Jim Schwartz takes minor dig at Packers' skeet shooting outing

Considering the offseason the Detroit Lions have had – and there is about six weeks to go – the last thing the club needed to do this week was put guns in the hands of its players.

But in Green Bay that is what Packers coach Mike McCarthy did, taking his team skeet shooting on Wednesday in a team-building exercise, scrapping what had been a scheduled minicamp day.

Lions coach Jim Schwartz seemed to take a little dig at his rival in the NFC North.

“We had no sporting clays today or no amusement parks or water parks,” Schwartz said after the Lions’ final minicamp practice, according to Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press. “Work day of minicamp.”

The Saints also took a day off this week to go golfing but Schwartz believed his team needed to get work done on the field.

“We take a lot of pride in the fact that we play for a blue-collar town and we try to reflect that kind of work ethic, and we have very few opportunities to practice this off-season,” Schwartz said, per the report. “Ten OTAs, one minicamp and we talked in the beginning, every one was crucial and couldn’t afford to waste any of them.
 

“Today was a work day for us.”

It’s worth noting the Lions are at a different stage as a team than the Packers are. Detroit needs to remain hungry after finishing second in the division in 2011. But, boy, can you imagine the punchlines if Schwartz had taken his team shooting for the day?

 Follow me on Twitter: @BradBiggs

Brad Biggs covers the Bears for the Chicago Tribune