Everything Dan Campbell Said After Detroit Lions Defeated Cowboys

Here is everything Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell told reporters after a 44-30 victory against the Dallas Cowboys at Ford Field.

Opening statement:

“Alright. Proud of the guys. They rallied, man. They showed up. The work was there all week – it always is, but the intensity, the urgency. The guys don’t ever get frazzled. they don’t get panicked. They just go to work, and they did it again. Talk about takeaways – man, we got takeaways. We got three of them. Two of them turned into 14 points. We were able to turn those up. Then the last one we were able to kneel it after (D.J.) Reed’s pick. A number of guys played really good for us. (Al-Quadin) Muhammad with the three sacks, that was big time. Hutch (Aidan Hutchinson) draws a lot of attention. He got some one-on-ones, he won his one-on-ones. That was huge. Jack Campbell was all over the field, had a punch out. TK (Tom Kennedy) in the return game. Tom Kennedy, was huge for us. Big time. So was (Jacob) Saylors. Special teams played a huge role.

Then (Jared) Goff, man, told him we were going to put this on him. This game we were going to put on him and it was going to start with him. Man, he really lit the fire for us. Then (Amon-Ra) St. Brown man, we didn’t know if we were going to be able to get him. Once again, St. Brown does what St. Brown does. If he can play, he’s going to play. He didn’t want any plays off either, by the way. Like, he’s going in to compete. He’ll block, he made some explosive plays for us. (Jameson Williams) Jamo stepped up. Just a number of great performances. I thought (Jahmyr) Gibbs showed up, (David Montgomery) D-Mo, the guys we talked about, man. We challenged a number of our guys and, man, they really showed up for us. That’s a damn good win. That team is hot. It was a hot team coming in here. That’s a potent offense. Was it perfect? No. We still got some stuff that wasn’t good. We had some of these penalties. We had some young guys that we got to clean some of this up – false starts, stuff like that. But we overcame a lot. That’s what this team does. So, I’m proud of them.”

On the complementary effort by the team today:

“That was awesome. That is one of the – that game there is one of the few we’ve had where we really played complementary football. I mean really, really did. To be able to score right before halftime. We come out, we get the takeaway. Great job by (Derrick) Barnes and then we turn it into points. That was huge. All of that. The whole sequence of just the momentum and carrying it and helping each other out. So, everything was big. The guys really stepped up. But we did, we played complementary football. That, above all, is what really makes the difference. That’s what good teams do. It doesn’t matter how good your offense, your defense is – if you’re not able to help each other out when you need it with one of the phases, it’s tough. It makes it tough and we were able to do that today.”

Detroit Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown (14) runs against Dallas Cowboys during the second half at Ford Field | Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

On how the presence of Lions WR Amon-Ra St. Brown impacts the team and when they decided that he was going to be active today:

“Yeah, it’s huge. St. Brown is what we are. He’s what we are. That guy is – where he goes, we go. His toughness and his will power, his desire to compete, to help those guys around him, to do whatever it takes to win, is second to none. He is rare, man. His mentality. He’s got – his mindset is just he refuses to fail. He refuses to let things – nothing is going to dictate where he goes, what he does, how it’s going to be. He will dictate to himself what he’s going to do. It was really yesterday. It came down to, provided nothing happened today when he woke up, we did a workout and quickly it was like, ‘I’m going.’ And we watched him and he was good. Was it perfect? No. But he was going. Nobody was going to talk him out of not playing. It was great to have him out there. Yes, his teammates feed off of that.”

On how the team has become 15-0 following a loss in the last three years:

“We just got, we need to string some wins together now. Okay, we battle back. Now, we need to get another one. Look I just – this is kind of where I led off, too. These guys do a great job of – they take it for what it is. They don’t get panicked. They don’t get panicked. They don’t make something out of it that it’s not. Don’t make more of it than it needs to be. There’s a reason why you’re not able to win the game and here’s what it is. Is it correctable? Yes, it’s correctable. Well, this is what we got to do moving forward. Where do we find our matchups versus Dallas, for example, in all three phases and let’s play our best game that we played all year. That’s what you’re trying to do. I think by doing that and keeping it that way, our guys are always able to answer back. They do. I think where you get in trouble is if you start just that. You start panicking and you start – I mentioned this last week. You get to start doing more than you need to do. Just do your job and do it the best you can do it. Make it clean. Make it efficient. Worry about your fundamentals, your technique and the guy next to you, he’ll do his. Because we have the right guys here.”

On how the team will move forward into the rest of the season:

“Well, we clean up the stuff that bit us today. That’s what we do. Clean up the stuff that bit us. So, we did some good things today, that’s good. Let’s see if we can tweak a couple things and do a version of it. But also, some of these penalties, let’s cut this out. That’s how you do it. You just start trying to reduce the stuff that could cost us. It didn’t today. We were able to overcome it, but that’s what you do.”

On the success of the pass rush today:

“There again, I need to watch the tape just to see exactly how or what or why. But I know this, we had a lot of guys who won their one-on-ones, you know. We were pretty disruptive there. I already mentioned Muhammad. I thought Mac (Alim McNeill) did some good things in there. Hutch was close a number of times and he got flushed. We played pretty good coverage. It wasn’t perfect. But all in all, we did what we had to do. We knew we needed to score on offense. Like I said, it’s a potent offense and at the end of the day, we did enough in all three phases.”

On swapping between Lions OL Trystan Colon and Lions OL Miles Frazier:

“Just to get Frazier some reps. He’s a young guy. This is about when we threw (Christian) Mahogany in there last year, Mahogany in there. So, we just wanted to get a look at him. Really, he kind of – it was just to get him introduced to the NFL and try to be smart. You still want to move the football but yet try to set him up to where he can have some success and we stayed away from some plays here. But really, he earned the right to keep going. He did good enough to where, ‘Alright, let’s get him another series.’ Because really, we didn’t have intentions of giving him as much as we did. We just wanted to kind of introduce him. He did some good things, it felt like, so we did. I thought (Trystan) Colon did some dang good things too.”

On the impact of Lions RB Jahmyr Gibbs on the offense:

“Yeah, he’s unique. He’s special. Everybody knows what he can do in the run game and really, we couldn’t quite get him going in the way we wanted to in the run game now. But yet, he found – he did find some pay dirt on a couple of those. But the pass game stuff, he just continues to grow. The more we give him and the more we work with him in practice, we just continue to try to open his horizons and give him a little bit more. Man, he just grows. He gets better and better. Then it gets in the game and the routes get crisper and crisper. He just keeps going. There’s just not a cap on this dude yet. There again, he works his tail off. He’s freaking smart. He’s instinctive. He’s a team guy. He’s something else. So, the sky is the limit for him. He’s just getting started now. He’s just getting started.”

On the severity of Lions DB Brian Branch’s injury:

“I don’t know. I’ll know more tomorrow.”

On if today’s performance allowed the team to prove something to themselves:

“Yeah, well I mean, we know what we are. I’ve said it all along, we can’t worry about the outside noise. We’re the ones who write our own narrative. We’re the ones who know what we are and what it takes and why we’ve had some difficulties. But also, why we’re able to succeed. We know why. So, it’s about us and it’s about how we handle our business. We handled our business today. It was good. Now we get a little breather. We get a couple of days here to catch our breath and then we get ready for the Rams.”

On if he is concerned Lions DB Brian Branch’s injury will be long-term:

“Yeah, I mean he didn’t finish the game. But there again, I’ll know more tomorrow.”