With about five minutes left in last week’s 38-10 playoff-clinching victory over the Chargers, Lions defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham had a message for coach Jim Schwartz.
“We were in pretty good control of the game and he was feeling good, I was feeling good and I told him over the headset ‘only took you three years, you are not as good as I thought you were’,” Cunningham told the media Friday.
“Right away he got off about me and I shook his hand and congratulated him because it has really been a great ride.”
The ride isn’t over yet for the Lions this season and where it eventually ends up is anyone’s guess. There’s Sunday in Green Bay and the team’s first playoff game since 1999 next week. That much is certain.
“When I first got here, I went ‘uh-oh, this is going to be tough,'” Cunningham said of his hiring in 2009. “I told (Schwartz) several times that ‘you never told me how tough this job was going to be.'”
Besides the obvious fact of getting better and more talented players, the Lions were able to right the ship because they started paying attention to the little things --- the details.
That’s something Schwartz excels at, according to Cunningham. Even down to the right font on presentations the coaches prepare for players.
“He is big on fonts,” Cunningham said of Schwartz. “We have all these presentations and Brandon Fisher is one of our young coaches and every Thursday night we have a meeting and Matt Burke and Kris Kocurek and Tim Walton and I (sit in).
“Jim will ask Brandon a question and he’ll say ‘on page three you should move this paragraph here and this one up here’ and the veteran coaches that are around look at each other and we have to put our head down because we know Jim, and if you don’t use the right fonts, you’re screwed. You have to do it all over.”
Cunningham said he isn't excluded, either. Even though he joked that he’s old enough to be Schwartz’s father.
“You misspell a word or something like that and he is all over you and that’s the detail part and that’s what makes the team go,” Cunningham said.
Just watch the Lions during the National Anthem and watch how the players and coaches stand shoulder-to-shoulder along the sidelines.
That’s Schwartz; he addressed it in a team meeting and told the team how he wanted them to stand.
The Lions are obviously winning football games right now because they have talent. That’s the bottom line and the most important aspect of any football team.
But taking care of the details and the little things helps in the big picture.
