Lions Dan Campbell on SEASON-OPENING WIN: "We made one less mistake"

getting them in here. And man, I thought they had a heck of a plan. They adjusted to some things that we threw at them well and they just kept coming man. They fought and they fought, and it was, you know, man, it was you know, it was a lot of I respect it, I do, I respect it and that quarterback man Stafford I thought played lights out man and played tough and hit after hit. Just kept getting up and making unbelievable throws. So I just give him a lot of credit. They did. They fought. Now but but we're hard to break. So we did what we had to do. And, you know, our defense held there before that Fox makes a heck of a punt and defense holds offense. We get it back. And, you know, get it into overtime. We win the toss and we don't look back. So we eventually found our rhythm. We did what we had to do. And I said it earlier in the week, the team that makes the most mistakes is the one who usually loses these early games. And we made one less mistake. And so now we just got to improve from there. Coach, is it a such thing as rush? I mean, you think of all these guys not playing in the preseason and all the Josh Landon kind of give themselves in or what? What do you think it was early on like just his first game? Yeah, sure. I mean, look, there's always going to be that and there's always going to be I'm telling you, you know, I just pulled up the first two games, you know, the Thursday game, Baltimore, Casey. And then green Bay, Philly. And you just go through and you just you just try to go, you know, fly through it and look at, you know, things that man are. What kind of games are these? Are they what you think they are. And it's you know, some of these mistakes show up. And does it cost the other team how many and man it's inevitable. It's every year and it really is. It's you know first game. And the ones that that can just play basic football the best man that you know the blocking the tackling targeting communication taking care of the football, being smart with it. The checkdown it's they win. And so yeah there's things that man they're going to come along with it. And it's the first time a lot of these guys in a while have played that many plays with that much intensity. You know, and so this is our first taste. We'll get better. We'll get in a better flow, on both sides of the ball, we will. But at the end of the day, our defense held these guys to less points than our offense and our offense scored more points than their offense did. And so we found a way to win. We talked about just the expectations of Jamison Williams and how impressed you guys have been on fall camp is to come in here, have a couple big plays 121 yards, two touchdowns. How happy are you for him to get off to that kind of start? Yeah Listen, you know, we expected him to play pretty good, you know, to play better. And, and he showed up. I mean, that was a that was a big game, you know, to be able to catch some of these and go through it. And the best part of it was he didn't even play his best ball. There's still so much to clean up, but it also shows the work that he's put in. And he, he is improving and he's an improved player and he wants it man. And he keeps working on it. And he just he keeps taking these steps. So as long as he keeps doing it, and keeps making plays, he's just going to continue to get better. So yeah, I'm proud of him. I'm proud of where he's at. But he's got so much room to continue to grow. Inappropriate performance for David Montgomery. Given the conversation we had last week, the way he finished that game, how much of that is him? His style running get stronger as the game goes on? How much is it that you can maybe manage or balance his workload with with a guy like Gibbs? Also on the roster? Yeah, I mean, look, that's going to help, you know, and I do believe in that having that one two punch of two different backs, you know. But but I just look I said it after we ran the conditioning test and whatever. That was July 26th I guess. You know, the day before we started our first practice and he was he just. Man, you talk about a guy who was in outstanding shape. Look, all of our guys were. But this guy just looked. I mean, he looked like he didn't break a sweat for this thing, and. And then the first few days of practice, he doesn't look fatigued. He he just. And so he's an unbelievable shape. He's worked, worked extremely hard and he's just man he's reliable. He's reliable. He runs heavy. He's tough. He's physical. He gets in a rhythm and I think he's a catalyst for us. You know he starts carrying it and he gets better and better. And I think the line feeds off of him and he feeds off of them. And we get what we get. So that guy's a stud. He's a stud. Stanford was playing without a couple of his tackles. Yeah. In there, he seemed to show something there that he knows the lines. He's seen the quick releases that getting to the outside did did he for a lot of the game kind of have the right game plan against you guys given what he was working with? Yeah, I thought, look, I thought Sean Sean had a heck of a plan last week and he had another one this week. Now, we threw some wrinkles at him, you know, I think we threw a couple of things at him that it was going to take him a minute to adjust to, and they did. But to that point, they adjusted quickly and Stafford knew exactly, you know, what what he needed to do. He knew where his outlets were. And yeah, he was going to get rid of that ball. They were going to go a little tempo on us and some things and, you know, tried to apply a little pressure on us, but I thought he played outstanding. I really did, man.