COLORADO SPRINGS Andy Isabella Jersey , Colo. (AP) — Forrest Gregg was remembered Wednesday as a gentle giant who was as comfortable playing Barbie dolls with his daughter as he was playing football for Vince Lombardi.Gregg died Friday at age 85 after a long fight with Parkinson’s, a disease his neurologist and family believe might have been triggered by the countless concussions he sustained while playing football in the 1950s at SMU and in the NFL from 1956-71.“Forrest Gregg is one of the giants of the game,” Hall of Fame President David Baker said, noting Gregg was one of a handful of players to win six NFL titles in a league that’s celebrating its 100th season. The others are his Packers teammates Herb Adderley and Fuzzy Thurston and Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.Gregg’s booming baritone that was reduced to a whisper in his later years reverberated through the First United Methodist Church in Colorado Springs as his Hall of Fame acceptance speech in 1977 was played on two screens above the altar.After playing 14 seasons in Green Bay, Gregg won one more Super Bowl in 1971 in Dallas. He went on to win 75 games in 11 seasons as a head coach in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Green Bay and he took the Bengals to their first Super Bowl during the 1981 season when they lost 26-21 to Joe Montana and the 49ers.Bengals owner Mike Brown was among those who attended the funeral for the man Lombardi once called “the finest football player I ever coached.”In an interview with The Associated Press in 2013, Gregg said “the finest bunch of players I was ever around,” weren’t Lombardi’s Packers or Tom Landry’s Cowboys but “the courageous kids at SMU.” They went just 3-19 from 1989-90 after Gregg was hired at his alma mater to restore integrity to a program that was handed the “death penalty” in the mid-1980s for paying players.Baker spoke at the funeral, as did Hall of Fame receiver James Lofton, who played for Gregg in Green Bay, and Greg Gardner, who was among two dozen ex-SMU players who stood at one point to sing “Varsity” in a moving moment at the public church service that preceded a private burial.Lofton said he saw another side of Gregg upon his retirement when Gregg, who was then the athletic director at SMU, invited him to bring his three young children to a basketball game. Afterward, they went up to Gregg’s office, “and he bounced my kids on his knee and I’m thinking, where’d this guy come from?”“The image that a lot of Packers fans, a lot of people, might have of Forrest Gregg is that iconic picture of Forrest covered in mud ,” Lofton said. “What I saw that day I think is what people in this room saw. We saw a loving father Zach Allen Jersey , a loving husband, a loving grandfather. I saw a loving man, someone that I respected, someone that I loved.”Gregg’s daughter, Karen Gregg Spehar, said her father was every bit the family man that he was the football man.“At his core, his life was about love,” she said.She shared some of her most poignant memories of her childhood when her father gladly attended her tea parties.She recalled “a giant smiling man sitting across from me, our pinkie fingers raised just so.”In addition to his daughter, Gregg, who was born Oct. 18, 1933, in Birthright, Texas, is survived by Barbara, his wife of 59 years, his son, Forrest Gregg Jr., and his son-in-law, James H. Spehar.Gregg Hakeem Butler Jersey , who earned the nickname “Iron Man” for playing in a then-record 188 consecutive games during his career, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in October 2011. He quickly embarked on a campaign to raise public awareness about the incurable disease, teaming with the AP to reveal his diagnosis so he could urge others to seek treatment early enough to delay the degenerative effects.His daughter said after the funeral that the family donated his brain to Boston University’s CTE Center, which conducts research on chronic traumatic encephalopathy and other long-term consequences of repetitive brain trauma in athletes and military personnel.“We decided as a family to donate his brain to Boston University because we are not sure what’s going on with his brain as far as either Parkinson’s or CTE because of his repetitive concussion syndrome that he experienced in football,” Gregg Spehar said. “So we are going to find in eight months to a year really what happened with his brain.“And we will share that report with anybody who wants to know so that people can learn about what happens in the world of football and also what happens with Parkinson’s in the brain,” she said. “So, we are hoping that his ultimate gift with be a gift that helps more people.” ALLEN PARK, Mich. (AP) — Matt Patricia wants the Detroit Lions to stay the course.The Lions have lost three games in a row — all by double digits — and are mired in last place. Their most recent defeat was an ugly one. Detroit fell behind 26-0 in the second quarter and eventually lost 34-22 at Chicago on Sunday.Patricia’s first season as coach has been a disappointment so far, and if he has any easy, quick fixes at his disposal, he wasn’t sharing them in his Monday news conference.“No time to feel sorry for ourselves,” Patricia said. “We have to just keep working and getting better.”Offensive lineman Taylor Decker sounded a similar refrain.“You’ve just got to play better,” Decker said. “At the end of the day, you’ve just got to perform better. I know that sounds cliche. It’s a simple answer, but it’s not easy to do.”The Lions (3-6) lost their first two games of the season, then fought back to a 3-3 mark before this current losing skid. They traded receiver Golden Tate before going on the road to face Minnesota and Chicago, and Detroit never led in either of those games.The past two games have been particularly rough from a pass protection standpoint. Detroit allowed 10 sacks against the Vikings and six against the Bears.“Whatever the situation is, whatever the score is, we have to play better as an offensive line. We have to protect the quarterback,” Decker said. “Six sacks isn’t something that’s going to be acceptable Chris Lindstrom Jersey , and we know that.”So now the Lions are back where they were after those first two losses — playing catch-up. Only now, they don’t have a long season still in front of them. Detroit’s next three games are at home, but all are against teams with winning records in Carolina, Chicago and the Los Angeles Rams.The Lions fired special teams coordinator Joe Marciano last week, but Patricia indicated no more staff changes are imminent. He said communication between him and the players is good.“I think we understand (that) we’re working hard to try to get everything the right way. There’s not a big discussion about it, there’s not a big confrontation or anything like that. I don’t know where any of that really comes from outside the building,” Patricia said.“Inside the building, we’re just trying to get better. We really are just working really hard to make sure we’re doing the right things and trying to find different ways, if we have to, to get those things done.”Detroit went 9-7 last season and then fired coach Jim Caldwell, so that makes the decline in 2018 even more alarming. Quarterback Matthew Stafford turned 30 earlier this year, and although the Lions traded Tate — a potential free agent at season’s end — for a draft pick, this franchise doesn’t seem as if it’s in a rebuilding mode.That means the rest of this season is significant. Whether they make the playoffs or not, the Lions need to show some progress — some reason for fans to trust that this roster and this coach are better than what the team has shown so far.“I believe in this team and we’re going to work real hard every single day,” Patricia said. “I think the guys in that room, I have a great understanding of what they are and what we’re going to do as a team. We’re not hitting the panic button or anything like that right now. We’re just trying to get better.”NOTES: P Sam Martin didn’t go into much detail about the medical issue that sent him to the hospital, other than to say he’s fine and will play this coming weekend. He said he got blocked during a return Sunday. … The Lions waived CB Lenzy Pipkins.