The Detroit Lions are preparing for Sunday’s game and the news and rumors are ramping up.
Check out the latest buzz below.
Stafford Praised by Peete
Former quarterback Rodney Peete took some time to praise Matthew Stafford.
“He’s still growing, he’s extremely talented. You look around at different quarterbacks around the league and you hear them talk, and people talk about just sheer raw talent, Aaron Rodgers gets mentioned a lot, but I think Matthew Stafford from just a pure talent standpoint is right up there,” Peete told ESPN.
“He’s got all the tools. He can throw the ball with anybody, moves around great. Keeping him healthy is the key. I like where he’s going, I like where his heads at.”
Peete said that he’s met Stafford and talked some with him, and that Stafford is a humble guy who is making good decisions.
He said that Stafford is taking the right steps to enter the top tier of quarterbacks in the league, including taking care of the football.
“He seems to have really understood when to throw it away, when not to throw it away; when to take chances, when not to take chances,” he said.
“It’s working out, and I think that’s the maturity that he’s developed over the past year.”
Peete also said that he notices a different attitude from the team as opposed to last year.
“They really feel like they can get it done. They’re making plays, without making mistakes,” he said.
“The last couple years, it was a feeling like ‘oh no here it goes again,’ now it feels like no matter what the situation, they’re going to find a way to win.”
Bush Might Not Play on Sunday
Reggie Bush, the Lions’ top running back, might not play at all against the Cardinals on Sunday due to a sprained ankle he aggravated last game.
Bush originally injured the ankle in early October against the Miami Dolphins.
Coach Jim Caldwell said that he might take a similar approach to that taken with wide receiver Calvin Johnson, who sat for three weeks with a high ankle sprain.
“Certainly, there’s that possibility,” Caldwell told the Detroit Free Press on Thursday.
Joique Bell took over after Bush aggravated the injury and has also increasingly become a key factor late in games.
Caldwell said that he doesn’t expect lingering problems for Bush.
“I think he’s had a bit of a tough stretch, but I do think that he probably knows his body as well as anyone. He felt he was really ready to go, and it just kind of got hit the right way,” he said.
“This game is kind of odd, it really is. He was feeling good and running well and just got caught the right way and the wrong position, and he had to take a few steps back. I don’t anticipate that being the case with him because of the fact that I do think he'll be able to help us here at some point in time. Could be this weekend.”
Johnson, Tate Lead Surging Lions’ Offense
Calvin Johnson--finally healthy--and Golden Tate are helping Stafford lead the surging Lions offense.
SB Nation notes that Johnson has another weapon lined up with him for perhaps the first time, making the team all the more dangerous.
“His return will be boosted by the fact that Detroit finally has a legit complementary weapon to pair with Megatron. Johnson has consistently made his hay by beating double and triple coverage while running with teammates such as Kris Durham, Titus Young, Nate Burleson, and Bryant Johnson. Now, with Golden Tate lined up opposite Megatron, the craziest thing has happened -- Johnson has started to draw single coverage on the outside,” it said.
“Last Sunday’s win over Miami provided great examples of how this could be a factor down the stretch. In the first quarter, the mere presence of Tate -- due to his ability to elevate and catch a contested ball, and then run with it after the catch -- was enough to draw the attention of two defenders, allowing Megatron to catch a deep touchdown pass for the Lions.”
It took Tate a little while to build chemistry with Stafford but that has been done, and he grabbed 11 passes for 109 yards even with Johnson returning to the top role.
And despite Johnson missing those games, he and Tate are fifth in the league in receiving yards per duo with 1,370 yards.
Lions Winning Close Games
ALLEN PARK, Mich.—Detroit safety Glover Quin has become something of a locker room sage, regularly holding court with reporters and dispensing wisdom about the NFC North leaders.
So if anyone can explain this run the Lions are on — and what’s changed since their collapse to end last season — perhaps it’s Quin.
“You kind of sometimes create your own luck,” he said.
That’s a cliche, for sure, but right now it’s hard to explain the contrast between the last few weeks of 2013 and what Detroit has done this year. The Lions are coming off their third straight victory in the final two minutes, and those games — each with a razor-thin margin of error — helped turn a decent start into something much more promising for this success-starved franchise.
“It’s the NFL. Every game is somewhat close,” Quin said. “I think throughout the journey, you need these games. You need games of adversity, you need games where you have to try to come back, you need games where you’ve got to try to keep a lead. You need all of those type of games, because we’re in a situation now where each week, every game gets bigger.”
Detroit lost six of its final seven games last year despite leading in the fourth quarter of all of them. There was the failed fake field goal at Pittsburgh; the snowy loss in Philadelphia; the excruciating defeat at home on a Monday night when Baltimore made a 61-yard kick at the end.
Those losses seemed avoidable, yet strangely inevitable. That’s what has made 2014 so refreshing for the Lions and their fans. Detroit (7-2) is leading its division precisely because the Lions are winning games in the same fashion they used to lose them.
“I think you just believe in yourself, believe in your teammates,” said quarterback Matthew Stafford, who has led fourth-quarter comebacks in the last three games. “Obviously, guys have made plays for me and around me. It’s something that I guess I feel comfortable in that situation. I guess I enjoy it.”
The Lions play at Arizona (8-1) on Sunday. The Cardinals have the NFL’s best record, just ahead of the Lions.
Stafford led the Lions to a postseason berth in 2011, but the team dealt with off-field problems throughout the following offseason. Detroit went 11-21 over the next two seasons, and coach Jim Schwartz was fired.
Jim Caldwell took over, and Quin credits him with creating a “family environment” in his first season as Detroit’s coach. Quin says the team’s sense of accountability is different than last year.
“We’re all about business. We do a good job of playing when it’s time to play and working when it’s time to work. Guys have fun with each other. It’s a very tight-knit locker room,” Quin said. “When we go to work we’re locked in. We’re really trying to make sure we have all the details down.”
Quin outlined the importance of those details when describing Detroit’s comeback against Miami last weekend. Trailing 16-13, the Lions were forced to punt, but Sam Martin got off a 59-yarder to push the Dolphins back inside their 20.
Detroit’s stellar defense forced a three-and-out, and Stafford led the Lions to the winning touchdown. But it might have played out differently if not for Martin’s punt.
“Say, for instance, Sam shanks the punt. Or we don’t have a good snap, now they block the kick or the punt goes out of bounds,” Quin said. “Now they get the ball at the 40 or the 50, where even if we do stop them, the punt is going to back us up even farther.
“So everybody has to execute their job.”
There’s no denying the Lions have been lucky at times this year. Against Atlanta in London, they won on a last-second field goal by Matt Prater — who appeared to have missed the winning kick, only to get a second chance because of a delay of game on Detroit. In essence, the Lions’ own mistake saved them from defeat.
But the weekend before that, Detroit rallied from a 13-point deficit late in the fourth quarter against New Orleans. Golden Tate caught a long scoring pass to start the comeback, and Quin’s interception of Drew Brees set up the winning touchdown.
It was reminiscent of a game last December when the Lions led the Giants by seven late in the fourth quarter, but Stafford had an interception run back for a touchdown, and New York won in overtime.
There’s a fine line between winning and losing, and the Lions are finally enjoying life on the right side of it.
“Every guy is in there and is comfortable, playing tough, playing hard and making plays,” Tate said. “Good teams find multiple ways to win games and that’s what we’ve been doing.”
Caldwell Toning Down Playoff Talk
Caldwell was recently asked about “playoff fever” after his team’s 7-2 start.
“We don’t have it,” he said. “We’re wearing a white mask around here so we don’t have to worry about it. But it’s like I’ve said every week, they don’t give out any awards or anything after nine games in the season. We haven’t done anything yet.”
Caldwell’s cautious words sounded similar to what predecessor Jim Schwartz was saying at this time last year. The Lions were 6-3 and leading the NFC North, then lost six of their last seven games and Schwartz was fired. Now Caldwell is in charge — and in pretty much the same position atop the division — but the toughest stretch of Detroit’s schedule may be underway.
The Lions pulled out a 20-16 win over Miami on Sunday, and now they have to play back-to-back road games against Arizona and New England.
“We’ve been playing well, we’ve been playing tough and that kind of stuff, but this is a long season. It’s a journey and we’re still on that journey,” Caldwell said. “We’ve got the team with the best record in the National Football League coming up. You better get focused in on them quickly.”
Arizona brings a five-game winning streak into Sunday’s matchup with Detroit. The Cardinals (8-1) have not lost at home to the Lions since 1993, although they will be without quarterback Carson Palmer, who suffered a season-ending knee injury Sunday.
That means Drew Stanton, a former Lion, is the likely starter for Arizona.
“He’s a quality guy, and not only that, that’s a really good football team with a real fine defense,” Caldwell said. “The one thing about quarterbacks is that they don’t have to go in there and do it alone. They can run the ball, they’re a well-coached bunch and he’s part of that. He can deliver the ball, he’s an accurate guy, hasn’t thrown an interception I don’t think this year.”
Detroit has not played a real road game since Oct. 12, when the Lions began their current four-game winning streak with a victory at Minnesota. They had to travel to London to play Atlanta on Oct. 26, but that was more of a neutral site — nothing like the hostile environments Detroit will encounter at Arizona and New England.
The Lions have dealt with injury problems all season, with Calvin Johnson missing a month before returning last weekend against Miami. Nick Fairley has been out with a knee injury, and offensive linemen Larry Warford and LaAdrian Waddle went down against the Dolphins. Caldwell did not shed much light on the progress of those two.
With the running game struggling, the offense has relied heavily on quarterback Matthew Stafford and receiver Golden Tate, with Johnson only now back in the fold. The last three games have come down to the wire, but Detroit won them by a combined six points.
“We just fight. We have a really, really good team. Unfortunately it keeps coming down to the end, but the game is never over until it says zero on the clock,” Tate said.
NOTES: Caldwell was asked why the team doesn’t use the no-huddle offense more often. “We have some of that in our system,” he said. “I can just tell you that it depends on the system and how it fits your personnel. That doesn’t necessarily fit our personnel the entire way through an entire ball game.” Detroit has used the no-huddle on only 3.2 percent of its plays, the third-lowest mark in the NFL, according to STATS.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
