The Detroit Lions returned a familiar face to the quarterback room on Thursday.

With the signing of Teddy Bridgewater, the Lions now have three passers on their active roster and one on the practice squad. Starter Jared Goff relies on everyone else in the room to prepare for each opponent.

Bridgewater is no stranger, having been with the Lions last year before retiring to coach high school football in Florida. After finishing his first season as coach with a state championship, he decided to come out of retirement and join the Lions for the final stretch of the season.

Each quarterback has their own role in preparing for each game. For example, practice squad quarterback Jake Fromm analyzes the percentages of how much man or zone coverage opposing defenses use in a given situation.

Bridgewater and Hendon Hooker also bring a lot to the table, creating a collaborative environment in position coach Mark Brunell’s room. The process is very thorough until the night before the game when the entire room goes over every part of the game plan.

“They all do a lot, whether it’s breaking things down percentage-wise early on, like figuring out the percentages, and Jake (Fromm) does a lot every week about what the percentages of what they’re at certain downs, and then throughout the week, just little quizzes here and there to make sure we’re on top of things,” Goff said. “We’ll go over the whole thing the night before the game and they’ll keep me on my toes. Well, Teddy (Bridgewater) is a guy I mentioned last year, a guy who played, a guy who played. “In big games, he’s had that experience, and I can relate to some of those things too rely on him. He’s a veteran and has great insight.”

Brunell, who has coached the Lions’ quarterbacks since 2021, reiterated that a lot goes into preparation every week. In addition to the time available to the coaches, the group of passers-by often spent a lot of time watching the video among themselves.

“It’s actually about going through the game plan every day. They watch videos together. We have a lot of time with them,” Brunell said. “They spent a significant amount of time being alone in the room without the coaches, watching tapes, talking things through and going through different scenarios. As you can imagine, Teddy is a great asset to us because he has seen it all, really. And he just has a different perspective, the perspective of a guy who’s been in this league for a long time, and obviously he’s a good coach, he found that out this year, and there’s a lot in that.”

MORE: Lions’ Teddy Bridgewater brings security and comfort as playoffs approach

Return to San Francisco

The Lions remember the pain of walking off the field at Levi’s Stadium as confetti rained down.

As the team returns to the site where it lost the NFC Championship in January, it will be eager to continue the postseason hunt for the top seed against the team that brought it back from the postseason just one game shy of its ultimate destination has.

As Goff explained Thursday, the Lions have emerged from that difficult situation late last season. It served as fuel for this year’s group, which coined the mantra “It Takes More” as the motto for this year’s campaign.

“Any time you get deep into the playoffs and go through a game like that, you learn, you grow, you get better, you get closer, all of that comes into play,” Goff said. “We felt so close to winning. “We came up short in that game, but yeah, it served us well this season and hopefully in the postseason.”

Wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown noted that while there are new faces on the roster, those involved in last year’s loss have grown from experience.

The wound of the loss isn’t fresh, but the game itself is crucial to Detroit’s hopes of securing the No. 1 seed in the NFC.

“It’s been a while, almost a year. It hurt then, it definitely hurt. But I think we all grew from it, both as players and as coaches,” St. Brown said. “We have some different people on the team, but a lot of the same people that were here last year. Last year it was a bad defeat for us. New Year we can write our own story and that’s what we are excited about.”