Detroit Lions assistant coaches meet with the media | December 2, 2025

Detroit Lions assistant coaches meet with the media | December 2, 2025

Um, I asked Dan this more broadly, but you know, maybe specific to Jared. Uh, urgency has just been the word of the week here. U, we all understand what’s at stake. How does urgency show up for Jared in a in a week like this? I don’t I mean, it’s a big week obviously, uh, considering where we’re at. I the version of J Jared that we get is urgent all the time and uh regardless of the record or where we’re at, what’s happening outside the building with other teams, boy, he’s he’s a pro and uh approaches this job as such. He uh every walk through, every meeting, every practice, man, he’s really dialed in and uh and so that urgency is consistent coming from that player. I know you would never make excuses and nor would would he, but there is a a challenge with, you know, losing Sam Leaporta and potentially losing Aman St. Brown or losing him for at least the duration of a game, you know, how how difficult is that as as a quarterback to lose your top two targets, your favorite targets. It’s it’s difficult, but you go forward um you won’t getting back to our quarterback, you won’t hear him complaining, and it’s part of the game. It’s unfortunate and uh um but you you just you keep pressing on and you have to spend more time on the practice field uh with those players that you really don’t have a lot of time on task with, you know, and uh and Jared’s done that which has been good and we have to be real smart about how we uh put those players in those positions and give them a chance to succeed. But yeah, obviously it’s man it’s tough. Mark, you saw Isaac play a bigger role than ever last week obviously with St. Al, I know he’s not under your purview, but from a former quarterback’s perspective, like what would you appreciate most about throwing to Isaac Tesla? Um, you know, everything. He’s he’s he has very good hands and um um he’s big target, which is huge. Um it’s important to him. He’s young. He’s going to make mistakes, but uh out there he’s just he’s just a young kid trying to get better and better and he’s learning. Uh he’s getting coached very well by Scotty and uh the kid’s got a bright future. Very talented kid and I think he’s only going to get better and he’s not afraid to stick his nose in there which uh might be his best quality. So meaning block. Um and uh he’s been great and and it’ be fun to see how his career plays out because I think he’s going to be a real good one here for a long time. gonna have to rely on on J Mo a little bit more again like you did last week. Where have you seen that relationship with with him and and golf grow the most maybe over the over the past year? Um it’s a Jared question. Um but you know just again getting back to the time on task you know um uh JO’s uh he’s explosive, he’s dynamic, he’s fast, he’s got it all and he and there’s another player that’s only going to get better. And the more time those guys spend together, the better it’s going to be. Much like you see with with Jared and Saint. Um, but uh it’s been fun to watch and uh he was he stepped up last week. We’ll need him to step up this week and and uh he certainly can answer the call when it comes to that. He’s a great kid, you know, a talented kid. I he doesn’t even know how good he is. Um but uh he’s fun to watch and he’s obviously taken a bigger role for us and and probably will on Thursday. that you know Jared had five passes done against the Eagles. They said that it was an arm angle. That’s what it was, huh? Arm angle. Yeah, we’ve been working on that. That’s probably my fault. His arm angle was off. Was there anything? No. Silly. I know a lot of things have to go right for a deep shot to to even be attempted, but if you look at Jared’s stats, his average intended yards are are lowest of his career, taking fewer deep shots than pretty much anyone else in the league. Are are the opportunities there just not happening or um I’m not familiar with the stat. I I haven’t seen that. Um, you know, um, listen, we’re always trying to push the ball down the field and take advantage of the, you know, the the, uh, secondary and what it is presenting us. Um, and sometimes that doesn’t exist when you have a a um when you have a J Mo and you have a Leaf and you have guys that can can stretch the field and and get down the field. you’ve got Tesla, uh guys like that, they understand. They don’t want they’d rather keep everything in front of you. And that that’s not an excuse. I um uh but I I can tell you every week we are looking for what we call explosives, big passes down the field and uh um sometime they present themselves, sometimes they don’t. Um but it is something that’s that’s important to us and that we’re always in pursuit of. How does that does that have to do with also some of the pressure that he’s faced? I mean, it’s your pressure. No, you know, um, no, I I don’t think so. I think our quarterback does a very good job uh verse pressure. Pressure, the way we look at it, is not a bad thing. Um, they could bring four, five, six or seven. There are opportunities for us and our quarterback is very poised and he’s very smart in getting us in the right protection. Listen, if you want to bring five, there’s six only six guys back there. You want to bring six, there’s only five guys back there. So, please come on. We love it, you know, with our guys and and uh um our running backs block well. Our offensive line does a good job. Our guys, our receivers separate. So, um yeah, we’re going to get some pressure and we understand why, but uh we feel very confident when that does happen that our quarterback’s going to go to the right place with the ball. I’ve been real proud of him how he’s handled all of that. He’s very poised, gets us in the right play, and has a lot of trust in in in the guys around him. Mark, this team hasn’t lost uh back-to-back games in more than three years. You’ve been in the building. saw that. That’s pretty pretty cool. You’ve been in the building for a while now. I’ve been in a lot of buildings around the NFL. What what’s unique about this one or this team that makes it so resilient after after losses? Well, I think it’s not just this team, but it’s it’s last year’s team and pre, you know, and I think uh I think it starts with our head coach. I think um um what I appreciate about appreciate about him is that when we have a tough loss, yeah, we watch the tape, we correct the mistakes, and we move on to the next one. And uh I think he does a very good job of of being able to put uh a loss away and just start going forward to the next one. That’s not always the case with with with some coaches and at least that’s my experience. Um so I think his approach and uh um has has been really good for us and really it comes down to to that and we have really good guys. We have hardworking guys. It’s important to them. uh they have a lot of pride and uh there’s a lot of uh uh mental toughness there. So all the things you look for, the qualities you look for in a team that really makes a team um our guys possess those qualities which is great and it and it uh it has everything to do with how we can bounce back and why we bounce back from difficult losses. Thanks guys. All right, enjoyed it. Have a good afternoon. All right. Uh good good to be back in the building. Uh tough tough uh last performance. of course didn’t quite come out the way that we wanted to come out. And um you know the other piece to it is that you know the elephant in the room is you know Saint did go down but it did give guys an opportunity to step into roles that they hadn’t done. I mean TLA had to go into a role that he hadn’t practiced at all and kind of got bursted into that role and then uh luckily we had TK up for a deal that just I mean he really stopped uh a lot of the leakage in a lot of spots. You just can’t see it because it looks like he’s playing one position but he’s playing multiple positions. So really appreciative of him. Thought he played really well. And then J Mo, you know, just really starting to u you all of it starting to come together for him. Would like to play 100% game. Didn’t quite do that. Um but we know that like he’s worked really hard to earn our trust more and more. Uh there’s been things that come up of course like they always do, but we we felt like in this off season that he would start to take that turn and uh with Saint going down, a guy that I would have to say really stepped in and played at probably one of the highest levels he’s played at since I’ve been here uh all around blocking uh down the field, run after catch, I thought J Mo did a did a really good job in this game, uh outside of a few plays here and there. Uh so we’re just really really looking forward to getting going this week. One of the things about having, you know, Saint in practice is that you do everything kind of directly directed around him and how you place him and move him. Uh, so a lot of our guys, um, especially TK, uh, we’ve allowed a lot of practice time was able to go in and fill in those spots. But this week, a little bit different because we know that he hadn’t practiced as much. Now we can practice multiple people in multiple spots and it gives us a little bit of flexibility unlike the flex the non-flexibility that you have when you’re in the game. You have to adjust in game. So looking forward to see some of these guys uh make a few plays and and guys practice in the positions that they’re actually going to play at. Obviously you would prefer to have Saint, but is is there a silver lining here with with Isaac? I mean that was a quarter of his season snap load and seems like experience. There’s no better teacher. So how how good is this for him to get these extra snaps in these different roles to maybe accelerate the learning curve for him? I think it does accelerate a lot of things as far as learning is concerned. But uh one of the things that’s the best teacher and experience connected is when you actually are practicing in that role. You’re practicing the details, the fundamentals, everything that goes into where you’re aligned at, who you’re aligned with, and then all of a sudden you get in the game, you actually go out there and you get to do it the way that you practiced it. So, this will be a good test for him. Uh we’re looking forward to seeing how he comes out and performs. He’s as physical as we thought he would be. He’s he’s done a lot of things, but now this is the last piece. He has to go out and play and get the experience. There’s always, you know, things that we know on the inside from watching practice and the reason why we bring guys along at the level that we bring them along at so when they get in the games they’re able to go out and function at a high level. Saints return is a medical decision, not you, but do you need to see something from him or hear something from him or, you know, how do you sort of decide like, you know, when he’s ready to handle the the full workload that he had? Yeah, he can walk up to me. he can walk up to me, you know, Thursday at what 7:59 and we right after we warm up, uh, right after we come in from warm-ups and, uh, like I’m ready to go. I think that’s that’s plenty of time outside of the, uh, our inability to change the active inactive list at that time. Scotty, Dan was was mentioning just the rising confidence that J seems to be playing with, especially when he has a day like he had last Thursday. In your eyes, how does that confidence manifest itself on the field in his play? So yeah, no doubt he’s playing at a better level than he’s played once he’s been here in certain times, but the bridge to greatness is consistency. So we can talk about the confidence part of it. Right now, what we have to drive is the way that you get to the level of greatness is really you you have to get to a point of where every single play is made, every single block is made. And the reason why we talk about the greats now if you go back and look at some of those old tapes of the really great receivers, it’s hard to even believe that how many plays that, you know, Jerry Rice made like back to back to back and then games of consecutive greatness and and right now a lot of times with all the social media and everything that we have, you can kind of create a highlight for your year even though you don’t play collectively the whole year. Well, back then, I mean, you had a body of work and people were watching it on television and you had to bring people back and draw them in. So, I think he is playing with a lot more confidence. Confidence plus consistency, greatness. That’s what we want to see. That’s what we need to see. And he’s been working really hard at that. Outside of time for some more, uh, telling him to maybe get the first down, if he catches the ball short of the sticks or whatever, is is there anything that you, I guess, coach him on after he gets the ball in his hands in terms of where he’s trying to go? Like, are you are you coaching him to look for the end zone every time, no matter where he is? We’re absolutely looking for the end zone, but there are certain paths and angles that you are choosing to get to the end zone. Sometimes when you go lateral for 40 yards and then you go vertical for 10, that’s maybe not the angle that we want you to go to the end zone on, but there may not be an angle to go on how we’re coaching. But one thing that we talk about after the catch and getting to the end zone, the first thing is ball security. We got to continue to improve his ball security. Making sure the ball is on the outside arm. And in a couple of those situations, ball was on the inside arm. If you get the ball on the outside arm, now you can protect yourself with an offhand weapon which gives you another chance to make someone miss which will extend the play. So those are the things that we try to focus on those details uh that people kind of miss. Oh, he’s running the ball. That’s a great run. Well, it could have been an even better run. Maybe if we have that ball in the outside arm, person comes in to tackle me in the lower legs. I can get them off my legs and now create maybe five to 10 more yards. Coach, it’s not a football question at all, but y’all got the Temptations performing at halftime this Thursday. What do you think about the organization tapping into the history of Mottown and just bringing some of these Detroit X? I know you locked in on your job, but what do you think about about that? Man, I love it. You know, I think um the only thing is it’s starting to cost me even more and more tickets because all of my family members now once they hear who’s performing uh my son was was definitely fired up uh last week. You know, you know, just hearing the Eminem was going to be there, but now we’re tapping into Mottown, of course, now uncles, aunts, everybody’s lined up. I just, you know, I told him I don’t have any halftime passes. Like we it’s you come to see the game. Uh but we’re really excited, man. But and it’s just a it’s a big deal, not only about the city, but not just here for the people in the city, but the people outside of the city, getting to really see what this city is all about, what it was built on, and why it’s so special. Why people walk around Detroit with the the the amount of pride that they have, the amount of style, the amount of swag. It’s I mean, it’s a long history of greatness here. Thanks, guys. Thanks, guys.

Hear from Detroit Lions assistant head coach/wide receivers coach Scottie Montgomery and quarterbacks coach Mark Brunell as they speaks with the media on December 2, 2025

0:00 – 7:19: Mark Brunell
7:20 – 14:01: Scottie Montgomery

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