ALLEN PARK — Jim Caldwell is moving on from the ending of Sunday’s loss to the Atlanta Falcons.
Now the Detroit Lions coach has to get the team on the same page with him.
It should not be difficult. Caldwell is consistent in his approach with the team. He’s even-keeled throughout the season and he doesn’t want players getting too excited or too down.
“I don’t want to be cynical in that sense but I can tell you that this is a fairly new group. Our nucleus is the same. Every year is different like we always talk about. I can only tell you that you have setbacks during the course of games. You have adversity. We’ve been able overcome those. So, we’ll see how we bounce back,’’ Caldwell said on Monday. “The idea is to get it behind us as quickly as we can, and a lot of that has to do with just guys making up their mind it’s over and done with. But the close ones make you think about it a little bit. We understand that part of it.’’
So on Monday the plan was to go over film of the game and make corrections which is a typical Monday.
Then on Wednesday the players will start preparing for the road game at the Minnesota Vikings (2-1) on Sunday.
We got to travel and play a very, very difficult team. Tough team that’s got some great challenges for us. So, that’s part of the challenge that we face every week after either you win or you lose. If you win and guys are still thinking about how well they played the day before or week before, that can get you,” Caldwell said. “And this is no different but this is kind of this part of this league that it’s all about. It’s how do you handle it? So, we try to preach it and talk about it, and I think our guys have always had pretty good, really good focus in that regard.”
Caldwell said it’s not just up to him to get the players in the right frame of mind. It’s the assistant coaches who work closely with the position groups and the team leaders too.
The Golden Tate touchdown with 8 seconds left was overturned and the clock run down to end the game.
Caldwell said the officials followed the rule.
“End of story. I mean I remember growing up, you guys always talked about a loser’s limp. To me, that’s the next thing to it. You start complaining about stuff, and it should’ve happened this way. Forget about that,’’ Caldwell said. “You’ve got to do something about it rather than talk about it. I don’t believe in excuses and all of those kinds of things. They don’t work, and they’re not good for us. We just need to go back to work.”
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