Lions 30, Vikings 24
KEVIN O'CONNELL: All right, we had four players sustain injuries and did not return. Addison, Hockenson, and Wonnum will all be further evaluated. Addison with an ankle; Hockenson with his knee; and DJ Wonnum, we need to confirm a potential quad injury. Blackmon had a shoulder. Tried to come back and was not able to keep going.
Thought our guys battled. Left everything absolutely out there. Some critical plays to try to find a way to win the game there in the end, but ultimately fell a little bit short there.
You know, had our fourth turnover of the day, which we knew would be some tough sledding to try to overcome losing the turnover battle like that. But proud of our guys for the way they battled.
Got to tip your hat to Dan and his group over there. Hard-fought football game. You know, very much a tough feeling in the locker room right now. These guys continue to battle, continue to work. I can tell by the look in their eyes they're ready to go back to work and figure out where we have to overcome possibly some injury adversity and get back to work and prepare for another home game next week.
Q. What did you see with Nick's game?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: I thought he was aggressive with his arm. I thought there was some opportunities that even on some of the those turnovers that happened, I thought there was some potential grass to throw the ball away from defenders or things like that.
He battled, but he will be the first one to tell you some of those turnovers are huge momentum swings and requires a lot of stress on your defense, especially when you're explosive as we were today on offense. I think we were somewhere around 7.6 yards a play, but when we moved it, we moved it pretty quickly via some explosive passes, and then when we didn't, we left our defense on the field far too much with some of those turnovers and asking them to overcome a lot there against a really good offense.
You know, just didn't do enough in the end to win the game. Had a chance.
Q. When there is that many turnovers on the down field throws, do you wonder if you're asking him to do too much?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: We have to try to do what we think to win the football game. Early on we had -- they were playing a little bit more base defense than we've seen to our 12 grouping, which gave us the opportunity to get some throws down the field once we established what the plan was, how they were going to play Justin.
There were some things available to us, and then I think we ended up about a yard and a half a carry and just did not think after the long drives that the best thing to do would be risk third and seven plus on those metrics when we thought there was some ability to move the football via the pass, which we were able to do.
We'll take a look at all those interception and try to coach Nick up. Whether it's scissor making, timing, just accuracy, trusting the design and where we want the ball to end up. You know, we'll take a look at all those things and adjust our game plan accordingly moving forward.
In the end, we're always going to do what we think is best to try to win the football game in the moment. I just once against credit our guys for battling, overcoming some adverse circumstances.
There were some momentum plays that the Lions played. Some momentum plays where they were able to get some free yards out of some decisions, and ultimately we couldn't overcome all those things.
We have to continue to strive to do those things. That's what December football is all about.
Q. The one he threw to Jordan, looked like he might've had some space. What was the conversation?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: It was that. It was that. Once the corner nails down on Justin, the design of the play is to work a three-level throw when a deep third or quarter's corner, if they're rolling to JJ, whatever it is, we're just trying to leverage the deep defender and use the grass we have available to us to potentially drive it away from the defender.
Defender was able to come back and undercut Jordan coming back to the football. Normally when it's the safety means we probably could have drove that ball flat and away from the defender. Kind of a standard play. We ended up hitting that play in the two-minute just with JJ on the top shelf. Made an unbelievable play there on the running clock, third and forever that we had.
Q. How would you sum up the way Justin played today?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: He battled. We were doing some unique things with motions, different tempo motions and different things to stress their coverages knowing there was a huge plan for him. Where he's at, missing as much time as he has over the last couple weeks, this guy is going to leave it all out on the field. That's what I love about him. He is so tremendously talented, such a competitor, and we're going to continue to try it feature our best player, regardless of what the defense tries to take away.
Most of his completions, I don't know what he ended up with, but most of those completions were against double teams or possibility a third defender.
Q. Final interception to Justin, is he sitting down or...
KEVIN O'CONNELL: No, he's staying on the move. I thought -- have to take a look at it, but Justin lined up outside and ran some similar concepts. Lined up at the two spot, three spot. We were just trying to move him around and play people off him.
It looked to me like there was a little grass maybe out in front. Nick got flushed up to his left. It's a tough throw to then direct that ball maybe to the back half the end zone there towards the pylon.
But that was the intent.
Q. What was the explanation about the Jared Goff fumble?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Yeah, so it was confirmed via the replay assist, which was unfortunate, because I would have loved to just hear that it was an official's ruling and maybe I could have thrown the flag and took it to the challenge.
The views I had I did not necessary see it the same way. That's why I'm on our sideline and not on the field officiating the game.
So clearly maybe it's -- there was some views I did not see. There was some things that clearly -- I mean, that's momentum in its purest form when your defense can force a turnover and get seven points out of it. Huge momentum plays. There was another, second and 26 where they got us for a roughing call.
Have to go back and take a look at that one. The illegal contact on Jaylin Williams, knowing how they were defending us a lot of the day with some the hands on in the Mo area, go back and take a look at that as well.
We didn't go enough to win the football game and overcome adversity, injuries, anything else. There was some things there that clearly we've got to coach better from a technique standpoint or just get a little clarity on how to do that.
Q. (Indiscernible.)
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Jaylin, I think we were getting into some of our multiple DB groupings there on third and long, and I believe at that point Akayleb Evans was out of football game.
Q. Because of injury?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: I believe he was taken out of the football game.
Q. On the roughing, what explanation did they give you?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Did not get one on that, Ben.
Q. You mentioned injury adversity. Are some of those injuries going to be significant?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: I do believe so. Can't confirm, but with two weeks left to go, we've got some really tough guys, got some guys all trying to battle their way back in there, but I do believe so.
Q. With DJ, you mentioned quad. No concern about a knee or anything?
KEVIN O'CONNELL: I have great concern about the injury. As of right now our initial diagnosis on site is a quad injury. The severity of that I'll have to let you guys know. You can see what DJ means to our team. He's one of those guys that probably hasn't got enough credit for the year he's had.
You know, one thing about our guys is we got the right kind of guys. It's as close-knit of a group I've been around. That is what makes losses like these hurt. And when a couple of their brothers go down, three, four guys go down with what may be significant injuries, it takes a lot to continue to persevere and push through. I thought the guys trite to do that throughout the football game.
Q. Knowing you guys probably need...
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Yep.
Q. (Regarding mindset of that team.)
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Yeah, some of our -- JJ, some of our captains when we were breaking down the team were talking about the next opportunity, going back and improving, getting healthy, recovering from a tough, hard-fought game.
I challenged them to leave it all out there. They did. We knew it would be close, it would be a grind to the very end. Just wanted to have an opportunity to make play or two to get ourselves a victory.
It was all right there. Credit them for getting a stop there at the end.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports