Locker room buzz: Lions embrace ruthlessness with 'finish your food' mentality
Detroit — Here’s what I learned bouncing around the Detroit Lions’ locker room following the team’s 52-6 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Finish them
The word of the day is ruthless. It might be my word choice, but is there one more applicable to what we watched on Sunday? Part of the identity of this team is they don’t take their foot off the gas, playing relentlessly on both sides of the ball until the final whistle.
Let’s start with the offense, which continued to push the ball downfield and go for it on fourth down, despite having the game well in hand in the fourth quarter.
“The reality was that they’re a team who has (fewer) wins than us and we could have played down to our competition in some ways, and — not to disrespect them, they’re a hell of a squad — but, we wanted to play to our standard (of having a) nameless, faceless opponent,” quarterback Jared Goff said. “That’s not just them, that’s every week. I think we wanted to come out and stay on the gas the whole game, no matter what happened.
“If it had been a closer game, we still would have stayed on the gas,” Goff continued. “We talked about it all week, holding our standard. What is our standard, and exceeding it, and trying to push ourselves. So, regardless of our opponent, we did want to do that this week.”
The same ethos applies to Detroit's defense. Often, when a team gets up three scores, they’ll soften their coverage and allow some easy catches, trying to run out the clock.
Not this defense, run by a coordinator who preaches constant aggression.
“We are a reflection of our coaches, man,” cornerback Amik Robertson said. “Dan Campbell and (defensive coordinator Aaron Glenn) AG tell us all the time, 'Finish your food.' They harp on making sure guys don't score the ball on us because we feel like we are the best defense in the NFL.
“…They were just in the way, man.”