Bush Expects Bell To Play Sunday
By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak
ALLEN PARK (CBS DETROIT) - Detroit Lions running back Joique Bell participated in practice Wednesday, and fellow running back Reggie Bush said he expects Bell to be ready to go for Sunday's game against the Minnesota Vikings.
"I believe Joique is back this week, and we'll see where everybody else is," Bush told Stoney, Bill and Sara of 97.1 The Ticket. "We're getting guys back healthy, slowly but surely, but hopefully we can get everybody back healthy at once."
Injuries took a heavy toll on the running game last week against the Buffalo Bills. Bell and Theo Riddick were sidelined for the entirety of Sunday's game, Bell with a concussion and Riddick with a hamstring injury. Bush got hurt during the game, leaving the bulk of the carries for George Winn, whom the Lions initially cut before the regular season.
At the conclusion of Sunday's game, former Lions head coach Jim Schwartz, now the defensive coordinator for the Bills, got lifted onto the shoulders of several Buffalo players after the Bills bested the Lions, 17-14, at Ford Field. The glorification was reportedly requested by Schwartz earlier in the year.
"I didn't see it," Bush said. "Coach Schwartz came up to me and actually asked me just how my ankle was doing, how I was, and I said, 'I'm good, man. Congratulations on the win.' It was real quick, real brief, so I didn't see the shoulder-raising, whatever it is."
As far as how he felt about the move, Bush said a team can do what it wants when it wins, so if the Lions had a problem with it, they should have won the game. Lions head coach Jim Caldwell had expressed a similar sentiment Monday.
Next up for the Lions are the Vikings, whom Detroit will play in Minnesota. Bush said the Vikings looked good on the film the Lions had watched to that point.
"With their head coach, they have a little bit of a defensive scheme that they run a lot like what the Bengals ran, and what we saw last year when we played the Bengals - a lot of different pressures and exotic fronts that they give us with the linebackers and the different stunts from the d-line," Bush said. "It's nothing that we haven't seen, and there's not going to be anything that they're going to approach us with that we don't know, that we can't prepare for. Ultimately this is another game that comes down to fundamentals."
