Caldwell, In Wake Of Ugly Loss: "Sometimes Festering's A Good Thing"
By: Will Burchfield
@burchie_kid
The Lions will have to wait a long time to wash the taste of Sunday's 52-38 loss to the Saints out of their mouths.
They are on bye this week, which is fine for Jim Caldwell. Asked how he prevents a defeat like Sunday's from festering among his players, Caldwell said, "Sometimes festering's a good thing. We try to balance it. Kind of depends on where we are as a team, but there's nothing wrong with being really determined about making certain you correct your errors."
There were plenty of errors for the Lions on Sunday, who fell behind 45-10 midway through the third quarter. They turned the ball over too many times on offense and couldn't stop the run on defense. They'll look to get those issues corrected before returning to action against the Steelers on Oct. 29.
Caldwell is hopeful the frustration can be fuel.
"It just kind of depends on the week. If you have (a game) right away, you certainly try to get it behind you within a relatively short period of time, and this particular week, it's not a bad thing that we need to be concerned about a whole lot of things in terms of how we're playing," he said.
The Lions will also use the bye week to heal some injured players. In fact, Caldwell said that's the priority in terms of what he wants to accomplish over the next two weeks.
"Get healthy, that's the number one thing. That's going to be the primary focus, but then obviously there's some little things that we can work on, and we have a lot of those. We'll make certain we keep our nose to the grindstone, try to get our team better and in a position to win some games," said Caldwell.
The Lions lost three starters to injury on Sunday. Glover Quin left with a concussion, Golden Tate left with a shoulder injury and Greg Robinson left with an ankle injury. On top of that, Rick Wagner was unable to play every snap due to an undisclosed injury and T.J. Lang was inactive due to a back issue.
Matthew Stafford is also banged-up, and the team appeared to be limited on offense because of it. He took almost every snap in either the pistol or shotgun formation, presumably to limit the toll on his injured ankle.
The bye week certainly comes at a good time for the Lions.
"Yeah, there's no question about it. We had quite a few guys get banged-up during the course of the game. Like I mentioned yesterday, if we were playing a Thursday game it'd be really tough or even a Sunday game would be fairly tough, but this comes at a great time for us," said Caldwell.
Even if the anger might fester.
