Overheard After Lions 8th Loss In A Row
By: Jeff Riger
And, then it was all over!
The 2012 Lions season finally came to an end on Sunday with a 26-24 loss to the Bears. From the winless record against the division to finishing the year with an 8 game losing skid, nothing went right for the men that dawn the Honolulu Blue and Silver. The year was a colossal disappointment and now the fans, player's coaches and front office members are left to pick up the pieces. Below are some of the more interesting postgame quotes from players and coaches before everybody said good bye and headed out to start their offseason.
Jim Schwartz talked about his job security after a report from ESPN's Chris Mortenson surfaced that the Ford family would review Schwartz's performance and make a decision about the coaches future.
"I wouldn't discuss any prior conversations for whatever purposes they served and I have always been that way. The thing that I'm most concerned about is getting this team back to where we all want it to be. When the story of this season is written, it's going to say 4 and 12 and nobody is happy with that."
Schwartz was asked if the front office did enough to address the team's depth and if the depth players were good enough as players started to get injured?
"They can plan for only so many things. We signed Jacob Lacey as really our only free agent, we drafted Bill Bently. We certainly did not anticipate a Lou Delmas injury, you know Amari Spivay was not able to make it back this year, missed all of our off season program. They worked extremely hard to fill all the needs that we had and as coaches we really appreciate that."
Some players were left having to support their head coach as now speculation about Jim Schwartz's future circles. Robb Simms, no doubt seems to be a fan of Schwartz.
"I think he's a great coach, I think he's a very good coach, I think he's an improving coach. I think we are all going together. Once in a while you can hit a bump in the road. The reason I call him a good coach is because with all that kind of stuff (injuries, players getting kicked off the team, etc) we could of shut it down a long time ago but everybody was still hanging in here fighting trying to get this done."
Kyle Vanden Boesch also defended the head coach saying "I think he's a great head coach, I don't think there is a better one in the league personally. It's not just about the head coach or just one person, this season was a disappointment to everybody in the locker room and nearly everyone could have done something better."
Justin Durant was floored by the teams 8 game losing skid and never really saw it coming.
"Not at all, I definitely had high hopes for the season, I know we all did. I think everybody is shocked with what happened this season but it's just the NFL, it happens sometimes. We couldn't catch a break all year, it was a tough one but I just like the fight that I saw in our team today."
Matt Stafford, like a lot of the players seemed sickened by the 4 and 12 final record.
"You know every time you start a season you expect to make the playoffs and see what happens from there. That's pretty much everybody's goal these days is to get into the tournament and anything can happen after that. It's a results driven business and it's just not good enough!"
