clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Lions quotes: Jim Schwartz comments on win over Cowboys

Quotes from Jim Schwartz's media session after Sunday's Detroit Lions game.

Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports

Below is a look at what Detroit Lions head coach Jim Schwartz had to say after Sunday's win over the Dallas Cowboys. (Quotes provided by the Lions.)

On his thoughts while QB Matthew Stafford switched plays on the last touchdown play: "Well, there is strategy involved in everything."

On if the plan was his strategy or Stafford's: "Well, I mean, no. There are a lot of things that he has the option to be able to do. If he can be able to get that ball over and they're not stacking behind him, then we want to get that ball in there. Even if he didn't get it, if that would have been reversed right there, it would have been a 10-second run-off because everything reviewed inside of two minutes with the clock running, they're going to take 10-seconds off of that. We would have had two seconds to make one more play. They never even tackled him. He spun off of it and scored a touchdown. I was confused trying to figure out what they were reviewing, but it was a good win."

On the resiliency that the team showed: "I don't think that's anything unusual. Our team has been resilient through a lot of things and we needed to be today. I think we're only the second team in the history of the National Football League to win a game when you're minus-four in turnovers, so we certainly didn't make it easy for ourselves. We left a lot of points on the board. We fumbled and threw interceptions with the ball over midfield. I think a play that probably goes a little bit unnoticed or a series that goes a little bit unnoticed was after we had failed on fourth down-and-twelve, our defense went on the field and not only got a stop, but also stopped the clock, forced a holding penalty. Held them to a field goal right there, which made it a six-point game. So a touchdown won it. We also had 40 more seconds than we were planning on at that point. Defense never gave up. They did well and got that stopped. I thought that was really a key point of the game. Any time you got a minute, you got our offense, we like the odds that we can go put that ball in the end zone. Calvin made some great plays. (Kris) Durham made a great play down the sideline. Stafford, I can't imagine many people doing that other than Matt Stafford."

On who drew the holding penalty that stopped the clock: "I think it was our right defensive end, Devin Taylor. It might have been Willie (Young), I think it was Devin. We had (Andre) Fluellen in there. We had short-yardage type defense. You would have to go back to the film. If we hadn't stopped them for less than a fourth down in that position, we would have to take that penalty, which would have allowed another 40 seconds to run off that clock. That helped right there. Not because we declined the penalty, but we got the clock stopped. That was the penalty in that situation. It doesn't show up on the yardage, but it was a big play in the game."

On WR Calvin Johnson's performance: "Just wait until he's 100-percent."

On if he ever saw a game where a receiver had more yards than the other team had total: "I don't remember. I think he had the second-most receiving yards in the history of the National Football League. That would outgain a lot of offenses. I thought our defense, we gave up two big plays. One was on a blitz we really played poorly on. One we were just a whisker away from breaking up. We were doubling Dez Bryant just about the entire game, and he still made two touchdown catches, both of them he was doubled. One was an over and under zone and the other was a true double-man. He kept on making a play on us. No matter what they did to Calvin, Calvin was still productive. We needed it today."

On this win meaning more than other wins: "Yeah, I might rethink my mantra on this one. It's a big win for us. Going into the bye 5-3 as opposed to 4-4, I don't care how you really look at it. 5-3 is a successful first half of the season. We have the bye week. We have a chance to rest up. We're going to need it. We have some injury situations. I thought our coaches did a great job of managing a lot of injury situations. A lot of guys went out in the game. (Ryan) Broyles went out of the game. (Bill) Bentley went out of the game. We were in nickel and dime and it didn't leave us much margin. Don Carey came in and did a nice job in there. We lost a significant amount of players. Ziggy Ansah went out early with an ankle injury. Not only did we have to battle with the turnovers and things like that, we also had to battle the injuries and plugging guys in. They did a good job. I was proud of them. We got contributions out of a lot of guys."

On if any of the injuries are long-term: "We'll have to see on Ryan Broyles if that could potentially be long-term."

On if the mindset of the day was going for touchdowns: "My library card has been revoked. I don't know what the book says. Is that what Pro-Football Folks is or one of those people? We have confidence in our guys and we also have confidence in our defense right there. When it's done in there that tight, I think the opportunity to get seven outweighs the opportunity to get six. Now late in the game, we had a situation where we went for those field goals rather than going for it because the game situation warranted it. We kept it a one-score game, whatever it was. We want to be aggressive as much as we can. Sometimes, you need to kick that field goal. In that situation, we wanted to be aggressive and thought the potential touchdown outweighed the fact that if we missed it, if we didn't make it the way our defense was playing, we had a chance to get the ball back close to midfield anyways."

On being hopeful to win despite the turnovers: "Honestly, you don't think about that stuff like that during the game. You're just trying to manage the next drive. Each drive is a new game, whether you're up seven points or down 10 or whatever it is. You can't worry about what's happening in the past. The only thing you can worry about is the situation right now with seven minutes to play and we're down 10 points, or whatever. It doesn't matter what happened in the first quarter. If you worry about what happened before, you're not going to put yourself in a position to play at the end. Our guys know that and stayed true. There were some times it didn't really look good. Our sideline never felt that way. I was proud of the guys for that."

More from Pride Of Detroit:

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.