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Head Coach Jim Schwartz Post-Practice Quote Sheet

Posted Sep 18, 2009

On whether Cliff Avril will play Sunday
“I don’t know, we’ll see on Sunday.”
On how important it is to have Avril available because of rotation
“Yeah, regardless of whether you’re the starting end or the third end, you’re going to get time and you’re going to roll through and all of those guys play. He’s done a little bit of stuff on the practice field this week. We’ll just see how he is on Sunday.”
On how S Ko Simpson is coming along
“It’s a completely different system. Physically he’s good. Mentally he’s picked up most of the scheme. There’s some blitz stuff that he’s still learning. He’s only been here for a week and a half right now, but he’ll be up to speed fairly quickly.”
On DE Turk McBride
“He played defensive end and defensive tackle at University of Tennessee. When we graded him a couple of years ago at Tennessee we really liked him. The scouts here with the Lions liked him. Obviously the Chief’s like him. They picked him in the second round, but what happened, he went from being a starter at defensive end to being a reserve outside linebacker. They switched schemes. They went to a 3-4. They asked him to lose 20 pounds to be an outside linebacker and really he didn’t fit that scheme. I mean no disrespect to him as a player, no disrespect to the scheme, he just didn’t fit. They needed to make a move for another player and he was the player who it had to happen to. His skill set fits what we do. It fits what we do on defense. We’ll put a little bit of weight back on him. He’s probably defensive end right now but he has the ability to be able to rush inside. That’s one of the things we liked about him when we came out.”
On whether they will try to stick with their system or switch things up after last week’s loss
“Everything is going be adjusted for an opponent and what you do is, like I said on Monday, you have to evaluate what went wrong. Was it a missed assignment? Was it a breakdown in the scheme? Did they take advantage of the scheme? Most of our issues were either physical errors or missed assignments—mental errors. In those cases you need to keep plowing ahead. When you start ending up with things that people are victimizing or exploiting in the scheme, you need to be able to tweak your scheme from week-to-week and then if physical errors continue you need to look at your lineup and you need to make changes there as necessary.”
On whether Vikings QB Brett Favre is the kind of QB the Lions will pressure
“So you’re looking for the game plan? I’ll say this: however you pressure the quarterback it’s important to pressure. Whether it’s four man pass rush, whether it’s all out blitz. Getting pressure on the quarterback is a necessity in this league. We didn’t do a good enough job of it last week. You know, I think they (New Orleans) were No. 2 in the league in sacks allowed last year. Favre has been hard to sack in his past. He’s had a couple years where he’s been first in the league in least amount of sacks allowed. But no matter how you do it, whether you blitz, whether you four man pass rush, whether you three man pass rush, your ability to pressure the quarterback is crucial to stopping offenses in this league.”
On what the sellout means to Schwartz
“Well it’s important to the city for everybody to see it but I’m really excited to see our fans in action. There’s a home field advantage in the National Football League. We saw it last week, drawing a couple false start penalties because of the crowd noise. When you can get that twelfth man on your side, and it’s not just that, it’s not just the crowd noise, the excitement, the players will feel it. It will be electric. It’s the home opener. It’s going to be a great time. I’m really looking forward to it.”
On how QB Matthew Stafford has adjusted to NFL game speed
“I think anytime your quarterback, or any quarterback you evaluate, they all say the same thing. They all say the game has slowed down for them and whatever point that is, Week 1, Week 16, year one, year sixteen, when they’ve made it as quarterback they say the game slows down for them. So that’s important. It’s one thing to have practice and be full speed but when the rush is coming full speed, when defenses are disguising full speed all the sudden the more times he plays, the more experience he gets, the game will slow down for him a little bit more.”

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