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Below is a look at what Detroit Lions head coach Jim Schwartz had to say during his Monday press conference. (Quotes provided by the Lions.)
On if there are noticeable differences with LB DeAndre Levy: "Not really. He's always been a guy that has been good around the football. I think back to a few years ago, he intercepted a ball against the Miami Dolphins and took it back for a touchdown. He's made those plays over the course of his career. He's making more of them this year. I think, I mentioned this yesterday, the step that he has taken has been understanding opponents offenses and taking that next step. He's always been a very smart player. He's been assignment sound. I think he is anticipating things really well now. I think that he certainly benefited from being in the same system for going on the first five years of his career."
On containing Browns TE Jordan Cameron: "He's a good player. He made a play at the end. His biggest play was when the game was sort of out of reach at the end. We didn't play that especially well, but we really played in a prevent mode. I know there are a lot of people that don't live prevent, but prevent helped us win the game on that one. He was a big part of our defensive game plan. We were trying to stay over top of him and trying to limit his big plays. He made a lot of them. We didn't play especially well over all on defense. I think we did limit his catches and his plays down the field. At the expense of (Josh) Gordon, he lit us up pretty good. He made a lot of plays in the game. We were fortunate enough to make enough plays to win the game. I don't think we're happy about anything that we really did on defense."
On limiting Johnson's number of plays to 50-percent: "No not really. We had planned on just using him in certain situations. There are some things that we thought that he could still do and some things that we didn't want to put him in that situation. It was just really going by play call. In the second half he was feeling okay and he played a little bit more."
On the reaction to LB Stephen Tulloch's halftime speech: "He was finished by the time I got in to the locker room. You want leadership from your players. It always is better, I've told players and coaches this, when it comes from players on the team, whatever it is. I think that's a sign of true leadership when players sort or handle things before coaches get involved. He said what he had to say. We moved on. We made our adjustments. Everybody knew that we weren't playing well. Everybody knew it wasn't just defense of offense. It was offense and defense. I think special teams was doing a pretty good job. They had a tough assignment with (Travis) Benjamin. They were handling that pretty well. Sam (Martin) was kicking off very well. Offensively and defensively there were things that we could play better. There was no panic. I think those things can be overblown a little bit. Nobody wins a game because of a pregame speech or halftime speech or anything else. Adjustments that we make occur after every single series and play callers take that in to consideration really every single play as they're trying to sure up things that an opponent is doing. We came out. We played better in the second half. I think that's the main part of that. If that had to do with him gathering the team up, I'm all for it."
On if TE Joseph Fauria will have to adjust his play due to new attention: "I think that would depend. If he starts to get more attention, somebody has to get less. Generally, that's Calvin for us. Not many defenses want to do that. A lot has been made of the dynamic between Reggie (Bush) and Calvin. I think there is, in red zone particularly, another dynamic there that can force defenses to be spread thin a little bit."
On how the dynamics on offense stop defenses: "Well if you want to stop the run and you have to get eight guys in the box that leaves you one guy that you can double. If that goes to Calvin, then a guy like Joe or any of our other potential receivers on the play is singled up. If you want to double both of them, you're going to be light in the run game. I think we have proven that we can run the ball across the goal line just as well as throw it. Anytime you have more play makers on the field and more size mismatches, and in that case it's a size mismatch, it makes it harder for the defense to defend everything."
On Fauria needing to make plays not just in the Red Zone: "All our players can do a little bit more. He's a young player, there's still a lot of things that he's working on. I think everybody has seen some of his accomplishments and some of the things that he's good at, but sometimes people miss the things that he's still working on and he's like any young player right there. There's a lot of parts of his game that he's still working on. I can't remember which game it was, I think it was Minnesota in the opener, that he had a couple of receptions, I think a bootleg on one and another play before we got into the red zone, so he's certainly in the game plan there. He's in all of our offense. Right now we're just trying to find the best way to use guys and try to put him on the field in situations that they can respond the best. In this game, he had to take a heavier load than he did in the first five games and it wasn't just in the red zone, he was in for a lot of other plays, but like any other young player, there's still things he's working on as a player, but there's also not many players that score three touchdowns in a game, particularly tight ends. So he brought something to us. Not that we wouldn't have scored on those other plays if we went to somebody else, but that was the difference maker. When we were up seven with not a whole lot of time left, and all of a sudden it was 14, I mentioned prevent defense right there. You're up 14 with two minutes, the opponent has no timeouts, as long as you don't give up a big play you're not going to lose the game. That's a big difference between being up seven there or potentially 10."
On the status of TE Tony Scheffler and RB Theo Riddick: "Him and Riddick are still being evaluated. They didn't make the trip, but we've done that with a lot of guys that have been concussed. Travel is one of the things that can potentially set guys back - the pressurized environment on a plane and stadiums and stuff like that, so both of those guys didn't travel with us this week. They're still being evaluated so that's really all I have to say there."
On what WR Ryan Broyles brings to the offense despite not putting up numbers in the box score as of late: "He's a slot receiver and he was out there a bunch for us. I think he had one opportunity to make a catch in this game. I'd like to see him make that, but same thing could be said for about a dozen other wide receivers it seems like. We had a lot of potential catches in the game that we just didn't come up with. He's working hard, he's an important part of where we are offensively and he's going to make some plays for us. I think we just have to be patient there."
On CB Darius Slay getting tossed back into the fire at Cleveland: "I thought he did a nice job. Rashean (Mathis) has really done a good job coming in and setting a good example for Slay. I think Slay's been improving over the last month. I think being able to sit back and watch a veteran player like Mathis has really been beneficial to him and I think you saw that when he went on the field. Physically he's done some good things, but I think mentally and just game-awareness he continues to improve. A little bit like I talked about with (Joseph) Fauria, there's still a lot of things he's continuing to work on. He also makes some good plays. I thought he made a really good play on that one pass breakup that ended up being called pass interference, but I thought he did a really nice job on that play - got a hand in, it got called, but I thought he made a nice play on the ball there."
On why the team has been so successful getting interceptions than last season: "I think a lot of it has to do with the guys up front. I think it was (DeAndre) Levy's first interception, again (Ndamukong) Suh got the assist on that one. If you look at the play, Suh's bearing down on the quarterback and the quarterback's got to get rid of it and Levy's in good position, he goes up and makes the play and the other one C.J. (Mosley) was all over the quarterback. Even on the last series, they had a fumble that we potentially could have got, and that was with Devin Taylor corralling the quarterback. I think a lot of good things happen when you put pressure on the quarterback and some of those good things are turnovers. It was an area we lacked last year and we've seen some good signs in the first six games. We still have a long way to go, but you look at our four wins, when we win the turnover battle, it puts us in good position to win the game. When we don't get turnovers, we haven't won games. So it's a lifeblood of our defense, but probably any defense also."
On if he is happy with the run defense: "Yeah we gave up the reverse, we have given up a couple of quarterback scrambles and some of those plays, they all count the same, whether it is a run or a pass or a penalty. Penalties don't show in stats and some of those can be big chunks of yards also. We're still working hard to improve. I think Gunther Cunningham and the defensive staff really did a good job of putting some fires out for us in the run game. We were a little leaky in the inside run game, early in the game, when we came back late in the second quarter and into the third quarter they tried to go back to those same runs and we were there to make the plays. I think that was a big part of our turnaround. We started to get three and outs and getting that run stopped was a big portion of it. We continued to give up some big plays in there. We can play that reverse better. We knew when (Travis) Benjamin went in the game there was a good possibility that he was going to get the ball. That is certainly a play we can play better. I think the good portion of that, even though (the drive) ended up being a touchdown, (DeAndre) Levy made an unbelievable play on that. He was running all the way across the field and if you are having a top 10 race for the fastest guy in the NFL, Travis Benjamin is probably in that consideration and Levy was able to track him down across the field and gave us a chance to go line up again. You've seen that a couple times from our defense where we have given up a couple big plays but we've had really good hustle and it has given us a chance to play. Not all the times did we stop them after that but last week (Randall) Cobb, when he had gone down the field, Tulloch had got him corralled. This week with Benjamin, Levy got him corralled, it gives us a chance to play again."
On the success of the Lions coverage units: "Honestly with our kickoff coverage, you can have 10 guys named Schwartz out there with Sam (Martin) kicking it and a lot of those are touchbacks. Not saying that we haven't done a good job because when they did decide to bring one out, we got them down at the 15-yard line. I think a lot of the credit there goes to Sam and his ability to hang the ball in and control with depth and also location. That has been a significant improvement and when teams have tried to bring it out, we have tackled them inside the 20 quite a bit. The punts have been a good team effort. Our gunners have covered well, our inside guys have covered well, the punt locations have been good, the hang time has been good. We knew that (Travis) Benjamin was a guy that liked to bring the ball across the field. He has made a lot of big plays doing that but when he did we were able to throw him for some losses. There aren't many times where you're going to see a punter average more in net than he does in gross but in this case he did, he tried to circle the field on us and our guys did a good job of corralling him. Even to the point of, we had a five-yard penalty on one, but we declined the penalty because our coverage was so good and our punt was so good. It has been a significant improvement for us this year."
On if the coverage success is because of the size and speed acquired in the offseason: "Everyone wants to be bigger and faster. I don't think that had anything to do with it. I mean faster maybe, bigger, I don't know if bigger would be the reason that we are covering punts better. Our gunners have done a nice job down the field. (Darius) Slay had to pull a bunch of double duty in this game when Mathis went down, we had four corners up, we kept an extra wide receiver because of Calvin's situation. So he had to pull double duty and do a lot. Joique Bell was covering a lot of punts for us, Joique has done a nice job for us. Mikel Leshoure ended up being on all four special teams by the end of the game. There were some guys that stepped up into some roles but I think it has been a nice job with our coverage and our punter."
On if P Sam Martin was always going to handle kickoff duty: "We knew he could kickoff, we researched him pretty well. I know there were a lot of people that questioned that pick, but I would like to see where all those people are right now, honestly. I think it has proven out that he is a pretty good punter but kicking off was definitely part of his skill set. Particularly when we brought in a veteran like (David) Akers, now Akers can still kickoff but I think at this point in his career it has benefited him to concentrate on one thing and Sam has been outstanding. Akers has been outstanding also. He stepped in a tough situation like that, that's not an easy field to kick on. It's natural grass with a little bit of wind down in the end zone, he stepped up and drilled that 51-yarder to give us a seven point lead. If he misses that then they have field position and we are only up four, that was a really big kick in the game and we have a lot of confidence in his ability to convert those kicks for us."
On if he has confidence in RB Mikel Leshoure: "Yeah, no question. He didn't play very much but when he went in there, we handed him the football. He played a lot of football for us last year, he will be a big part of what we do. We wouldn't have him on the team if we didn't think we could plug him in and he could tribute and he could play well."
On if Leshoure is in game shape: "Oh yeah, he works really hard during practice, that's not an issue at all. We have had guys brought up from the practice squad, we've had guys that have been inactive and all of sudden move into an active role. All these guys are professional and they work hard."