What They're Saying: Lions 'Hitting Our Stride' at Right Time
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The Detroit Lions were quite excited to win in such a convincing fashion against the Jacksonville Jaguars Sunday.
Here is a sample of what was said in the locker room, immediately following Detroit's 40-14 victory at Ford Field.
DJ Chark
On what it means to get the game ball after battling so many injuries: “Yeah, it feels great, you know. Like I said then, every game means a lot to me. But, to be back on the field, I’m taking it very seriously and trying to help my team in any way I can. But, it does feel good that you know, to play with my brothers against my old team, to be able to have a good performance, as well as win. That means everything, but I’m more excited about the way that our offense played as a whole. No punts. That’s pretty impressive.”
On how fun it was to play in a game when everyone on the team is playing at their best: “It’s very fun, you know. You can spread the wealth. You know, that’s a good team. We saw them last week, and we see how they play everyone every week, similar to how we play everybody every week. So, to come out and have a dominant performance, you know, it sets us up for the rest of this year and the way that we have to come out and attack every game.”
Aidan Hutchinson
On how this team can compete with anyone when playing its best football: “I mean, I think that’s very accurate. I think we’re just hitting our stride right now. From the start of that game, it felt like we were rolling and were on the same page, offense, defense. We came out in the second half and let up a touchdown, but offense stayed hot and we got our three-and-outs. So, yeah, I think we’re playing hot offense right now.”
On the offense scoring every time it touched the ball Sunday: “Yeah, it doesn’t get much better than that. It was kind of a weird game. It felt like we were in control the whole time, even when they had scored their touchdown, they had to work for it. It was like a 20-play drive, so burned most of the third quarter, I think. Man, it’s fun playing in these games.”
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Dan Campbell
On getting healthier down the stretch of the season: “It’s very nice. It’s very nice to have. You know, it is the healthiest we’ve been. I think there’s a good chance we can get Romeo (Okwara) back next week. We’ll see where he goes. That’s just another guy. So, we’re getting healthy at the right time. We’re playing our best football at the right time. Look, man, I like this team.”
Taylor Decker
On how validating it is to be right about this team not being the ‘Same Old Lions’: “Yeah, there’s a lot of people that owe me an apology, (expletive) Twitter DMs and (expletive). Oh my God. I don’t know, I just -- you know I’ve been here seven years now, and I kind of just know what it feels like when we’re playing good ball and playing confident. And, you know, that sounds fun. It’s felt like we’re playing good ball. We’re confident and we’re going out there to play to win. And, we’re just building. We’re getting better at things that we are singling out that, ‘We need to improve on this.’ And, we’re improving on it. It’s no secret to it, other than just to go back to work and continue to just build on all the good weeks. So, we’re just trending in the right direction. This was by far our best game. We’re just going to take it one week at a time now, and then just see where it ends up.”
Amon-Ra St. Brown
On the confidence gained from the win over Jacksonville: “I think, as a team, it gives us a lot of confidence. Coming out of that Bills loss on Thanksgiving, we felt like we were super close. We felt like we could have won that game, if we would have, five or six plays, done something differently. But, we never lost hope after that game. We were on a three-game win streak, and then we lost to the Bills. But, we knew what we were capable of, and we knew if we came out this week -- the Jaguars are a great team, don’t let the record fool you. They’ve got a lot of young guys on their team that are hungry, that can play. But, we were going to come out here and really do what we did, and I think we did that.”
