One of the highlights every week for anyone who covers the Lions is getting a chance to talk to defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham on Fridays.
Cunningham is widely respected around the league with nearly 30 years of NFL coaching experience under his belt.
His players all rave about him and the media loves him because he isn’t afraid to speak his mind.
Here are a couple snippets of our conversation with Cunningham this week:
On Vikings tackle Jared Allen and his negative comments about Detroit:
“He is not good enough to live here. I know him well. He should go back to California – Los Gatos – where all those nice people live. It is too tough of a town for him.
“I love Jared Allen and he makes all those comments and I hope he didn’t learn them all from me, but he is an outstanding player. I love the guy. He plays great and he has great quotes for you all and they are good for the fans to read. If I were him though, in the streets I have driven down, I’ve made some wrong turns in town and for me, I got stopped one day and I looked out the window and they all yelled, ‘Hey coach, how are you?’ I went out and signed autographs. Jared, if you come to town, you are not going to get to sign autographs.”
On the problem the team’s had with penalties over the last couple weeks:
“We don’t try to get penalties because we want to get penalties, we get penalties because we are playing our hearts out. There isn’t anybody that can accuse us of not playing hard.
“On defense, and I can speak for that pretty freely, all I tell my guys is play in between the lines. Hit them when you see their eyes. Don’t hit guys in the back. We are going to hit them right in the head, in the face and all over the body as long as they are looking at us. That is how we teach. Our guys need to understand that you can’t do that after the whistle, can’t do it before the whistle, but the rest of the time we are going to play and we are going to play as hard as possible.”
On the criticism the Lions have faced about being an undisciplined team:
“Here is the issue for me: there are some ex-coaches on television, in the media, making statements. Why don’t they come talk to me about it? Tell them to face me and come and talk to me about it.
“Don’t tell me how to coach. They were in high school and maybe not even born when I started in this business. I think I know a little bit about it and I will challenge any coach to ever face me up, 1-on-1, put the tape on and tell me how to coach football. That is what I object to.
“The media, the rest of you, you do your job. But those guys, to tell Jim Schwartz how to coach, tell me how to coach, good luck. They are not coaching. They are on TV. I wonder why they are on TV? There is a reason for that and I am still standing in front of you and we are still coaching. We want our guys to play hard. That is how we play. People overreact to all that stuff so I am tired of hearing about it. I really am.”
On defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh:
“I don’t just say he is a great man, I mean it. Behind those words, there is a lot of meaning. I think he is one of the most outstanding young men I have ever met in my life and I don’t care what the rest of the world says. Basically they can say what they want. But I can too. I will stand up for him at any time, any place and I am right. I know I am right.
“I have been doing this for a long time. I am a father of a couple of kids that are close to 30 and I think they are doing okay and I challenge anybody, anybody, to meet this guy and talk to him. This guy plays football. Yeah, there is something that triggers him and he is coached by a guy that gets triggered real easy about a lot of things and to me, what happened in the game, is in the past.
“When he comes back here, if I see one of our players blink, they are going to have to deal with me. And I have told them that already and they are all supportive and I will support him as much as humanly possible. That is how we are going to start off and we are going to play.”
