Sunday, December 25, 2022
Postgame – Green Bay
LB Jerome Baker
(What changed in the second half for you guys?) – “We didn’t execute. We didn’t stop them on third downs, we didn’t get off the field. That’s the main thing. We didn’t execute as a team and that was the result.”
(The wins have come in bunches and the losses have come in bunches. It seems the team is really streaky. Can you put your finger on why it’s happening that way?) – “I can’t put my finger on it. If I did, I would have figured it out and stopped it, but that’s part of the game. We lose and we just have to get back next week and get back on track. That’s all we can do. It’s Christmas and we can’t take this home to our families. We still have to enjoy our families. Really just lock in next week and come in tomorrow and get back to work.”
(The goal is still in front of you if you win the last two so how do you keep that mindset going?) – “Don’t even think about it. We got another game next week. We’ve got to focus in on that. That’s how our approach will be. We’re going to go in tomorrow and look at the film and see how we can get better and get better and focus on next week.”
RB Raheem Mostert
(What was different in the second half?) – “I think it was more of the mental mistakes. We didn’t capitalize when we needed to and then the turnovers. That’s definitely not going to go in our favor. If you win the turnover battle, you practically have a better chance to win the game. We didn’t capitalize on that”
(On the interception, it looked like you were the intended receiver. Was there miscommunication there? Was that route supposed to be different?) – “The route was supposed to be different. That was on my part. I didn’t mentally rep that, like I said, I got to go back and figure out what needs to be done. But that was definitely my fault. That’s not Tua’s fault at all.”
(On approach going forward and how the season has gone) – “I think the biggest thing for us is we take it week by week. This season has gone just the way we planned it. We knew we were going to have some tough games and we knew we were going to lose some crazy ones, some unfortunate ones. But you have to look at it as a one week season. So that’s basically how we operate.”
T Terron Armstead
(You are one of the few players with playoff experience on this team, what is different about these late December games?) – “It seems like they are all playoff games—pre-playoffs, if that’s a phrase. They are important. They are vital. The important thing is to continue to improve; you want to get hot going into the playoffs. We’re on a bit of a skid right now, but we have a chance to get this next one and keep our playoff hopes alive.”
(You guys as a line have not been penalized a lot this year. A couple costly holdings—what did you feel like happened today?) – “Yeah. We just have to keep working on our fundamentals and technique. That is one thing we pride ourselves on, not having the negative plays, staying on schedule, not getting behind the chains. We helped ourselves especially early in the game.”
(How does the offense find the groove that it once had when you guys were on a five-win run?) – “Consistency. Being consistent. The intention is there – the will, the effort – it’s all there, but that doesn’t win you games. Continue to work; working on the details, fundamentals, penalties, things like that. Turnovers, it’s hard to win a game with turnovers. So we need to get back to business and lock in maybe even a little bit more on those small things, small intangibles.”
(What does it take to come back tomorrow not dwell on the losses and remember everything you want is still ahead of you—does it take leaders, what does it take?) – “It is a collection of leadership, especially guys with experience that have been through this. But it is really just an understanding of what does dwelling on the last four (games) do for you moving forward? Anything past doesn’t help your present or future so learn from mistakes—the reasons we have fought going through this losing streak and then we build and move forward and get the next one.”
WR Jaylen Waddle
(Is there a sense of optimism knowing you guys have everything you still want right in front of you?) – “We’re just going to take it one day at a time, one practice at a time. (We’ll) learn from our mistakes over the past few weeks and try to get better. Just go out there and compete.”
(Can you walk us through that touchdown in the first half?) – “They just called my number. Tua (Tagovailoa) gave me a ball. You have to credit ‘Reek’ (Tyreek Hill), he had some good downfield blocking to really spring me. Some of the people you won’t hear about during the play, they were the guys that really got the play to work.”
(What’s the confidence level that this team has that you can turn this thing around?) – “We’re very confident. I feel like we all know we’re a better team than what we’ve been showing. So just knowing that, that’s our confidence. Knowing how we prepare, how hard we work throughout the week. It not showing up on Sundays, obviously that’s not what we want, but we have to keep going, keep working, just keep playing.”
CB Kader Kohou
(What is it about Aaron Rodgers? Seemed like they were getting good field position all game but you guys held up pretty well.) – “He is just a hall of famer so he does a lot of good things. Can’t really say too much about it. He is just Aaron Rodgers.”
(How do you come in tomorrow and put four games behind and know that because everything is on the line, the next two weeks everything is still in front of you?) – “I mean I feel like we attack every game like that, but we definitely have to go back and see what we messed up on and fix all the little things because we do have to win out now. It’s crunch time.”
(What went through your mind when you hauled in that interception?) – “I really don’t even remember. I was so hype. I thought I had a celebration ready, but I went left and just went to the sideline.”
(What did Head Coach Mike McDaniel say to you guys afterwards?) – “He was pretty positive. I feel like it was one that we just let slip away, so we’re just going to go back and watch some film and try to get ready for the Patriots next week.”
QB Tua Tagovailoa (Transcribed by ASAP Sports)
Q: The three fourth-quarter interceptions, can you take us through what happened on each one?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: On the first one, I tried to throw it over a defender, but I ended up really throwing over the defender and Tyreek (Hill), so that one got away. The second one, I might have said the wrong play. I’m not too sure. But there was just some communication errors on that. Then the third one was just not a good ball for my receivers to have been able to make a play on that. You know, it’s tough. You get an opportunity to play on Christmas Day against a really good team, and I go out there and really — not being able to put my best foot forward for our team. In hindsight, this is something that we’ve got to be able to just move on from. Like I say with ‘Bev,’ (Darrell Bevell) he says, ‘let every play stand on its own merit.’ So for this game, we want this game to stand on its own merit, as well. Obviously we’re going to learn from these mistakes, but this isn’t something that after a loss we should be going home and taking to our families, our kids, our other halves. We leave it all here and we go enjoy Christmas, and then we come back in when time is, and we learn from it.
Q: Moving quickly to the next opponent, how long do you all try to dwell on the loss?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: Yeah, I would say it’s tough for a competitor because there’s always, ‘if I would have did this, we could have won, if I would have did that, we could have won.’ It’s always tough, but the challenge is to be able to just separate what you do here and what you do at home really and kind of just get your mind off it so that when you do come in, you have a clear mind. You’re not just focused on whatever particular play that was that you messed up on, and that everyone has the chance to learn from that mistake.
Q: On the second drive where you had the second interception, it seemed like you were getting to the line particularly late – 8, 7 seconds left on the clock. Was that intentional? If not, how may have that play into some of the miscommunications and just issues that you had?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: Yeah, it wasn’t intentional. I was just trying to get the play out to the guys and just try to make sure everyone was going in the right spots. But just the miscommunication with the entirety of the plays is sort of what went wrong with that interception.
Q: You guys finished with 270 yards of offense in the first half and you threw for 229 yards. Up until the fumble right before half, everything was going pretty well. Did they do anything differently in the second half?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: I would say no, they didn’t do anything new or different. They were playing the same defense, the same way that they played in the first half. But offensively we just didn’t capitalize on our opportunities and we were killing ourselves with a lot of the penalties that had happened off of explosive plays.
Q: When you look at those illegal formation penalties and what not, just where does that stem from?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: I think it stems from me trying to spit the formation out to the guys, the motions, and then when we do break, me realizing how much time I have and then just sending guys already, and there’s times where we’ve got to wait for guys to get set so that one takes the ball, one gets off and dead motions, and those were kind of the mishaps with that today.
Q: It’s been kind of a strange season in the sense that it’s been one streak after another streak and then after another streak. You’ve got two games left; you win and you’re in the playoffs. How do you keep the confidence up with this group?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: Yeah, well, I would say it’s easy to keep the confidence up with this group. I think we all believe in each other. I would say we all love one another. We’re all invested into each other as well. I don’t think it’s a time for us to blink. Like we just move on and we learn from it. We’ve got another tough team that we’ve got to go to and play.
Q: On your touchdown pass to Jaylen Waddle, what impressed you most about that catch and run?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: Really nothing… I was waiting for a reaction. (laughter) No, but like in all seriousness, that’s something that I’ve seen Jaylen (Waddle) do many times, and that’s a testament to how he comes out to work every day, with how he finishes plays, and him and Tyreek (Hill) being able to get the guys in that room better by just going out and doing things like that. Obviously, I’d say that’s very, very impressive; you don’t just do that coming off the bench. That’s the first play of the drive we had on the second series, I think, and that just doesn’t happen. It’s cool and it helps that he’s on our team.
Q: Can you detail what you saw on the long pass to WR Tyreek Hill?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: Yeah, sort of looked like they were playing six-strong. It was like quarters to Jaylen’s (Waddle) side, and then it was Cover 2 to Tyreek’s (Hill) side and I was just trying to pin down the backside safety and then hit Tyreek.
Q: Going out for the final possession there, even though the offense hadn’t really moved in the second half, you still had a chance obviously to win. What’s your thinking as you’re going out there on the field?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: We’ve got to go win this. That’s all there was. We’ve got to go win this. Just very unfortunate. It was just terrible how everything ended. Like I told the guys, that’s on me. I will definitely get better from that.
Head Coach Mike McDaniel (Transcribed by ASAP Sports)
Q: Going scoreless the second half, three second-half interceptions by QB Tua Tagovailoa. Just what happened to the offense especially with those turnovers?
MIKE McDANIEL: Yeah, I thought it was unexpected. Did not foresee that happening. I felt strong coming out of halftime, just where our guys were at. I didn’t foresee standing up here really in this situation. I know the team feels the same way. Apparently we needed another gut check, and we’ve got to — there were critical errors, turnovers. I mean, the percentages of winning games where you’re — what were we, minus 3? You turn the ball over four times; yeah, you’re not going to win the football game. I thought on top of all that, there was some uncharacteristic really, really controllable penalties that were absolutely devastating. It’s hard to continually move the ball, and we weren’t taking advantage of some of the situations in the first half as well because we were putting ourselves behind the 8-ball with controllable penalties. And then in the second half it was much of the same. It wasn’t for a lack of effort, but there’s just some things that, regardless of what people try to do, the mainstays of football, if you don’t do right by alignments, you don’t do right by protecting the football, these are the things that will happen. Our young team is having to learn the very, very hard way, and so nothing has really changed moving forward except for the fact that we were really expecting to cleanse ourselves of this feeling and we’re going to have to wait another week to try to get right.
Q: A quick follow-up to that specifically on QB Tua Tagovailoa’s interceptions, all three of them just seemed like kind of pitch and catch right to Green Bay. Was that communication issues or anything else that stood out on those three?
MIKE McDANIEL: We’ll try to identify exactly what was going on and how we got to that place. It’s one of those things that I want to be careful before speaking too absolute. It felt like it was situations where the ball just kind of got away from Tua, which is not characteristic for him by any means. He was executing at a pretty high level to start the game, and I don’t know where that went, but that’s something that him and I will really comb over, but it wasn’t just that. There were some pass exclusive situations we kind of put ourselves in that really took us out of some of our run plan situations. We play our best ball when we’re able to keep the defense on their toes in both phases, and when you’re having those mishaps and then the defense gets paid, too; they were kind of compressing us in the second half, and I think those compounding variables really hurt the team’s chances of winning the football game.
Q: You’ve spoken several times this season about how hard QB Tua Tagovailoa can be on himself, his own worst critic kind of thing. Given the three interceptions tonight, how much of a challenge do you have to make sure Tua’s head is in the right place for the last two games?
MIKE McDANIEL: It’s a challenge, but it’s also something that every quarterback really goes through. It’s kind of one of those necessary things that you have to really figure out how you don’t let mistakes snowball and that’s one of the reasons the approach and the way we’ve gone about things has been so intentional in that regard, because you can’t let past influence the present. I think that there could be some portions of that that have to do with him kind of snowballing in his own mind, but he’s such a strong individual that the good news is that I’m very confident that he’ll be able to get through that. It’s just that this team needs him. This team needs myself to make sure that all those situations are not putting him behind the 8-ball. And then the quarterback needs the rest of his team to be able to execute so that he doesn’t have to do too much on his own. There was one of the interceptions that the primary receiver kind of busted, ran the wrong route, a concept that we ran numerous times this week, and so it’s not just him. I’ll look at the tape and have probably more concrete answers for you guys tomorrow, but overall, that is a team failure, not a one-person failure.
Q: And beyond QB Tua Tagovailoa what do you tell the team as a whole? Now this is four straight losses to not allow us to snowball you do still control your own fate?
MIKE McDANIEL: No, that’s exactly what it is. Human nature is what you have to fight. It is very, very hard to put in as much as these guys put in and keep coming up short. I recognize it as kind of what you’re looking for generally in life and in competitors and people, is you want people to not blink at situations that a lot of people would, and it’s going to take a team that’s really tight and close to not allow anyone to press and really have these situations manifest anything but improvement. We’ve been learning hard lessons for the last month of games, and at some point if we want to make the next step, we’re going to have to put up or shut up. It is tough, but also nothing comes easy in this game, and the one thing I do know is if you’re able to dig yourself out of it, it does benefit you in the next phase of the season because that’s where you don’t want to have wilting or snowballing of play or really not-clean football. Bottom line is it is what it is. What type of people are we and are we able to really get through this together, because there’s no one else outside of that team meeting room that’s going to come save us. We have to figure it out ourselves.
Q: Why has the team struggled over the past month to sustain drives from your perspective and make that in a way you getting too reliant on the big explosive play to score?
MIKE McDANIEL: It is tough to execute. I think in this particular game, I felt like it was sustaining really clean football because I felt like we did score on some big plays and we were moving the ball in other situations and we would convert 3rd downs, but it was really the self-inflicted wounds for this game that really cost us. I’m not sure if that was necessarily the case in the previous weeks. Definitely not to this magnitude. We just last week didn’t have any turnovers. So to go from zero turnovers to four is going to impact the game in a grave way. I think those are two independent situations. Each game stands on its own merit really. I think this one in particular we learned again the value of possessing the ball, not giving it back. At this point in the year, if you don’t play clean football and you have a team that’s — to the credit of the Green Bay Packers, they had their moment during the season pretty similar to this, as well, and they found a way to clean that up and played a very good football game and didn’t blink themselves. That’s a lesson that we can take from them as we move forward.
Q: On the defense’s final drive I think it was second-and-2 within the 10-yard line and DT John Jenkins jumped offsides. Was that on purpose and if so can you kind of explain the rationale and the thinking behind that?
MIKE McDANIEL: I think that situational football comes down to time, and second-and-2 and you’re kind of assessing really how much time they have, how much time you have, and wanting to really make sure that you are clean with all the time. It was I think we were coming out of a timeout, it was second-and-2, so in those situations if you feel confident about being able to stop a team, I think we could get it before the two-minute warning if our math was correct. So in that situation we enable our players to really be aggressive and guess the snap count. So if it is anything but a quick snap, you probably will jump offsides, which gives you a first-and-10 on the stopped clock. If you do guess the snap count right, then hopefully you have penetration and you can move the ball back. That was one of those situations that we kind of enacted, which is why we — something that you probably wouldn’t do if the clock wasn’t already stopped and it wasn’t in that four-to three-and-a-half-minute range.
Q: There was a situation early in the third quarter where Packers TE Marcedes Lewis caught a pass for 31 yards and it helped set up a touchdown. On the replays Mike Pereira on the telecast said that a challenge would have overturned that catch. What was the thinking there? Did you consider a challenge?
MIKE McDANIEL: Well, obviously I didn’t get access, nor did the people upstairs really get access to the review in time. That’s something that’s standard operating procedure where especially in a game like that, you have to be right with your challenges because those timeouts are costly. If I would have received any sort of concrete information, I definitely would have thrown it, but from the coaches upstairs, they didn’t receive clean information fast enough, nor did I. Unfortunately, hindsight is 20/20 on that one. Obviously I would have loved to challenge that had I gotten the information quick enough.
