- Opening Statement
- “We said all along that we didn’t want to look at anything other than wins. We didn’t want to point to progress, we didn’t want to point to anything else. In the final determination, we were a 2-14 team this year which those results aren’t satisfactory and we need to do better than that and we’re going to do better than that and we have a lot of ways to go and a lot of areas that we need to approve. Are you going to keep opening that door and closing that door? We have a lot of things that we need to address as a football team. We’re going to make progress in those this offseason. We’re going to improve this team in the offseason.”
- On whether he was expecting so much roster turnover when he initially became the head coach
- “We knew that we would turnover a significant portion of the roster. We turned over about 50-percent of it going into the regular season and turned over more as the season went on. We knew that we couldn’t stand pat, even at the beginning of the season that we were going to have to keep working the waiver wire and keep working trades or anything else that would find a way to improve the team. It wasn’t unexpected.”
- On his biggest priority for the offseason
- “Improve the talent level of the team.”
- On whether one area needs more help than others
- “No, I think that we have areas to address in a lot of different places and we’re still at that point. We said last year in the draft that we had a lot of needs and our No. 1 need was talent and that we couldn’t pass on talented players in order to solve one need. I think we’re still in that situation in a lot of areas. There aren’t many positions on this team that we can just sort of sit back and say, ‘Hey, we’re good the way we are,’ and that’s just a fact of life.”
- On whether he is going to make any changes to his coaching staff
- “There are always changes in the NFL. I don’t want to lock into one way or the other because there are some things that happen for a lot of different reasons. That’s part of the evaluation. Right now we’re still working on players and things like that but there are a lot of stages to the evaluation of players and coaching staffs and scheduling and schemes and things like that. That stuff will come through.”
- On what degree of roster turnover he expects this offseason
- “I think I feel strongly about some of the players that are here. There were some players that we went into last offseason and being a new coaching staff, you knew reputation-wise, you knew what you’d seen on tape but you hadn’t been around that player for game weeks and you hadn’t seen that player and seen the whole season from that player. I think there are some players who we feel strongly about who were here in the past and there are other guys we feel very strongly about that we acquired last year, particularly in the draft. I think that there are some areas that you look at and say, ‘Okay, we just need to make more decisions like that.’ Is there going to be turnover? Yeah, there’s going to be turnover. How much? It’s too early to tell. There will be significant turnover for this year to next, sure.”
- On which position needs the most work
- “If you say, ‘Okay, this is the one area that needs the most (improvement),’ you can get backtracked a little bit. You can make so many attempts to improve that area that you neglect other areas of the team and things like that. I think I’ll just keep that the same way: we have enough needs at all positions on this team and there are issues at every different position that we need to address. When you’re building a football team, I don’t know that you can wait those things out. I don’t know that you can say, ‘Hey, the secondary is more important than the defensive line which is more important than this other (position).’ I know, I sort of speak with a forked tongue and said that the quarterback was the most important position on the team – and I still feel that way – but I think that everything else, you can look around the NFL and see teams that are really a strong running team and don’t necessarily have an explosive pass team or really a good run defense but don’t have a really good pass defense, things like that. That’s not us. We didn’t have anything this year that we can hang our hat on and we could say, ‘Hey look, we’re really strong in stopping the run, we just need to improve our coverage,’ or ‘we’re really strong in running the ball, we just need to improve some skill players.’ That wasn’t us this year.”
- On whether the offense needs less work than the defense
- “That might be a better way to put it as far as number of pieces. I think that if you look at the resources, this team is devoted to offense, not just since I’ve been here but in the recent past. I think you could definitely say that you’re probably a little bit closer as far as numbers go there. I don’t want to talk about talent level there, but I’ll say numbers.”
- On if, outside of the team’s record, did he meet his expectations
- “I don’t know if I had that kind of blueprint as far this is where we want to be in this thing? I said this before…I think you can make poor decisions if you do that. If you say, ‘hey look, I want to be…we want to be right here at this point and things like that.’ Some of those things are artificial and some of them are counter-productive. Certainly not satisfied with the record but you guys have been around me for a little while and those kind of things, setting those kind of standards…Here’s what we need to do as far as a blueprint of how we’re going to build this team and how we’re going to get this team to be a winning NFL franchise, and a division winner and a consistent playoff team, is we are going to have make good decisions. (And) I still go back to the draft and say, ‘hey we made good decisions in the draft.’ We need to build on that. We need to continue to build this team from starter standpoint and from the depth standpoint. We made some progress in our waiver wire pickups. From the beginning of the season, we required a half-dozen, maybe 8-10 guys that have a chance to be on our 53 next year. Now, they might not be starters. Most of them are not starters, but they’re guys that can fill a role. Now, depth was a major issue with this team. There are times when you say…I’ve been a part of teams that say, ‘hey if we stay healthy, we’re a playoff team,’ and that’s not a good strategy in the NFL. You need to be able to say, ‘when we get injured, we’re a playoff team.’ (And) what happened with us when we lost major players…we had injuries just like everybody else has had, but we didn’t have enough depth to be able to handle those. Our depth showed up with injuries and our depth showed up in second half of games. We’d get outscored twice as much in the second half as we do in the first half, and those are depth type issues. When you have injuries and production significantly drops, those are depth issues. I think we made progress in the draft. I think we drafted good players. I think we addressed some of that by keeping an open mind and saying ‘hey look there are other players out there that can help us, that can have the possibility to fill roles and be on our 53, and we didn’t shy away from making those hard decisions during the season and picking up some of those guys. I think we’ve made progress there, but we still got a lot of ways to go, not only with starting talent, but also with depth on this team.”
- On how long do fans have to wait to see a .500 football team
- “I mean, I think if you look at it that way, you’re going to make poor decisions and I think that you…I mean like I said, it goes back to other things...if you sit there and say, ‘hey we’re going to get it done this year.’ Well maybe you make poor decisions just trying to go all in on that year and then you have a good year, and all of sudden it comes back. I’ve been a part of some of those situations before. I’ve been a part of mandates from ownerships that said, ‘hey look, if it’s not won this year then the coaching staff’s, we’re blowing this thing up and we’re starting this thing all over.’ (And) what happened is? There were poor decisions that were made. Poor decisions from a lot of different standpoints, but it was like, ‘hey look we got to do this right now because we have got to win tomorrow and it doesn’t matter what happens the next year, the year after, the year after, I don’t care what our salary caps look like, I don’t care if this guy is an older player, or this guy doesn’t fit. It’s immediate gratification. We can’t take that path. Immediate gratification is not a recipe for success. Our goal is long-term success for this team and building this team the right way, and not being in this situation having Monday’s after the season that is ending before the playoffs.”
- On if the team made bad decisions with free agency this past offseason
- “I don’t know if they were necessarily bad decisions. I think free agency is not the way that you build a team long-term. You can supplement it with free agency and free agency a lot of times, you’re at the mercy of what’s available free agent wise. You can’t choose who another team isn’t going to put a franchise (tag) on or who another team isn’t going to bring back or something like that. There have been a lot of good free agent pick-ups, and we’ve had guys that filled roles for us this year and did good jobs for us. It wasn’t disappointing. The point I’m trying to make is if you want to have a good franchise and you want to be a consistent team from year-to-year, you have to draft well. You have the keep stacking the young players behind good young players, and you have to do that over a period of time. That’s not an overnight thing. If you’re going to do it that way, it’s not an overnight thing. There aren’t many people particularly in the landscape now with free agency and the guys that make it out to free agency, and the money that needs to be paid and things like that…there’s not many players that you can go and say, ‘that guy is going to be a guy that we build around.’ You’re either getting a guy that’s a little bit older or guy maybe another team didn’t want to extend or something like that. It’s not that they’re not good players, not that they can’t fill roles, but we need to draft well and we need to continue what we did last year.”
- On if it will take more draft cycles to build up the talent pool
- “That depends on how well we draft next year.”
- On if he will likely get six or seven picks
- “That’d be pretty good.”
- On if that would leave him with one side of the ball
- “Again, the point I want to make is: we can’t panic. We can’t go for immediate gratification because immediate gratification is a short-term thing and it might do well for one year and everybody feels good – ‘Oh, wow this thing’s turned around’ or ‘We did this’ – but in the long run it was counterproductive and you’re back where you were.”
- On if teams get more specific with free agency as time continues with a team
- “That’s probably been – I don’t want to say a better strategy – but people probably have more success with free agency in the NFL when that’s been the case.”
- On signing players with a specific need
- “Are you saying a good team and filling in role players? Or are you saying – just going all-in on one player.”
- On the philosophy of whether you should ‘go all in on one player’ in free agency
- “I think there’s definitely some merit. The point I was making is that a lot of those players don’t become available now. The number of free agents – the number of guys – has significantly dropped over the years and I don’t know that those players on a yearly basis are there to be able to do that. I think that’s obviously a good strategy in free agency, I mean, any acquisition you make from your team, No. 1 they want to fill a specific role, but you want to be able to move forward with that player. You don’t want to be sitting there saying the next year or the year after, ‘Hey, we have to go back and address that need again.’ So you want to be able to get somebody that’s young enough, that fits your scheme, that’s healthy enough, that you can sign to a contract and you can say, ‘Hey, we can expect to see the end of this contract.’ That’s definitely the goal. But the number of those opportunities – those opportunities are limited now in the NFL.”
- On how he would categorize QB
Matthew Stafford ’s progress this year
- “I said before: we need to do a better job of supporting our quarterback and I mean that with Matt, I meant that with Daunte, I meant that with Drew. We need to do a better job around those players, so I think that’s important to note when we talk about the quarterback position. When we drafted Matt, we went into that draft with an open mind. We didn’t say, ‘We’re going to draft a quarterback’ and Matt was who we thought was the best quarterback and that’s who we took. We said, ‘Okay, let’s pick the best player in this draft. The player we think is the best in this draft and let’s be objective with that and let’s sort of make sure that he fulfills everything we want before we do that.’ Well, he did. Then we drafted him and we said, ‘Hey, look, let’s not decide right now in April if he’s going to start or if he’s not. If we’re going to sit him, if he’s going to start halfway through the season or anything else.’ Let’s say, ‘Okay, let’s let him go out there and let’s see what he can do. Let’s let it play out and if he’s our best quarterback and he’s ready, he’ll start.’ Well, he did.
“As the season went on, how did he progress and things like that? There were times he played exactly like we thought he would. But you also have to temper that with where he is in his career and things like that. Here’s a 21-year-old quarterback who was starting as a rookie. There have been a lot of great players in the NFL that have been thrown into that role that haven’t had a lot of success right away. Particularly with, like I said, we need to do a better job of supporting our quarterback. And let me throw defense in there as supporting a quarterback, too. Because a lot of issues that we had – similar to (how) Chicago played yesterday – you get in situations where you’re down 17 points in the fourth quarter and you need to catch up. That’s not a good recipe for a quarterback. I don’t care if you’re Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees – whoever you are. That’s not a good position to be in and you’re going to see mistakes. Matt made mistakes in those situations.
“Most of Matt’s mistakes came from either being late in the game trying to catch up and trying to do too much and throwing interceptions or being in situations where it was third down and 15 or third and 12 or third and 17 and trying too aggressively to make a play – to make a first down. We weren’t in a position on offense that we could concede a first down – attempt a first down. Third down and 15, there’s a lot of teams in this league that will hand the ball off on a draw and just say, ‘That’s fine. We’ll get it, maybe we won’t. We’ll punt it and we’ll be okay.’ We were in a situation where every single series had to count whether we were behind in the game or whatever it was and we had to try to make some of those (throws).
“Some of those throws he made – he made some throws that I haven’t seen made in the NFL on a consistent basis. Some of those pockets in Cover 2 that he fit into Calvin on some third down and 20s; down the seam to Pettigrew on third down and 20s and things like that. Some big-time throws. He made some big-time throws, he tried to do too much at times, he was forced to do too much at times. Then the injuries. He missed significant time with injuries, but I wasn’t disappointed with his decision-making; wasn’t disappointed with his accuracy as a passer; in his leadership, in his toughness – all those things, exactly what we thought we were getting.”
- On whether he’ll be more confident in the quarterback position at the start of next season in comparison to the beginning of this year
- “Oh yeah. From this year, you mean from the beginning of the year? Or this time last year? Because I think that we’ll be significantly better in both of those. No. 1, we’re obviously significantly better now than we were last year at this time, but also, we’ll be significantly better than we were at the beginning of this season. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. I mean, more experience is one of the things that he needed. I mean, Matt didn’t have any issues knowing the playbook, knowing what opponents did, having physical tools – all of those things. He needed to play, he needed to be in those situations and particularly if we can… it’s not all about the quarterback. The quarterback is an important position, but if we put more pieces around him, if we were able to run the ball effectively, if we’re able to play defense where we’re not down late in the game and we put our quarterback in that position, we’ll be significantly better.”
- On why he isn’t looking for instant gratification after a rebuilding process that has gone on for 10 years
- “There’s no excuse and there’s no low expectations. I disagree 100 percent with that. I am not setting the bar low at all. I mean, I’m very disappointed to be 2-14 and there are no apologies, there’s no excuse, we’re a 2-14 football team. What I’m saying is that we need to make good decisions and sometimes those decisions aren’t made for what happens in the next month or in the next six months, or things like that.”
- On stating that the only thing that mattered over the season was winning each game and why it’s not important to do everything possible to win the first game next season
- “Here’s what I say to that. You never once heard me say that it’s the most important thing is to win the first game. Last year in OTA’s, last year before the draft, last year before the draft, last year in training camp, we said what’s our objective? To improve every single day and to make every single thing that we can do to improve this team, we have to do. We have to make progress every day. Once we got into the season, I don’t know if you ever heard me say the word: improve. Once the season began it’s about winning on that Sunday. I think you need to balance both of those. You can’t during the season make decisions for the next year, for the future, that’s a poor thing to do during the season. During the offseason you can’t say, ‘Hey look, we got to get back and we have to win x number of games next year.’ Believe me, I want to win as much as anybody and my blood pressure is high. You guys made my hypertension high. I have a lot of doctors sending me notes during the game that worry about my physical health. We’re not building any excuses, we’re not setting the bar low. I’d also argue that there have been times that in this rebuilding, this constant rebuilding that you mentioned, that there have been some decisions that were made that weren’t in the interest of long-term building. They were more in the interest of, ‘Let’s get this together right now and let’s get that.’ I’ll concentrate on what’s in the future.
“I understand. Believe me. I didn’t say we have to do it slow, those are your words. My words were not that we have to do it slow. My words were that we have to do the right thing, that we have to make good decisions. We have to keep making progress. Not that we have to get immediate gratification. Like I said, that can be a little bit of a Chinese finger trap, the harder you pull on that, the tighter it gets and like I said, I’ve seen a lot of bad decisions. I mean, I grew up in Baltimore, I’ve been a Baltimore Oriole fan and I share those same feelings with the Orioles. Every year they have different things and go to different players and you get the same results; but, I think you look and you say, ‘What were the objectives this year,’ and the objective has got to be to improve the talent level, to improve the players that you have and to make progress there, not to talk about winning a game. I mean, it’s January 4, we don’t play this week. Our objective is not to win a game this week. Our objective is to make good decisions and to improve our talent level and to improve everything about this football team so that we’re in position to be able to win games next year and in the future.”
- On that whether he’s saying the same thing he said last year, but has more pieces in place
- “We didn’t know about last year and I’d include, I mentioned those guys that we pulled off the waiver wire, I mean those guys… they’re not (foundation) players; but they’re also very important and it’s something that we lacked this year as far as having depth and a lot of those guys that we picked up on waivers were 24, 25, 26 years old, guys that have experience in the NFL that can fill roles for you. Hopefully if we’re doing this right you won’t hear me say anything different when we’re doing this after a playoff appearance, or we’re doing this after a championship appearance. I’ll come up here on a Monday after the season and say, ‘Hey coach what are the goals this year?’ and I’ll say, ‘We have to improve. We have to get this team better.’”
- On if the No. 1 priority is finding talent
- “I don’t know if that will ever change. We have to keep our eyes on the best ways to improve and things like that, I don’t want to say, ‘hey, we’re going to draft the best player available.’ Talent is going to be the guiding force, it always is, and I think any time that you sit there and say, like I said, when we’re successful, we’ll probably be saying the same things. When we’re successful, we’ll say, ‘hey, what was training camp like?’ ‘Well, it looked a lot like his first year.’ ‘What was the offseason program?’ ‘It looked a lot like this.’ And that’s just being consistent and doing that. You can’t make decisions then change and make decisions then change and keep trying different results. You need to have good, sound philosophies, you need to make good decisions, you need to do it over a period of time, and when you do your franchise will be where you want it to be. If you don’t, then you’re not going to have success.”
- On how he can improve as a coach
- “Keep my blood pressure down maybe a little bit. I take pride in being even-keeled. I take pride in being the same way whether we win or lose, there have been some Mondays where obviously my temper was little bit shorter than others, and there are times that I’ve showed my displeasure with certain things that have happened on the field and things like that, but I’d like to be that head coach that is the same whether we’re winning or losing, the same whether we’re 10-1 or 1-10. I wasn’t that way this year, but it was me. I’ll work on it.”
- On how he can improve strategically
- “From a personal standpoint, I’ve just got to get used to not really having a schedule. People have asked me, ‘what’s the biggest change between being an assistant coach and being a head coach?’ One of the biggest changes is that as an assistant coach I could set a schedule and I could stay on that schedule every single day. Very few things could take me off that schedule. I would be a great witness in court, if somebody asked me ‘where were you at 9:32 on November 3, 2001?’ I’d say, ‘well, what day of the week was that? I know it was during the season, what day of the week was that?’ ‘It was a Wednesday.’ ‘Ok, I was doing third down package.’ Because you knew every single day that that’s what you were doing. That’s the way you do your week. As a head coach I’d say I don’t know, I don’t know where I was because there are so many other things that happen. There are player issues that happen, there are a million things that get your attention, and you just need to be that much more organized with your time to take advantage of the time that comes. Everybody has always said that every step you take up you get a little bit farther away from the actual coaching and things like that, and I tried not to let that happen, but it also stretches you thin as far as time management and being on schedule. You can’t do everything that you want to do, but you can still stay close to the game.”
- On why he would change if what we saw was ‘him’
- “You don’t want anybody to see your temper; you don’t want anybody to see that kind of thing. I just don’t think that the game is necessarily the best time for that to happen. I lose my mind a lot of times during practice and during meetings and things like that. During the game I’d rather not that be the case, but unfortunately that was the case this year and we had situations that I needed to be that way. It’s not that I’m not going to be who I am, what I’m saying is that what I’d like to do is be at the point with myself personally and with this team that I don’t need to do that during a game.”
- On if he will be coaching the Senior Bowl
- “There’s a good chance. We haven’t received any confirmation of that yet but there’s a very good chance that we will coach the Senior Bowl and we would relish that opportunity. There’s a lot of information. I’ve done that before, I’ve been on different staffs before, and that’s a great opportunity to get to know some of the best college football players in the country.”
- On concerns about attracting free agents and keeping current players happy
- “As far as free agents go and things like that, players understand this league and players have eyes. People thought that was going to be the case this year as far as free agency—we wouldn’t be able to attract anybody. And that was never once a concern. It was never once an issue. It just came down to somebody didn’t want to go through a rebuilding situation or a team whose talent level wasn’t what they came from. I don’t think that was an issue at all. As far as selling players that have been here that haven’t won, that’s not a concern of mine either. I’d take the approach of, we haven’t won, I’ve been here for one year, however many years they’ve been here, they’ve been here for three years, something like that. After a few years you lose the ability to be able to say, ‘hey, look, I’m fine, it’s everything else around me.’ My message to the players would be, take some accountability for it yourself. Rather than say, ‘hey, woe is me, I’m a great player and there’s nothing around me and the team hasn’t won,’ be accountable and say, ‘hey, look, I’m going to make a difference. I’m going to be a part of a change.’ It can be a cop out for players to point to the players and say, poor so-and-so, he hasn’t won. Those players have been here. Everybody takes accountability and wants to look at themselves first. I think players need to do that, coaches need to do that, front office needs to do that. Everybody always points to whatever it is, a general manager, a head coach, an organization. It’s more than just all that, and I think that we’ve been pretty firm here that players haven’t gotten a free pass, and we’re going to continue to take that approach.”
- On whether the team needs to add a running back
- “Well, I think where we are injury-wise at that position that becomes a definite concern. I try not to overreact to where we were at the running back position because if you would have asked me at the end of the first half in the third game of the season against Washington where we were – you look at the opener and we weren’t able to run because we got behind and we had 20 carries and it wasn’t enough; and then Minnesota was the best run defense in the league for three years running and we ran the ball consistently and we ran the ball well against them. (Against) Washington, I think Kevin (Smith) had 100 yards in the first half and then he got his shoulder. When he got back from his shoulders, because he got his other one later in the year, when he got back from them, all of the sudden he started having more production and we started seeing him run the ball well again and then he (hurt) his knee. From an injury standpoint, yeah, that’s definitely something (we may need to add). But I try not to read too much into the evaluation of our running backs from a talent standpoint because of injury.
“I’ve said from the very beginning, we want to build this team as a physical football team that can run the football and stop the run. A huge part of that is running back.”
- On what positions are solidified on this team
- “Quarterback; (we have a) pretty good free safety, I like where we are at free safety; I like where we are at center. We have some good players. A lot of it is perception and reputation and things like that. When I got here in January of last year or whatever it was, one of the things that kept coming up is that (Jeff) Backus couldn’t play left tackle and that we needed to get a left tackle. I thought
Jeff Backus had an outstanding season. He was consistent from start to finish; he’s available for every single game; he was our best run-blocker this year; we had issues on this team and left tackle wasn’t one of them.“At this time (last year) coming in, the common perception was, ‘Hey, if we don’t have a different left tackle we don’t have a chance and that Backus needs to get moved…’ and all those different things. We went in, we evaluated him, we went through the offseason program, we went through training camp and that concern honestly never came up – as far as coaching staff and when we were going through our grades every week. And every week, you could count on the way Jeff Backus would play.
“When we did pro bowl balloting this year, you’re not allowed to vote for guys that are on your own team, but when I was looking at the offensive tackles – the head coach has a vote – so I’m going through and looking and just looking at all of the available tackles. I said, ‘Jeff Backus should get votes here; I can’t vote for him, but Jeff Backus should get votes.’ Walter Jones wasn’t there anymore; Chris Samuel wasn’t there anymore; Orlando Pace wasn’t starting at Chicago at that point, those perennial type guys weren’t there. When you get past those name players, Jeff was every bit as consistent as those guys.
- On what he thought about the way LB
Julian Peterson fit into what they were doing on defense this year - “I think he fit exactly what we were looking for: multidimensional player that had size. (His) production was spotty; was up at times, he played very well in (some) games. I mentioned Backus and (how he played) every week and that was very consistent. I think Julian would tell you himself that he had ups and downs. There were some weeks that he played very, very well for us and was exactly what we were looking (for). And other weeks he didn’t have that same kind of consistency. I think that he started off slow but then found a nice groove; he stayed healthy for the most part; anytime you’re talking about a player that’s had a little bit of age, that’s an important thing to look at. If you look back on that trade, and Julian Peterson coming here for Cory Redding, we’re certainly not dissatisfied with the results of that. He fit like we thought he would.”
- On whether he expects the team to bring back Peterson: “Here’s the point I want to make with that
- "We don’t even know what the ground rules are going to be yet. We don’t know if there’s going to be a salary cap or if there’s not going to be a salary cap, who’s going to be a restricted free agent, who’s not. Who’s going to get franchised and who’s not. So anytime you talk about those things pending free agency or those guys who have contract issues or contract numbers and things like that, you really can’t comment on that because you don’t even know the ground rules yet.”
- On the fact that an uncapped year is likely
- “It depends on who you talk to when it comes to that. It’s not our job to assume. It’s our job to be prepared for all contingencies.”
- On whether Peterson’s contract could have anything to do with whether he comes back
- “Sure, but we’re also in the position where we want to be acquiring good players and guys that fit our philosophy. This was the first time in his career that Julian played behind the ball as an outside linebacker which means he plays from four-yards deep. He had a pass-rusher role; we used him a lot in our third-down packages, not only as a down guy but also as a multi-dimensional role who may drop, that may come back. I thought that Gun did a really good job of using him in those roles and he has the ability to be able to do that kind of stuff. Like I said, he stayed relatively healthy and that as a big part for a guy who’s been around.”
- On the uncapped year hurting the Lions chances to build through free agency
- “I don’t know if it necessarily hurts it, but it limits the number of players that would be out there, sure. I think that the reason those guys are sort of the marquee guys is because they are four-year or five-year players and you’re talking about guys that are 25, 26, 27 years old that somebody can give a five-year contract to and expect them to fill the end of that contract. There will still be good players available in either system, no matter how that comes out, there will be good players available – it just might be less and there might be more competition for those players. It may limit the pool but it’s not an excuse for there not being guys out there because there will be guys out there.”
- On whether he’d like to re-sign LB
Larry Foote - “We don’t even know what the circumstances are going to be as far as all those different things. Larry was an important guy for us this year. When we drafted, I think there were a lot of conspiracy theorists when we passed on some linebackers that said, ‘Hey, they have a handshake agreement with Larry Foote or they have a contract that’s been signed and not handed in.’ That wasn’t the case. We went into the draft and drafted based on not having Larry. We signed him two weeks later but there was no agreement. He came in and I told him the same as I told a lot of other players, ‘When you come in, when you sign on that line that’s dotted, it’s not signing as the starting middle linebacker, it’s signing as a chance to compete as a starting middle linebacker.’ Larry looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Don’t have to worry about me.’ You feel good about veteran players that can do that. From the time he got here, Larry just took that position and held on to it and said, this is mine. Wasn’t able to finish the season with his foot injury but played very, very consistent football for us and did a good job in all those things. Like I said with Julian, every case is going to be a little bit different and things like that but we’re in a situation where we want to be acquiring good players and keeping good players. I think I’ll just leave it at that when we talk about players like Julian and Larry.”
- On WR
Calvin Johnson ’s apparent frustration on the sideline this season - “There is a lot of frustration when you go through two wins. Here’s I think the thing that I’ll say philosophically about that: It’s not about one player. Our objective here isn’t to make one player happy or to feature one player or things like that. Calvin is a very important part of this franchise and he’s going to be a huge part of us being a consistent winner in the NFL but if our goal is to feature him as our goal is to make sure…if that’s our goal, then we’re looking at the wrong thing. What we need to look at is how do we best put ourselves in position to win games. He is very, very, important in that. Every player is going to have frustration. There are a lot of players that are frustrated because they’re not starting or they’re frustrated because they’re injured or because they didn’t have the kind of year that they thought that they would or whatever. That’s not our goal as a team. We need him to be productive for us, he will be productive for us. He battled through some injuries. There was a game he went out and played – he went out and played on Thanksgiving and Calvin is fast. He has a 44” vertical. He climbed the ladder – there is not a ladder tall enough for me to catch that pass that he caught on Sunday, yesterday. But he went out on Thanksgiving and I could probably jump higher than him and I could probably run faster than him but it was important to him so he went out and did it. Did his production suffer as a result? Sure it did. He missed some games in there, but he went out for his teammates and he went out and battled through that stuff. There’s not always going to be a smile on your face when you’re going through that kind of stuff. We have a lot of respect for him and what he’s done but our objective is to do things best in the interest of the team, not for any individual.”
- On how Foote helped the younger defensive players develop
- “That was part of what he brings to the table. We knew a lot about Larry before we signed him. You could watch a lot of tape and you could talk to a lot of different coaches about him and things like that but until you actually had him in the building – like I said, he sat across the table from me and said, ‘Hey coach, don’t have to worry about me.’ That gives you confidence that he’s going to respond the right way. Until you see him in the weight room, until you see him in the locker room, until you see him on the practice field, in the cafeteria, it’s just what you’ve heard. Those kinds of things, when you see them first hand, it is important. When you have good young players that are pointing to a guy like that, I think that is important. I think that leadership is something that shouldn’t be underestimated in the NFL. Talent alone doesn’t win. You need talent pointed in the right direction. You need talent doing the right things and part of that is what Larry brought to this team.”
“There are a lot of guys, I don’t want to sit here and just go item-by-item and give you – I know that would be good for you but… Here’s what I’m saying: it’s not always perception. If it was that; if it was, ’Hey, left tackle is our No. 1 concern or things like that, maybe we would make a bad decision. Maybe we would panic and say, ‘Hey, we need to go draft a left tackle with the first pick of the draft and that’s the way we need to build,’ and maybe we would be dissatisfied and we would be sitting this year saying, ‘Wow, we don’t have a left tackle and we don’t have a quarterback and we’ve got a long way to go.’
“There are a lot of different levels of players on this team. There’s good young players that are going to be guys that we build around; there are solid steady players that are guys we can build with; there’s other guys that fill different roles for us. It’s not that you’re dissatisfied with anybody there – it’s one thing if you have a player that’s a nice role player for you, maybe plays special teams, maybe he backs up, he’s active every Sunday, he’s reliable, he’s not a starter but you’re satisfied with that player. We have guys that fill those needs.
“I think from a standpoint of looking to improve this team and doing things, we need to address depth and we need to address frontline starters. Other than quarterback, there’s not many positions on this team where we can’t use an infusion of more players and more talent.”
