Brian Manzullo

Detroit Free Press

We admit the question of how the Detroit Lions will move on from Calvin Johnson is getting old.

But there isn't a whole lot else to discuss while we wait for training camp to get started.

So NFL.com's Steve Wyche sat down with Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford this week and asked him again: What now for the Lions? Like he did last month, Stafford stayed optimistic.

"The NFL is such an up-and-down league, I mean teams make the playoffs one year, don't make it the next year, it happens every year," Stafford told Wyche after Gatorade's High School Athlete of the Year awards ceremony Tuesday in Los Angeles. "But you know it's a difficult game, he went through a lot, he took a beating, you could tell physically that he was hurting and his ability to show up for us and play on Sundays was amazing."

Stafford suggested last month that the Lions could be tougher to defend without Johnson because so many opponents keyed in on the Lions' top receiving target.

He told Wyche that it also may make it easier for the Lions offense to game plan for opposing defenses.

"It almost became non-important for me to look at tape sometimes because whatever (opponents) showed me on tape was not what I was going to get on Sundays when Calvin Johnson was playing," Stafford told Wyche. "So in that respect, hopefully less in-game adjustments that I'll have to make and the coaching staff will have to make to see how they're defending us. It's on us to go execute and score points."

Note: Stafford's wife, Kelly, posted an Instagram video of Stafford wakesurfing on a lake in Michigan on Tuesday. It's almost as if Stafford's been practicing!

Contact Brian Manzullo: bmanzullo@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @BrianManzullo.

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