HEAD COACH ROD MARINELLI HOLDS SEASON-ENDING PRESS CONFERENCE
Allen Park, Mich.- Detroit Lions Head Coach Rod Marinelli held his season-ending press conference today at the team's headquarters and training facility:
2008 DETROIT LIONS OPPONENTS
HOME:Â Chicago, Green Bay, Minnesota, New Orleans, Tampa Bay, Washington, Jacksonville, Tennessee
ROAD:Â Chicago, Green Bay, Minnesota, Atlanta, Carolina, San Francisco, Houston, Indianapolis
2008 NFL DRAFT ORDER (TENTATIVE)
The Detroit Lions will hold the 15th selection in the first round of the 2008 NFL Draft. The Lions were among seven teams with a 7-9 record and were tied with Chicago in that group for the highest strength of schedule (139-117, .543). The tie for the 14th and 15th slots was determined with the divisional tie-breaker which first reverted to head-to-head competition, with the Lions defeated the Bears twice this year. Since there are three-or-more clubs tied (7) with a 7-9 record, the club selecting highest among that group in the first round moves to the bottom in the following round and the other clubs move up one spot to determine draft order. This occurs throughout the seven rounds of the draft.
HEAD COACH ROD MARINELLI
Injury Report: "The only injury, really, was Shaun Rogers, and that was just an ankle. Really, we came out fairly clean. Questions?"
On the status of Offensive Coordinator Mike Martz: "I said (I'll address it) after I met with the staff, and we haven't yet. We just watched tape this morning. It'll be through the week."
On the issues they need to discuss: "I'll just have a chance to meet with the staff and sit down with each staff member and see where I'm at with them."
On if he's not questioning the fact that they are even talking about Martz's status: "That's why I'm going to meet this week, yeah."
On if he anticipates any changes, excluding Martz: "Again, I'm going to go through this process. I need to sit down with each guy. We just finished a game last night, came back, watched the tape this morning for the most part. We had it somewhat graded and had a chance to have a team meeting, and that's what we've been doing today."
On if he'll meet with Mr. Ford and Matt Millen: "I meet with them, like I said, every other week or so. It's just a sit-down, and at the end of the season, you go back and review every part of your season, from staff members to players, to myself."
On what he told the team during the final team meeting: "Basically: you get what you deserve in the NFL. You get what you deserve. We have to learn from this season. We had a great opportunity in front of us, and what it takes to play at a playoff level for a full season is hard. We weren't able to do that, but it's, again, self-evaluation. You ask for 17 weeks of being at your very best physically, mentally, lifting, and preparation. You ask for 17 weeks of your very, very best: football, preparation and all those things. So it becomes a self-evaluation, and that's the only way you can look at it in terms of why we failed for those six weeks."
On if some of his key players didn't continue to prepare mentally as hard as they could have during the losing streak: "I just brought that up, the self-evaluation. Each guy has got to look at that. All I can look at is the record. I couldn't say (if some did not prepare hard enough). Some of those guys… as a team, we self evaluate ourselves as a football team. The consistency wasn't there. The road effort was poor. I look first at myself, and at coaches and player - it's not just player - somehow, to have a six-game losing streak, when every one of those games were vital to stay in the playoff hunt, we failed."
On the possibility that not everyone was on the same page on the offense: "I just think that (its being) on top of all the details: assignments, everybody together. It's not just one person. Nobody is excluded, because when you fail, you fail together as a football team. That's where I look back, and, again, the opportunities we had, we've got to learn from them. The biggest thing now, as we sit down, we've got to learn from those opportunities that we had, how hard it is to continually prepare every week and win those types of games on the road or at home. We lost two key games; I felt: the season-turners were the Giants and the Cowboys at home. We weren't able to get it done. Those were two critical games in our season. We've not been a good road team: we went 2-6 on the road. So you have to capitalize at home, and we did not do that."
On if the lack of consistency and mental toughness is his biggest disappointment: "Yeah. There's no doubt about it. As I look back at it, and I'll just keep repeating what I said: you can't have a six-game losing streak; and you have an opportunity at that point, any one of those (losses) has a chance to put us in the top echelon of teams in the league. We weren't able to capitalize on it."
On what needs to change to get that consistency and mental toughness: "The message has got to keep continuing. You keep bringing in youthful, young players. You've got to keep drafting. In the NFL, your roster changes constantly. So that's all part of it. You've got to create more competition: the competition is good. When you get that type of competition for jobs, it's good for a football team. It's something I've tried to do here. We've got to keep doing that."
On if he feels the personnel decisions are giving him good players to work with: "I do, because I look at losing a couple of the games that we lost at home, that was just an inconsistency here, an assignment error there. To me it still comes back to coaching, to get these guys to do things exactly right all the time: in big games and pressure games, where you can't make an error and you've got to be on top of the details."
On if the talent is not good enough: "I look at a couple of the games we lost, the real close games that we lost. That is getting these guys to do things exactly right all the time. Sometimes its came down to an error here and there, a mental error."
On if the good players win and the bad players say they were close: "Yeah, and it's the same with the coach."
On you need players who can make plays: "No question, we all see that. We've seen that and we see that here. A guy can - a pass can be wide open and you get a great rush. You throw a ball up in the air and a guy goes up and gets it in a crowd, those types of things."
On how much the blowouts concern him on the road: "You just watch the tape and the same theme kind of shows up: not stopping the run, the physicalness of not stopping the run, and we weren't able to run the ball as well as we would like on the road. Also, turnover/takeovers; those are the things that continuously show up on the road for us."
On why it is different on the road: "I couldn't tell you; I really don't know. That's the consistency. It opened up with the Raiders and that was a tough, tough game on the road for us. We got behind and came back and won. We probably played our best game of the year in Chicago on the road. We executed extremely well. We played very tough, played good run, ran the ball well, stopped the run, turnovers were way in our favor. The other ones they weren't. That's something you are looking at. I look at myself and make sure that the consistency is there. It's not like it's a magical formula. I keep repeating myself because when we do those things and when we have done them, we are successful. When we don't then we're not successful."
On if he thinks the team progressed this year from last year: "Its two seasons in one, is how I look at it just about. The 6-2 start, we played with such energy, but not all. We had the two bad road losses, Philly and Washington in those first eight games. They were part of that fast start. The six wins, it was that we had tremendous energy. We played with energy; we were getting takeaways a lot - we were leading the league at one point. We were playing really smart football I thought. We didn't turn the ball over much and then went the other way. Like I've said from the very beginning: turnover/takeovers, that's the tail end of this league. If you take care of the ball and you get them, then you have a chance to be in every game."
On making sure the slow finish doesn't carry over into next season: "As I always (do) and you know me well enough, I look for every positive. I have a strong belief in positive. I look at, like I told them today, those six losses in a row: that was in a playoff crunch time which this team hasn't been in for a long time. They have never experienced that, how hard it is and how you have to be on top of every detail. We went through that unsuccessfully. Now we've got to learn from it and it was kind of like a year ago when we couldn't win a close game. We started off the year hammering it, and most of our wins were in the last minutes. But the blowouts are disturbing. I'm going to look at it and keep working with them in terms of that playoff hunt and how to do it and keep developing the right type of guys that can go out and can compete. I'll take a negative that people look at and I'll turn it into a positive."
On what positives he can point out and build on: "I would say just like the games the we lost last year in the two-minute; you have a drill for it. We went two minute everyday in camp. I think some of the things and the pressure situations you have to put them in during practice, in camp. We just have to see who can execute when they're fatigued, they're tired, and we've been through it once. We've been through it unsuccessfully. Now we have to look at it; why? What calls were we making that maybe we had too much in, did we not have enough in? Where were the breakdowns, the execution? You look at the game plans, all those things. That's how you break your season down. That's the how and now we have to be able to improve."
On how much roster turnover he anticipates: "I don't know. We just have to look at it. I want to keep looking at this team. We'll have a meeting Thursday - Wednesday or Thursday - with personnel. We'll go through all the grades for the entire year. We look at that thoroughly because I do believe you are your film. As a coach, the film we produce and the film the player produces, that's who they are. We evaluate it. We look very thoroughly at the whole season, not just good games or bad games. You have to look at what the future is; how can this guy help us win. I look at those six games very closely. Who graded very well in those periods of time? Then you have a way to find out how to get back. Some of the road games were (close). Those two home losses, the Giants and the Cowboys were (close). That's the ones, if we're struggling on the road and we're a good home team, then we have to win them at home. We have to do that. We have to go back and look at ourselves, self-evaluation, just like the players do."
On if he is referring to the six game losing streak: "Yeah, but I'm going to evaluate the whole season. I'm looking at those six, and when you look at grades and effort and who is doing a good job at that point. It's a different situation when you're going into that because it's not like: 'wow, the season is already over so we can relax and play.' That team is looking at you completely different. When the Giants came in, they looked at us differently. They had to go in and beat us as Dallas did."
On if it upsets him the players played better at the end of the season when it didn't matter: "The pressure was off a little bit. Other than it was meaningful, the game means everything to us, but the playoff hunt was over. Now you are still looking at who is going to finish and who is going to compete. That was important to me, and it still is. You want to see those types of performances on the road, when it counts, when you have to have it. We weren't able to get it. The two losses to the Giants and the Cowboys, guys responded and we played extremely hard in those two games, extremely hard. We fell short."
On the importance of the offseason to QB Drew Stanton and how he looks at him: "This is critical for all our young guys and Drew because Drew didn't have any work this year. We've got to get him going right out of the shoot and see where he is at. You look forward to it and getting him going early."
On the feel he has for Stanton: "It was short. It was such a short window. He didn't play in a preseason game or anything. It would be unfair to say either way. We like him, and coming out we liked him a lot."
On if RB Kevin Jones needs surgery: "Still where we were last week."
On why a decision on Martz would not be quick: "I just don't do business that way, that's all I can tell you. I've never done things quite like that."
On what he would know about Martz on Thursday that he doesn't know now: "I think you sit back and you evaluate, that's me."
On if there are contractual issues or anything else that needs to get ironed out: "No, it's just the whole thing I've got to evaluate."
On what the schedule is for him and scouting in the offseason: "This week is a full evaluation of our team right now. Each coach is evaluating his position this week. We'll come in again tomorrow and fill out our reports and get as many of those things done as we can. We're looking at Thursday, having a full personnel meeting and see where this team is at, how they view us, how we view this team to the personnel people. They'll look at it and then we'll get ourselves ready to go to the senior bowl."
On if there are any other games he'll go to: "All our scouts and everything will be at those other ones."
