had confidence to run. When we called the first boot, they did a good job of jamming up Pettigrew at the line but when they did that on the play-action Matt was going to be free. We knew it was sort of a run-pass option. I think we had confidence we had a good play there. We felt good about it."

On throwing at the end of the game to eat up the clock: "Well we could've run, we just would have had to hurry up for a field goal like on that third down play or even the second down play. Would have put us in a hurry-up situation and we liked better huddling. But we could easily have called runs in those situations. We still had enough time and we could've easily got the field goal, I think it was the last 25 seconds, 24 seconds. Anyway, we had enough time that we could have gotten the field goal team out if we would have run it. We spread them out. They were in a position...the reason Titus was one-on-one like that was because they were packed in there to stop the run. And when that happened, Matt was able to get that little quick inside-breaker in there and Titus was able to finish it."

On Calvin Johnson having drops, including the one off his fingertips: "I don't know if I would call that a drop. I mean, we've seen Calvin make great plays but that's an over-the-shoulder in the corner on the fingertips. I think we've been a little spoiled to call that a drop."

On the mental toughness of the team and their record not having an effect on them: "I think people outside of the team tend to think that happens more than it does. It's a long season. Guys have something to concentrate on every week. There's a new opponent every week. This team doesn't sit around feeling sorry for themselves. They know where they are; they know why we've won games and why we've lost games. This team certainly fights to the end. As did the Seahawks - Seahawks all year were a team that was resilient to the end. That's life in the NFL. We're expected to do that. They're all professionals. Last thing you can do is let things like that affect your preparation, affect your play and our guys have done a good job of not allowing that to happen."

Reminder: You can follow Pride Of Detroit on Twitter and like us on Facebook.

NEW: Join Pride of Detroit Direct

Jeremy Reisman will drop into your inbox twice a week to provide exclusive, in-depth reporting and insights from Ford Field. Subscribe to go deeper into Lions fandom, and join us on our path to win the Super Bowl.