Here is everything Detroit Lions coach Dan Campbell said after a 40-34 win over the San Francisco 49ers.
Opening statement:
“All right. How’s it going? You know, proud of the guys. They were ready to go, and they came out, they competed and we were able to finish that one out. A number of guys played really good for us, played really, really well.
I thought (Jared) Goff had a big game, that offensive line, (Jahmyr) Gibbs, (Jameson Williams) Jamo, (Amon-Ra St. Brown) Saint. Defensively, there was a number of guys — certainly, Kerby (Joseph) came up with two picks that were big. Anyways, it was just — wanted to play complimentary football and we did that. I was really proud of the guys.”
On why it was so important to play starters in a game that was meaningless for playoff seeding:
“There’s nothing easy about this. There’s a number of things you’ve got to decide. We don’t get to prepare those other guys, because you don’t know what’s gonna happen. You don’t know what’s gonna happen for first, second down, third down, red zone leading into the week. Like, for example, (Hendon) Hooker’s not getting those reps. Those are Goff’s reps because we don’t know. That’s just one example.
I just don’t believe it’s fair to put in a guy that’s not prepared to play, especially a young player. And then, you can only sit six guys, so who are those six? ‘All right, here are the six.’ And then the other guys, that don’t, was it fair to them that we’re not using everything we’ve got? We flew out here, we prepared this way, we came out to win and that’s ultimately what it came to. And yeah, you cross your fingers nobody gets hurt. It’s tough. And we were fortunate, we got out. And now it’s on to the next one.”
On Kerby Joseph’s two interceptions and overall performance:
“Yeah. Really proud. That’s what we talked about. When we needed to the most, man, he came up big. We’ve been talking about it. We knew we needed to get takeaways, and it was just another example of playing complementary football, and man, he came up in a big way. Not just the picks, but he had some critical tackles in this game and just really showed up for us. That was big.”
On how he feels about the defense’s readiness for the playoffs:
“For me, it’s, ‘Do you want to play a little bit better?’ Yeah, you do in areas. But we calmed some things down in the second half, (defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn) A.G. and those guys did a good job, and we talked about, man, disruption and takeaways and we got those. That’s the world we’ve got to live in. So I feel good, because I know that the most important thing is that we do complement each other. And when we need it, offense has got to show up, and defense, if we’re not able to score, then they’ve got to show up and we did that. And then we’ve still got special teams, that we haven’t even talked about yet. We’ll be fine, we’ll be fine.”
On if he had any thoughts about resting starters after the Vikings beat the Packers:
“Yeah, I’m probably like you guys that were all here. Woke up at 2 or whatever this was this morning (Monday), and yeah, it was on my mind. I thought a lot about it. I thought about it leading up to the game, I thought about it last night, I told the staff, but I ended up settling on — the right thing to do was play these guys, because we owed it to the team. And it was just one of those positions we were in. It’s hard to say who you’re gonna sit and it’s not fair to ask guys to play that haven’t been prepared to play. So yeah, that was tough.
I think the biggest thing is there were things we wanted to do better than we did last week, and we did. We cleaned a lot of things up offensively, I thought. Defensively, we talked about getting takeaways, we got takeaways, and so that’ll always serve you well going into the next week. And look, there was never gonna be anything — we knew what this is. You’re out on the West Coast, you go, it’s all good, that’s what we do. This is what we do. We love it hard. This is our deal right now, so we’re looking forward to this, everything about this week.”
On what it means for the team to finish 8-0 on the road:
“It shows the type of guys we’ve got. It shows the type of players we’ve got. We’re a resilient group. We’re built to handle things that not everybody can do and you go 8-0 on the road, that means you’re a pretty damn good team and you can handle adversity. I’m proud of these guys, I’m proud of the coaches. It takes a village, it takes everybody, so we prepare that way and we play that way.”
On whether Penei Sewell is dealing with any concern of injury after briefly leaving the game:
“No, shouldn’t be. Should be good.”
On what injury Sewell was dealing with:
“Thumb.”
