Detroit Lions: Jim Caldwell, Players Talk About Win Over Eagles
By Zac Snyder
MATTHEW STAFFORD
On his pass to WR Golden Tate late in the game: “Yeah, you know, Golden did a great job. Little deeper than I expected him to be, but I was kind of waiting and waiting, waiting for him to kind of show up in a little bit of a crossing route. He got through some traffic, I saw 53 (Nigel Bradham) at the last second, you know, just bailing, getting a little bit of depth. I threw it to where I thought it was going to be a good spot. Didn’t see the rest, but I’ll see it on Monday.”
On how confident the offense was after the defense forced a turnover: “Yeah, I felt really confident. You know, huge plays by our defense. Really the two turnovers were big-time plays. But once we got the ball back we knew it was our opportunity to go. We obviously didn’t play as well as we could have in the second half on the offensive side of the ball. Just got in long yardage too much, you know. We didn’t have first-down efficient runs or sacks or dropped passes or bad throws, whatever it was, we just had too many mistakes on first and second down in the second half. But that was our drive to go do it and made a big play to get there. Wish I could have thrown a touchdown to make it a little bit easier, but didn’t happen.”
On what he was able to exploit in a stout Eagles defense on the first three drives: “I think we just played really smart, efficient football. There weren’t massive, huge plays. We were just staying ahead of the chains, getting first downs. First downs lead to touchdowns in this league. We did a good job of that, and then we were converting in the red zone. We were by no means perfect on those drives, but played well. Then the second half, they didn’t really do too much different. We just kind of hurt ourselves.”
On the significance of beating an undefeated Eagles team following three losses: “I mean, we don’t really pay too much attention, honestly, to the record of the people we’re playing. We just watch them on film, study and try to figure out how we’re going to beat them and go out there and beat them. We hadn’t done that the last couple weeks and needed a win at home. It’s a big one, but at the same time we’ve got to stack these and just keep playing well.”
On staying patient on the final drive: “I think you want to play smart. I think we called two really good plays to give us a chance to run the ball in and it didn’t happen. But we made them use timeouts, and then the last play – I look at the picture now and they didn’t cover it was well as they could have and I just was looking at the wrong guy at the wrong time. It just happens sometimes. Wish I could have thrown a touchdown pass there, but we knew a sack was going to be better than throwing the ball away, make them burn their last timeout. So tried to run around there for a little bit, just wish, as an offensive player, I always want to score a touchdown there and make them go score a touchdown. Didn’t happen.”