Detroit Lions Store

News


Head Coach Jim Schwartz Press Conference Quote Sheet

Posted Nov 2, 2009

On what he feels the Rams took advantage of with the fake field goal
“That’s the same rush that we blocked the field goal against New Orleans with. It’s a good rush. What we did is we went to it once too often and a lot of teams will have that, where they have a fake that they like against a certain rush, it might be punt, it might be a PAT or field goal rush and if you get the look they’ll have the fake one, if they don’t get the look then they’ll call it off. In that circumstance it wasn’t a bad scheme it was too aggressive in that situation and we went to it one too many times. They saw what they like, and we had done it on film before, and they were able to take advantage of it.”
On whether anything was built into that that they should have factored in the fake
“We’re actually strong on the fake on the other side, we’re rushing on that side and you’re counting on the rush to disrupt the play on that side, we really have one guy and what they did is they had the ball in the hands of the one guy and it was almost like a reverse option. If the guy takes him, he throws it over his head and if that guy fell back, then he was going to run it. We were weak on that and most, I mean not most, but there are a lot of times that you use field goal rush and stuff like that. To block, you have to be able to take those chances. Like I said yesterday, it’s a little bit like a blitz. There are risks and reward with those, there’s risk and reward with attempting to block that. We were just a little too aggressive in that situation."
On whether their tendency should have been picked up through self-scouting during the bye week
“Well it wasn’t necessarily a tendency as much as it was a look, it wasn’t a tendency as much as we just went to it too many times in this… twice in a row in this game. We rushed the first time and came really close to blocking it. The tendency is ok, we were really close the last time, let’s go for it again. They saw what they saw on tape. They saw it the first time and they said, ‘Hey, let’s go to it.’ But as far as looking at our self-scout and saying, ‘Hey, we’ve done this too many times,’ I mean if you do that, then you start removing all your plays in your playbook, ‘Wow, we’ve run this too many times, somebody’s going to get this one.’ There’s a fine line. The issue there wasn’t the scheme, the issue wasn’t anything other than it was an aggressive scheme, we were probably too aggressive in that situation and we went to it one too many times. Those were the issues, it had nothing else to do with scheme or self-scout or tendencies or anything else.”
On whether doing it more than one time is a tendency
“Well it was a tendency in that game. I mean it was twice in a row in a game. It’s the same rush that we blocked the New Orleans field goal with. I mean, yes it’s been on tape. Yes it’s been successful for us. We went to it too many times.”
On whether there was any concern that there wasn’t anyone else back in the play besides DE Cliff Avril
“They were all rushing, they were all trying to block the field goal. That’s where it was too aggressive. If we had guys back there to defend the fake, we would have had nobody trying to block a field goal. You can’t say, ‘Hey, we’re going to be really good against all the fakes, but we’re going to give up a really good rush.’ There are fine lines in between both of those. We had a good rush. Like I said, the previous field goal, we came close to blocking it. If we block that kick right there and pick it up and score, it’s a little different situation. They executed a play, we didn’t, they were in a good position, we weren’t and we take that as a coaching staff.”
On whether QB Matthew Stafford will continue to be monitored day-to-day
“I don’t know for how long, but it will still be a situation where we’re going to be monitoring him and trying to make sure that he doesn’t have any setbacks and things like that. But he came out ok; there were no issues in the game and there were no issues after the game. There’s been nothing, but is he totally out of the woods? Is this behind him? Probably not yet; he still has treatments and things like that which will continue to go. I don’t know for how long. He was able to play, he was able to play effectively, he was able to scramble, and he scored a touchdown on that and could move around. Those weren’t issues in the game.”
On whether WR Calvin Johnson is day-to-day
“Same thing. He’s getting closer.”
On whether losing an equal match-up is concerning
“We’re concerned on any loss. Honestly, the way we evaluate games, we’re concerned even when we win. We’re going to find things that we need to improve on. We find areas that we need to address and things like that. You’re right: we are as a team, as an organization, where we still have issues that we need to address. I don’t think it makes it any more or less urgent to get that done based on losing to the Pittsburgh Steelers or losing to the St. Louis Rams. A loss is a loss and our issues don’t change regardless of where those losses are. There are still things that we need to address as we go forward.”
On whether it’s really true that a ‘loss is a loss’ when losing to a previously winless team
“Anybody we play, I mean, I don’t really understand the question. We don’t go into a game saying, ‘Oh, yeah, hey guys we have a good chance to win this one,’ or ‘This week, not so much,’ or ‘This is a must win,’ or ‘This one as long as we play a good game, that will be fine.’”
On whether he looks at playing a Super Bowl Champion team and playing an 0-7 team equally
“Sure, I honestly, I don’t know how we could handicap a game and say, ‘Ok, a win against these guys is worth whatever… 10 points in the BCS and a win against in this team is worth three points in the BCS,’ or one of those kind of things. Our job is to win every week and every week it might be a different way, there might be different circumstances, playing on the road we may have injuries in one game and we may not in another. There are a lot of different circumstances that go into that and to minimize a win is disrespecting the game in this league. Every win is important in this league and it’s hard to win in the National Football League. Also to gloss over a loss, or to excuse a loss, is unacceptable and that’s disrespecting this game. We’re not going to go there. A win is a win, a loss is a loss, this is the National Football League.”
On whether he feels he’s on schedule in terms of development for the team
“The only schedule we’ve ever really had is to try to improve every single day. We talked about it in the offseason, we talked about it during training camp and things like that; so schedule wise, that’s really the only thing we’ve ever paid attention to. We’ve hit a bump in the road the last couple games: at Green Bay and then this Rams game. I don’t know that we made improvement in those two games. There have been some things, you can always take any play in a game and point to some positives, but as a team I don’t if we say improvement there, so we’re off schedule in that regard in the last two games.”
On RB Kevin Smith’s status health wise and spreading work load between Smith and RB Maurice Morris
“That was always our thought when we signed Maurice Morris. It was always the thought that we were going to use two running backs. Kevin is our workhorse running back, getting most of the carries, but we always had in the plan that Maurice was going to carry balls in the game. His health hasn’t allowed that every single week, he’s gotten back and the bye week helped him significantly. We were in a situation that we could get him the football. Kevin banged his shoulder a little bit at the end of the game and Maurice was running and in the situation that we stayed with Maurice right there.”
On whether they’ll share the work load moving forward
“I don’t think that anything has changed from the fact of Kevin is our lead running back and Maurice is the complimentary running back. If both are healthy, then that hasn’t changed at all; but health plays a part in that dynamic. It’s played a part this whole season in that dynamic.”
On how much of a concern it is that so much of the passing game depends on Calvin Johnson
“It doesn’t rest solely on him, but he is obviously an important part of it because he affects the way that it opens things up for other guys. You take any great player in the National Football League whether it’s RB Adrian Peterson, a great running back from Minnesota, opens up their passing game because of the way people have to defend him. Calvin affects coverage, so it’s not that he’s the only threat, it’s just that he enables other people to be able to make plays down the field.”
On what he had planned to do with Smith and Morris early in the season
“This one ended up 50-50 as far as carries, that’s never really been the plan; but the one thing, if you look across this league in running backs, there are not many teams that have one running back that gets all the carries. We just mentioned Minnesota with Adrian Peterson, Chester Taylor gets a lot of carries for them in a lot of different situations. The Giants had three running backs and he used them all. Jacksonville, when they were rolling really good running the football, they had multiple running backs. I think that’s a fact of life in the NFL. Running backs, it’s hard for one guy to go the whole season with that kind of load. It hasn’t changed at all there. We never really saw 50-50 split, which this game basically was, but injuries sort of pushed us into that.”
On whether he was happy with what he got out of the running game
“We came out and we ran the ball effectively. There’s a difference between efficient runs and explosive runs. When you run the ball on third down and one and you gain one yard that doesn’t look really good on your final stats—one yard average per carry—but that was a good one. We, particularly early in that game, we came out and really wanted to establish run, run, run, run. We moved the ball pretty effectively there. We got the ball right to midfield. Had a little setback with a penalty. Had a chance to get in the field goal range on the opening drive of the game and couldn’t execute a catch down the field. That play makes that drive at least three points if not a chance to be seven right there. So, the run game had an effect in opening up the pass game even though the numbers were pedestrian. It was two yards, three yards, five yards. It wasn’t those big runs. We need to break some longer runs. We need a running back that squirts through there for eight yards, makes a safety miss and goes 40 or goes 30 or goes 25. That’s really where our running game’s lacking. Not from an efficiency standpoint because we’ve made consistent yards. There’s been two things. One, is our failure to make explosive. The other thing is we’ve had a tendency to take too many lost yardage plays. We were in the fourth quarter and we were running the ball very, very effectively. We got to midfield, or right around midfield, first and ten. We took a seven yard loss on a toss that we had run very effectively in that game, and all of the sudden it’s second and 17 and now it’s hard to run the ball to stay on schedule. Now you’re in a one dimensional pass and it makes it a lot harder on the offense. Offensively, running the ball wise—lost yardage plays we need to eliminate and we need to make some more explosive plays down the field.”
On to what extent you can determine whether the run game is a talent issue or an execution issue
“Explosive’s coming from running backs. You can block, to expect the offensive line, the offensive line opens holes at the line of scrimmage. Wide receivers and running backs account for explosives. Wide receivers will go block safeties and then you’re able to get—once you’re able to break the front seven you’re able to get big yardage and running backs make guys miss in the secondary and account for big yardage. It’s a little bit of both. It’s a little bit upfront. It’s a little bit on the wide receivers to block. It’s a little bit on the running backs to make somebody miss or to make a run down the field.”
On whether Smith and Morris have the ability to make those explosive plays consistently
“I don’t know that he (Kevin Smith) has. I don’t want to classify him with anything. I don’t know that speed is always part of it. I talked a little bit about our wide receivers and being able to block down the field. Making a guy miss doesn’t necessarily mean explosive speed. We have the potential to do it, yes. It depends on a lot of other things. It depends on our wide receivers blocking. It depends on somebody making a guy miss. It depends on having a good enough passing game that it opens things up a little bit more inside. All of those things would go into making explosive runs.”
On how he feels about G Jon Jansen’s performance and whether the position at left guard is a rotating door that is now closed
“It was his first time out there. He battled through it. Blocked pretty well in the run game. There were a couple issues here and there in the pass game from just about anybody but we still have work to do. We still need, and like I said, I don’t want to say is the revolving door still revolving, we just still need to get efficiency out of that position. Jon’s working hard at it and hopefully we can get that solved.”
On what his view was of the holding call on the last play
“He’s restricting the rusher. The officials called it. They can probably call holding on just about any play in the pass game. We picked a bad time being backed up to be able to get those and be in the situation. I think really the biggest issue there is that we were in a situation where we had whatever, a minute and change left and we were down seven points and everybody in the stadium knows that we have to pass and that makes it a lot harder on the offensive line. We weren’t getting those situations early because we were running the ball and we were setting things up and we were protecting the offensive line. When you get in a position—and typically a lot of our problems this year—when we’ve made negative plays in the passing game, have come from being in that situation late in the game. Against New Orleans, down three scores. Against Minnesota down three scores late in the game. Quarterback trying to make a play down the field. Rushers rushing, guys getting holding penalties, when you make yourself one dimensional you set up bad things. That’s our fault for letting things get out of control right there.”
On the call on LB Julian Peterson
“He hit him in the head. It was a glancing blow but the rule book states you can’t hit the quarterback in the head. “Hit him in the head. They called it. That’s the definition of the rule. It’s hard on defensive players. If you go low on the quarterback you’re going to get a penalty. We had one of those a couple of weeks ago. If you go high and you hit him in the head you get a penalty. If you try to hit him in the belly and he ducks his head and you hit him in the head, it’s a penalty. It’s difficult for those guys. They just have to go play and they need to let the officials officiate. We just need to play. You hit the quarterback in the head; it’s going to be a penalty. They’re going to throw it.”
On whether Stafford’s inexperience accounts for his last play
“That was just a bad pass. I don’t think that was experience. You’re having four guys bear down on your rush and they’re in cover two, they’re really soft. He just put the ball too high and outside. He’s made some other really good throws in that game. I don’t think that was an experience thing – that was more just a pass that sort of got away from him. You want to keep that inbounds, at least give your guy a chance to be able to come up with it.”
On whether the guys have heard his message too many times and they’ve heard it all before
“No. Most of these guys weren’t here for any of that. We’ve turned over half of the roster. I think the message to the team just needs to be consistent. We need to say the same things. It’s up to the head coach not to change courses, not to have a different message every single week and things like that. If you keep driving to that point then I don’t anticipate any issues like that.”
On how many drops he thinks they had
“I think we had six. “No. There was one in the second but there were six balls that regardless of where the pass is, we get two hands on it, we should make that catch.”
On the personnel changes in the secondary and if guys are ‘on notice’
“What do you mean wide receivers? Sure. This is the first game that we consistently had drops. Wide receivers are going to drop some balls. It’s unrealistic to think that they’re going to catch every single one the whole season but when you have a situation like we had and there are consistent drops, yeah there’s definitely accountability to it.”

Recent Articles

Subscribe

Game Day Videos

More Video

Photos

More Photos