Bears
Bears HC Matt Eberflus cited experience as the reason for leaving QB Justin Fields in the game on Sunday while the team was being blown out by the Lions.
“It’s important for us to be able to do that going forward this last game,” Eberflus said, via Courtney Cronin of ESPN. “That’s why late into the game we kept Justin in there because we want to get that live experience. You can’t really get that anywhere else, so that’s why we decided as a staff and we decided as working with Justin, he said, ‘I want to be in there.’ Credit to him, he was, ‘Coach, man, I’m still going out there. I want to be able to operate.’ With his toughness and grit, he wants to go out there and compete, and that’s what he did.”
“You can certainly look at it that way but as we said, Justin’s got to be back there and operate,” Eberflus added. “There’s going to be different people out at certain times, and he’s got to be able to operate, get rid of the ball when it’s not there, and do a good job of having poise in the pocket.”
Packers
Packers QB Aaron Rodgers spoke about the team righting the ship following their big win over the Vikings on Sunday. Despite falling to 4-8, Green Bay now controls their own playoff destiny with a win-and-in game against the Lions to close the regular season.
“We’ve all seen some of the commentaries on the outside as we went from 4-8 to 5-8 to 6-8 and nobody’s worried about the Packers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” Rodgers said, via NFL.com. “Now, what are they going to say? I had faith, much like at 4-6 I think in ’16. Sometimes you’ve got to fool yourself a little bit into believing a little bit more. But I definitely had faith I was going to go down scrapping, for sure. I do believe in the power of manifestation and I do believe in momentum and I believe very strongly in the force of the mind. And when you start to believe something strongly, some miraculous things can happen.”
“It didn’t look great for a while,” Rodgers added. “And I was resigned to some of those realities being possible. And when I took my mind there, I had peace about it. I had peace about all of it. Whatever was supposed to happen, I was surrendered to that reality — with also the resolute mindset that we could still get back in this thing. And I think that’s what I’m most proud of, for myself and our team, is that there were a lot of different things that could happen, and we stuck together and we put ourselves in position to do something special.”
Vikings
- Vikings HC Kevin O’Connell said RT Brian O’Neill will miss Week 18 with a “pretty significant leg injury.” There’s no word on his timeline apart from that. (Ben Goessling)
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