HEAD COACH BRAD CHILDRESS
Opening statement
“I knew we were in for a dogfight. The Lions always fight us. So we had no illusions about that. I thought we were better in the second half. I didn’t think the tempo was where we wanted it in the first half and we were able to come out and set that off. You know generally those games with the Lions, you want them to get left handed you drop the ball on the ground and we tried there in the beginning to drop the ball on the ground, it cost us three points. I think the important thing was we wanted to hit the passer, we wanted to neutralize that run game which in the first half didn’t happen. I think they had rushed for 90 yards in the first half and I want to say at the end they had 129 so, the second half… Just like last week, it was the tale of two halves.
“Offensively we wanted to stay aggressive with the calls, but we were three-and-out a couple of times and it’s hard to get any rhythm when that occurs. We did much better the start of the second-half with the kick, defense straightened out and then the offense driving the football. I expected a good amount of blitz and they did disrupt some rhythms and then special teams-wise I thought they did a nice job of shutting off the return alleys and I thought that our kickers did a nice job of kicking the football, Kluwe and Longwell both. But plenty to work on, always good to get a win, no such thing as a bad win and always good to beat the Lions.”
On QB Brett Favre throwing mostly short passes“Well, I think he was 23 of 27 with a couple of touchdowns. Yeah you want him to be efficient with the football, I can’t remember how many deep throws we had. Again, they were kind of softer playing back, didn’t want guys to get run by but that’s what you have to be able to do and there was a point there where we thought we needed to throw it to back them away from the box a little bit and reopen the running game.”
On the defense defending the run better in the second-half
“Yeah, I just thought they were getting a lot of runs back in the second level. If somebody’s going to run a ball, somebody getting out of their gap and so just making sure we’re back being gap-secure. Safeties were in the gaps that they needed to be in and then tackling when we got there. You know we had some missed tackles and missed tackles hurt you. I put it off to urgency, resolve; I just expect them to play harder than that. That’s been our MO and I thought I saw them play harder as we started the second half.”
On if Favre hurt his hand
“I don’t think so. I mean he’s probably shaking everything he’s got, but not that I saw.”
On rhythm on offense
“Well, they had a lot of guys by the line of scrimmage and some of that’s going to allow you to keep it in check and some of it’s going to allow you, with the way they were flowing to give you those backside breaks that Adrian was able to hit and bust out there which, he had a couple of those. It’s a checkers game. Depending on how you want to deploy your personnel, I thought you saw Percy start to get involved with some of those run-looks that we were able to get the ball out to him as we went on. None of that was there in the first half just from a rhythm standpoint. Enough plays with those two three-and-outs to where we felt like we could start moving around and doing what we wanted to do.”
DE JARED ALLEN
On what kind of adjustments as a defense did you make
“It was nothing too much. It was players making the play. Everybody was making plays. We were flying around out there. We make plays depending on how fast our defense is. It was kind of hurting us in the first half and they were finding some holes. We just had to be patient, the plays will come and it was more just a look of the men and check yourself, and every position started making plays. We just wanted to get turnovers and run the ball.”
On missing tackles in the first half
“We kind of lacked fundamentals we missed our tackles. We missed tackles in the gap and they started bouncing plays. But you go in and see how they’re running plays and it was more a gut check on our part. It made us want to come out with a little more tempo and we wanted to set the pace on them instead of having it on us.”
On how important it was to come out and force a three-and-out on the first series of the second half
“It was big. We were barking up front and we were putting it on our shoulders. We didn’t get too many rushed opportunities till the end of the game, so we took advantage of those opportunities when we got them. The three-and-out really set the tempo coming out. We couldn’t let them hang around; otherwise we knew we would be in trouble.”
RB ADRIAN PETERSON
On the 29-yard touchdown run
“The linemen did a great job up front for me and It opened right up for me and I cut it back it to the left side and I saw daylight."
On what the offense wanted to do in the second-half
“We came out in the second-half and we knew offensively that we needed to get it going. We came out flat in the first half. We came out in the second half and got a good drive and delivered, and fortunately we put points on the board.”
On his touchdown run after the fumble by Lions RB 
“We were actually on the sidelines talking about that play and the defense came up with a big turnover and that play worked.”
On struggling in the first-half
“You know, not to take anything away from those guys, but it was a lot of what we were doing. We came out flat. If it wasn’t me, it was someone else. We weren’t getting anything going offensively. We weren’t being productive but in the second-half we came out and were doing things right.”
