Detroit Lions Head Coach Caldwell on the Lions Bye Week
Caldwell on …
If he adjusts the team’s goals during the Lions Bye Week and how he approaches the second half of the season: “Yeah, no we don’t. We just do it the same way we always have. We’re 1-0 in this quarter and we’ve got to look to the next game and we’ve got a real challenge. Already started to look at Jacksonville and you can see that this team, they’re loaded with a number of very high draft picks and you know, they’re going to be a real challenge. (Chris) Ivory ran like crazy yesterday, so we’ve got our work cut out for us, so we don’t look ahead further than that.”
His goal for the team during the Lions Bye Week: “We’ve been at it for quite some time. This team has battled through a bunch of adversity and a bunch of injuries, and things of that nature. Rest for us is extremely important to kind of get healed up, to see if we can get a few guys back. That’s going to be our number one focus. But, we still have to certainly keep our bodies and mind sharp and those kinds of things. Stay in the kind of conditioning that we hold, but our rest is going to be the emphasis this particular week.”
If he prefers the Bye Week to occur in the middle of the season: “It’s convenient, but we’ve had them four games in, not here, but elsewhere I’ve been. You’ve had them all different sorts of places and midway is a good spot, but we’ll take it whenever we can get it. We’ve got to play it. I have no preference and I don’t think it gives you any undo advantage other than as long as it’s not too early.”
How much healthier he expects the team to be after the Bye Week: “Not certain, we’ll have to wait and see. Hopefully we get a little bit healthier.”
The importance of playing all three remaining divisional games at home: “I know you guys probably don’t believe me, and I tell you just like I kind of tell you every week that, you guys have stopped asking the question now. ‘Why Golden (Tate) isn’t getting the ball,’ or ‘What’s wrong with this guy?’ I tell you that our quarterback reads his progression, and sometimes you’re going to find out that Golden is going to have 10 catches or so and this guy is not going to have as many, that kind of thing. Well, the same thing happens in terms of I don’t look ahead and talk about that, about three games at home and all that kind of stuff. I do not look at it, we do not talk about it. Only thing we talk about is what’s coming up on the next game. I think that’s the quickest way you can get in trouble with your team, is when you start to have your team try to look ‘big picture.’ Big picture softens you up and we try to keep our guys away from that. Narrow focus is one that I think is extremely important to us, and that’s the way we try to keep it week in and week out. When you ask me about goals, and future and all that kind of stuff, we don’t even let that stuff even sink in to our mindset.”