Locker Room Buzz: Self-Inflicted Mistakes Doom Lions

Here is a collection of quotes from Detroit Lions coaches and players following the team's 29-24 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers.

HC Dan Campbell

On the emotions of the final play resulting in a penalty:

"I don't even want to get into it, because it's not gonna change anything. We still lost. I mean, look, you think you've scored, you don't score. And then you think you're gonna have another play, replay it or back it up and have one more shot. But I guess that's the way it's written in the rule book, so that's frustrating. But there again, it shouldn't ever come to that. We had our opportunities and weren't able to put it in before that."

QB Jared Goff

On the officiating of the final play:

“Those guys have a hard job. I don’t want to make any excuses or anything like that. We’ve been on the right side of a lot of these. We’ve been on the wrong side of a lot of these. I think a few plays prior, the one on (Isaac) TeSlaa was a little bit more – in my head, for interpretation. But listen, man, they’ve got to make the calls, and I promise you if I were sitting on the other side of that right now, we'd be saying great job. Those sting for sure, and you wish they weren’t called. So be it.”

WR Amon-Ra St. Brown

On the sequence of events on the final drive that ultimately led to the Lions coming up short:

“The call, it is what it is. Those are the rules. Can’t change them, but it never comes down to one play. It’s never just because of that play. There were plenty of plays throughout that game that we could’ve made. We had calls go our way too throughout that last drive, so it goes both ways. We just have to execute better. We have a job to do, the refs have a job to do, so we’ve just got to be better.” 

On the challenge of not having the run game functioning:

“We know if the run game’s not going, that’s fine. We’ll throw the ball, we’re capable of doing that with the guys that we have, the quarterback. That’s fine if the run game’s not going, it’s not gonna work every game. But that just means it’s gonna be more of a pass game, we’re gonna have to get open and make plays, and we just didn’t make enough today.”

WR Jameson Williams

On the team's mindset during their late rally:

"We never thought we were out of the game. It wasn't too bad, it didn't get too bad for us. We just needed to execute more and dial in on the details a little bit more. One explosive got our offense going for the drives that we scored on and made things happen. We've just got to execute more, less mistakes, we win the game."

On the mood in the locker room after the loss:

"The mood? Not good."

WR Kalif Raymond

On the feeling after the loss:

"The toughest thing in the world is to work as hard as we do all week and to come out and not win the game. It's such an emotional game, put so much work into it. So it definitely stings."

On what the team was thinking when the Steelers missed a field goal, giving the ball back down five with two minutes to play:

"Your expectation is to go and score. Knowing the guys we have, the caliber of work we put in, at that moment we're just thinking we've got to score and win this game. We came up short. It's a tough pill to swallow. You lick your wounds, because we've got a short week coming up here so we've got to get back to work tomorrow."

OT Taylor Decker

On the feeling after coming up short on the final drive:

"Ultimately, yeah, it sucks. There's no sugarcoating that. But we had so many opportunities earlier in the game. Games come down to two-minute drives in the league, but we put ourselves in that position. We did not play well enough and we still had a chance to win. So that's the frustrating thing, we put ourselves in that position and it didn't have to be that way. And then, as always, you give credit to them. They executed on our mistakes, and they made plays where we didn't."

OL Aidan Hutchinson

On the team being outside the playoff picture with two games remaining:

"It's not ideal. Obviously I wish we were in a different position, but I fall back on what I can control. That's preparing for the Vikings now and cleaning up this tape and finding answers to fix the issues that we have. That's really all you can do. Yeah, I don't know. Of course I'd like to be in a different position just like you all would with this team. I don't know."

On whether injuries have been a big part of the team's inconsistent performance:

"In my opinion, every NFL team deals with injuries. And we may have a little bit more than the average team, but it's hard for me to fall back on that. Look at San Fran, for example, losing their two best defensive players and they're playing great football. Even last year, our defense with all the injuries we had up front, the boys were still finding ways to win. It's hard to fall back on that when we proved last year we can win these games if some guys are banged up. It's tough, it's tough."

On the need to bounce back quickly for Thursday's game against the Vikings:

"Good or bad, these Thursday games — I don't know what the numbers are, but all I know is we've got to beat the Vikings."