Detroit Lions assistant coaches meet with the media | October 28, 2025

Detroit Lions assistant coaches meet with the media | October 28, 2025

It’s good to be back, of course, off of uh coming off of uh an open date. You know, some people call it vibes, kind of more of an open date. Had a chance to to get in here, but but more so got a chance to hang out with my family and and my children and uh they they thought it was going to be this fantastic week where we did everything. Uh my my middle son, Moses, ended up getting to come to work with me on Thursday, so that was the highlight of the week. I told him there’s the least he could do since he I had to be at football, soccer, basketball this week. But in the midst of that, trying to also figure out how we get better, continually get better moving forward. And uh I think there’s a few things that that you know, of course, we will be able to to to progress where we are. And then just looking at the room and then looking at the building in totality, some of the things that coach asked us to do and asked me to do, it was a good time to get away, but also watch some football and what other people are doing. Uh and and just seeing the, you know, the landscape of what’s going on in the NFL. A lot of times when you’re in a season, it’s kind of hard to see, you know, who’s playing well, who’s doing something a little bit different, especially off basis, just looking at at records. What ideas did Moses have for you? Uh, you know, come home earlier. Um, you know, he’s like I get home the other night though, he’s I forgot he was in he was in my bed, uh, looking at the the Monday Night Football. So, he was uh he was fired up that I was able actually to see the last quarter or so, but I coached him up this week. So, I it was just me and him and I got to coach him at receiver play, at running back plays. So, he he’s he probably not too happy to see me when I ask him to come to work because it really is work. Just curious about Dominic Love it. You know, it’s a guy that’s obviously for understandable reasons buried on the depth chart, but I’m just curious what what does his practice week look like? Is he more involved with scout team? and you know, how does he how is he progressing since we’ve seen him at camp? Yeah, special teams um you know, big portion of his practice is directly connected to everything that FIP has him doing. Uh but for us, uh he’s really doing a good job for um on the show team. He’s been, you know, named show team player uh before. So, he he’s doing a really good job. He provides great looks. Uh I really do feel like at slot play and at outside play, he’s grown at both. uh the time off in camp uh kind of slowed his progression there, but now we’re seeing all of that being caught up at a a pretty fast level. And yes, he is in a situation where he’s learning from Saint. So now when you’re not playing as much, when you’re not uh on the field as much, what you get a chance to do is you get to watch more. So he’s watching the things that Saint does. Even taking, you know, notes from from TK and understanding the things that goes into being a professional, he’s coming along. We we think we got a really good football player with him. uh and and really kind of like what he’s shown in special teams to this point. Uh both him and Tla in the Gunner game. Uh we’ve been looking for guys that can get down there, create havoc, get guys to furry catch, and even if they don’t make the first play, put people on a lateral movement so we can rally to it. Really like where he is right now. Doing great in the room. And you know what we do is we just throw him in randomly with our with our top guys to put the pressure on him to understand that at any moment he could be the guy in there. Really like where he’s at right now. I think I’ve talked to guys about this before, but just when you’re on the scout team and you’re trying to give a look, say he’s trying to be Zay Flowers for a week, he’s studying Zay Flowers, like how valuable can that be for a guy just to see kind of how the other team’s best guys do things? Well, there’s two there’s two sides to it, right? Uh the value comes with, you know, our our defensive secondary, they they love these guys, the way they come out and practice and prepare. The other part of the value goes to the player. Not only are you learning to compete at a higher level, like you’re going into the every practice as a game, but you’re also getting to watch the skill set of someone else that’s playing uh in a position that you want to play in. So, when you’re watching that skill set, you’re just you’re sponging all the information that you can get from that player, but you’re also understanding that, man, I’m I’m pretty good, too. You know, that’s that’s one of the things that come out of watching some of the tape of the other guys. They’ll come back to me and say, “Hey, this guy’s out of his transition in four steps, coach. I’m out of my transition in three steps. He’s not building on the move. he’s building lateral, all of these details, so it just keeps them wrapped around their game and then just like trying to progress where they are fundamentally. It’s outside of your room, but uh Graham being able to to take on the center job was was pretty big for you guys. I’m just curious obviously in your your past roles, the running back’s coach, how have you seen his growth, uh over these last couple seasons, cuz it feels like he’s playing some of his best football right now. Yeah, communication. anytime you’re putting into that role, the first thing that’s noticed like when you when I was thinking about, you know, Frank when, you know, when it did happen and and he chose to retire, which we love Frank, the one thing that I always remembered about him was I would try to get him and put him uh in in really bad situations in our blitz pickup drills where I would script the worst looks that you could possibly script. like the one off from 2020 and is 25 or 24 and he he would turn around and look at me and to give me the look like I know this one. I’ve seen this one before. I got you. And then he would communicate it down the line at at a way this quick, you know, without saying a whole lot. So, the first thing that I would say when you move from the guard position into the center position, man, now you’re the master communicator, not just for the O line, but for the quarterback, which now is echoing different things out to the receiver. Uh so where I’ve seen him grow has been what I’ve been able to watch. And then physicality, he’s always been, you know, he’s been there. He’s playing a lot quicker. Uh we we we like what has happened with him right now. And just being able to see uh that’s, you know, that was a big concern. You know, you see Frank walk out. But we did know that we had a guy with capabilities who played it. Uh but now just seeing the communication from one end to the other has been pretty good. With uh with Jameson, is there a middle ground and and do you guys need to find it? you know, he’s had these zero or one catch games or he said two touchdowns or six catches. Does it does it, you know, no middle ground, only a ceiling, man. Like, we got to get we got to get to the ceiling. Like, it’s just it’s one of those situations to where it’s one of the things that I study, you know, where he is in the progression, what happens when he is first, second, third in progression, and it’s kind of been all over the place, right? you know, we’ve uh either we, you know, were the progression started and he’s he’s he’s open behind the first progression or he’s second progression and we don’t quite connect. Uh or we do everything right, O line, everything is right and we don’t make the play down the field. So, the combination of all those things and collectively we just got to get him more ops. Uh he’s got to get more opportunities. We’re working on doing that and um and how you get those opportunities, right? And it’s directly connected also to our third down production. Third down production, what it means for receivers are more opportunities. What it means for backs are more opportunities, extending those drives. But our third down opportunities, you know, giving them opportunities to be catch and run. A lot of those have been pass the sticks. Uh, and as you go back and look at, you know, around the league and you used to go around and look back in the history of what we’ve done and some of the other places that we’ve kind of studied, a lot of guys now is it’s a lot more catch and run. Catch and run. we’re doing a good job in catch and run. In the games that we’re playing well, uh you’ll see I think we had one game almost at 170 yards of catch, you know, run after catch. Um and then the games where, you know, we haven’t done uh we maybe won the game, but we just haven’t hit the standard and expectations that we have for ourselves, our run after catch hadn’t been that great. So, we got to sharpen him up on a a couple of things in his toolbox, but there’s also other opportunities um I don’t want to talk about, but we can put him in better positions. How’s he hanging in, you know, mentally? He post a little gift that I don’t know don’t want to read into it without talking to him. Yeah. Like if he wasn’t a little bit, you know, honory right now, it would just it would it would just signal complacency to me. Um I don’t think he’s he’s he hasn’t shown anything in the building or anything on the sideline, which if we were in a different year. Uh this probably would have happened four or five weeks ago. Uh but I do think it speak to his maturity, but he also understands that he is working and doing things the right way. Uh, a lot of times the way that you prepare gives you the confidence and the way that you do not prepare sometimes creates anger when you don’t have the opportunities or situations don’t go the right way. Uh, I thought he was going to go crazy on the penalty in the game. Uh, where it was a great back shoulder catch with it was a great backshoulder catch. All right. I don’t, you know, I got three kids. I can’t, you know, just can’t donate money at this point in time. Maybe later in life, but not now. So, I thought that was going to really frustrate him. Uh it’s frustrating, but it didn’t frustrate him to the point of where he was not ready to go back and have questions on about what was going on and what we saw. So, but we got to we got to get to a point where we’re not talking about potential. We’re talking about more production and we’ll get there. Is that maturity on his part to not go crazy and Oh, it’s maturity on my part. Uh okay. He’s probably a lot more mature than me in those some of those situations. Uh especially when you’ve coached, you’ve been coached to do something a certain way and then you have the opportunity to do it the exact detailed way and it doesn’t go the way that you would like it to go. It doesn’t really reflect on you as much as it does on, you know, the coach when you’ve seen it, you’ve done it the right way and you’ve seen it, you you hope that it goes the right way and it did not turn out the right way. So, uh yeah, great level of maturity from him right now. Scotty, is that a message that you delivered to him personally like, “Hey, the ball’s coming your way and we appreciate your selflessness before that, or is that something that he understands intuitively kind of on his own?” Well, you know what? This this is a process that doesn’t start during game week. It starts the moment that you walk into a room as a coach. You got to there’s certain standards you got to have for guys. And you also got to create a level of of understanding that it’s selfless, but also you got to have a little bit of selfish nature to you because receiver is one of the only jobs where everybody else has to do their job almost correct just just almost perfectly for you to get the opportunity. And because you’re the the punctuation mark or you’re the uh the period or the question mark or the exclamation mark right there to finish the sentence, you have to be, you know, you got to have a different level of confidence to be able to finish strides and finish plays and finish with the ball in the end zone. So, you know, it’s it’s it’s something that we’ve started a long time ago, but we also create a level of competition. They know they want to go out and be the best in the league. and and unfortunately we live in a league that even though you might play a 90% game, uh you need to have statistics to back it up as well. Coach, you mentioned third down a little bit. What has the messaging been from Coach Campbell coming out of the buy in terms of third down? Oh, okay. Yeah. Um so in every category, all right, in every category, it’s been fundamental detail. Uh and that’s the way he sees it. And I don’t think there’s been like third and two, third and four to six, third and seven to 10. Uh third downs are like we all kind of you know taken a good look at it. Uh we have different sections that we’re doing but he looks at everything and when you break it down uh he’s looked at us schematically. He’s looked at us fundamentally and then he’s looking at our personnel and how we’re using our personnel. So the biggest deal about our third down and I think his point uh of all of us is that listen if we’re going to get better at third downs it’s not going to be a scheme. It’s not going to be a player. It’s not going to be you know how we’re using the it’s going to be a collective hole. So that’s what he’s watching. He’s watching uh how we practice it, you know, he’s watching how we card it, making sure our guys defensively are doing exactly what the third down card says. So we just got a big emphasis uh on that and uh we we we’ll continue to work it, but it’s collective hole. So is it more of like a mindset to get better at? No, no, it’s it’s it’s collective scheme. We need to be better scheme and some things. There’s collective player. We got to make more plays. Like we we we can we can be a little bit better in the way that we go after the football. is is collective and how we’re finishing. You know, our catch and knife hadn’t been as great is. So, it’s not a mentality. It’s more of a complete detail in each one of those situations. We’ve done a pretty good job. Like in the red zone, for instance, we’ve we’ve been pretty good. The details have been there. When you look at it, we’ve ran the ball efficiently, but also when you look at that category versus third down, we’ve been able to get the most out of everything that we’re doing. Our backs are straining, right? It looks like a three- yard gain and Jir spins out of it, scores. is now the red zone percentage is where it’s at. So, we got to have a little bit more of that. It’s not mentality. It’s just a little bit more from everybody, a little bit more scheme, a little bit more player, and then just a little bit more preparation as far as what we’re showing them in those situations, and we can get that cleaned up. What do you just think of the the collective performance of the secondary on uh on Monday night? Well, I was really disappointed. No, it was it was awesome. It was awesome. It was great to see some of those young guys take advantage of an opportunity. Uh, I thought Chev put together a great game plan. Uh, chance for those guys to play fast, be aggressive, and um, obviously they showed up when the lights were bright. So, uh, it was good to see. I mean, guys like Eric Howlet who for most of training camp played corner and nickel and then didn’t get a rep, you know, probably in a in a in a real defensive call until last week playing safety. To see him go out and play 50 plays at safety and 14 or 15 plays at nickel was awesome. you know, Lawrence Strickland got in there and they all they all made plays. He had a big play at the end of the game. You know, uh it was good to see Thomas Harper. I thought he did some good things in the deep part of the field. Uh it was really good to see him come downhill and uh make that knife tackle on that counter play. So, some things that, you know, some boxes that we were empty, we needed to get checked to find out about him as a player. I thought he did that. And then guys like Whitide and Arthur Mlette, you know, Art going in there and it was just it was it was it was awesome. It was awesome. There was a play where Howlet was in a cover two and rotated down when I think Mallet got picked off and forced the QB to hold on the ball ended a sack. That seemed like a really advanced play for a guy that that hasn’t, you know, seen a lot of reps. Yeah, I I think one of the things with um with him is just his instincts and and his ability to see the field. So, you know, if if we’re talking about the right play, it was a drive route coming from the field. He was in the deep part of the field. he kind of felt the runaway and you saw him trigger and it was a it was an outstanding tackle. Um so yeah, it was he he did some really good things. So really good things. Just curious uh with Eric and Lauren specifically. They were here last season. They kind of saw the injuries to to the rest of the defense and and the opportunities that could present. How do you think that helped them maybe get acclimated or just get ready for the game having seen all their teammates and even, you know, uh, in the secondary do that last season? Yeah, I think that the the culture of this place does a great job kind of if you’re here, you’re expected to play. You know, you’re expected to be ready to play and you’re you’re expected to hold the standard. So, and I think that um the coaching staff does a great job not flinching if those guys have to go in the game. And I’ve been places where, you know, we’d actually have a stuffed dog and uh we’d always say, “If you’re scared, get a dog.” And there’d be a lot of coaches that would have got the dog last week and and nobody on our staff lynched, you know, going into that game. So, um, but it says a lot about those guys, too, you know, cuz they don’t get a lot of reps throughout the week of practice or, you know, so they got to get their reps on the scout field and they got to get the mental reps and and and those guys went in there and they performed and they played well. Was there a prior experience in your career that you were able to draw from in terms of being down four starters in your secondary and just where you begin to process building a game plan from there? Um, I don’t know if I’ve ever been down four starters. I mean, we I’ve been I’ve been in some places where we’ve had move safeties to play corner. Uh, in my experience, I don’t know if I’ve ever been down four starters. But one of the first lessons I learned from Rex Ryan, um, when I was a when I was a younger assistant coach, is is he told me, “You’re not going to be evaluated by your starters, you’re going to be evaluated by how your backups play.” And that’s always kind of stuck in my head. And I I think our whole entire coaching staff does an unbelievable job coaching everybody on the roster. So, when we get in those situations, and just in the year and a half that I’ve been here, you know, we especially on defense, we’ve been decimated at every level of the defense and guys have stepped up and gone in and played at a high level. So, um, I think it’s just, you know, it’s it’s credit to the players, it’s credit to the coaches, it’s it’s credit to, uh, the play callers building the game plan. So, but I can’t remember being without all four starters. Sorry, you got Brian back from suspension, obviously. How, you know, if at all, do you think that will change him? Has changed him, you know, just mentality wise, or or No, I I I think you’ll get an even more motivated Brian Branch. So, uh, I’m I’m really excited to see how he takes the field on, uh, on Sunday when he comes out of the tunnel, but, um, it’s great to have him back. Um, he’s one of my all-time favorite people, all-time favorite players that I’ve ever coached. So, it’s, um, I love his competitive spirit, so I’m I’m excited to get him back out there. Talk to him later about this, too, but what do you think it meant to him that all those DVs wore his jersey, you know, kind of supported him like that? All the coaches did, too. Yeah, I I had my 32 jersey on. Deay had his on. The DT had his on. But, uh, no, I mean, I think that we would do that for any of our guys, you know what I’m saying? So, anybody that goes through adversity, but Dan had the offense really study third downs. I’m just curious from your guys perspective, what was there a big picture thing you guys studied? You talking about over the over the uh the by-week? Yeah. I think that um one of the things I think uh one of the things Shep and I meet about every week are are some of the the tendencies that uh offenses might be attacking on us. So, you know, for example, what are we calling on second one to three? What are we calling on second four to six? Are we creating a tendency on earn first down uh across the 50 yard line? You know, what what are what are some of the things uh offenses might be attacking us on? But, you know, for me safety-wise, it was good to see, you know, are are we giving anything away with our stances, you know, is there you’re able to look cuz, you know, when you get in the season, you’re you’re studying the opponent so much. So, it’s always good to be able to take a step back and kind of look inward and, you know, study Brian Branch, study Kirby Joseph. What are you doing really well? What are you not doing so well? How can we maybe um mix a few things up to keep the uh keep the offense on their heels? um what play calls have been good to us, what play calls haven’t been good to us, you know, and the the play calls that haven’t been good, why is it a personnel thing or we just not good at that? And, you know, give Shep a chance to uh to maybe re-emphasize some calls and maybe not emphasize some of the calls that we thought we were going to be good at. And we we have a we you know we installed a lot of the defense a lot of defense during training camp and there’s still quite a bit of calls we haven’t even called yet you know and and you know so that’s good too because you got calls that you kind of put in the bank during training camp that you got great reps in and you haven’t shown them yet so you can you can pull them out and the guys have cumulative reps already in those calls so it’s not like you’re installing something new. Hey Jim, back to Brian for a minute. What what does a more motivated Brian Branch look like? Uh, it’s scary. Scary cuz cuz he’s clearly one of the best players at his position in the league. So, um, but no, I just he’s just so much fun to coach just because of how coachable he is and um, you know, constantly wanting to get better. He does a great job watching film, comes a great job does a great job coming to the meeting room with ideas or asking questions. Um, does a does a great job with his teammates. Does a great job asking me about my family, you know, stuff like that. So, um, it’s good to have him back. With Kirby playing through that knee since training camp, really, and the ball production is still there, but how have you seen that injury limit or or hamstring him at all through the first half of the season, like physically plays he can’t fully commit to or I don’t even know if that’s the case, but how does No, I I don’t think I I think that he’s he’s doing a hell of a job fighting through it. I mean, he’s he’s working he’s working coaches hours cuz he’s here early in the morning getting treatment. He’s in the meeting rooms getting treatment. He he’s doing everything. I know last week he spent the whole week um you know, taking care of himself um and doing some things out on his own, all right, to try to try to get himself right. But, um no, just just how he’s attacked it professionally and and how he’s helped some of the young guys that have come in too. Because it’s always great, you know, when you get new guys, you know, you you coach them up, you have extra meetings, you you you teach them that you teach them our system, and then when you have older, experienced guys that can kind of kind of give it to him from a player’s perspective or help him help him in in certain situations. He’s been outstanding with all that stuff. But when he goes, I I haven’t seen a a drop out. I think he’s he’s been he’s he’s been the same Kirby that we’re all used to seeing. I’m sure there’s a few plays this year that he would like to have back. You know what I mean? But that’s with everybody.

Hear from Detroit Lions assistant head coach/wide receivers coach Scottie Montgomery and defensive assistant/safeties coach Jim O’Neil as they speaks with the media on October 28, 2025.

0:00 – 12:11: Scottie Montgomery
12:12 – 20:43: Jim O’Neil

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