Thursday, September 19, 2019
(Opening statement) “Good evening. Obviously it was a good win. I told the players in the locker room it was the longest short week that we’ve had in the NFL. I give a lot of credit to the coaches. I give a lot of credit to the players. It’s tough to play on a short week. It was great to be at home. It was great to be in front of our fans. They really helped us tonight. I thought that obviously in the beginning, coming off a tough loss on the road last week, you’re looking for something to happen early. You’re looking for something good to happen. Obviously we were able to get that muffed punt and able to recover it and turn it into a score. We were able to build on that and go up 14-nothing. I thought we had a couple of opportunities to go up 21-nothing and we just missed it. I think on offense we can build on our third downs. We haven’t done a good job with that so we need to improve, and then obviously up front it was good to get Cam [Robinson] despite the holding penalty right off the bat. I thought he did a nice job and played well. Some communication stuff inside. The Titans have done a great job if you look at their past games really scheming up third down and really every game had a bunch of free hitters. I thought we did a heck of a job in our protection game. Obviously, I think we all know and the players included that we have to improve in our run game, and that’s something that we’re going to need down the road. Obviously D.J. Chark [Jr.] is playing at a high level. Obviously we’re pleased with the quarterback. Defensively when you look at two weeks ago, the way we opened up, that’s not who they are. They feel that way, but you are what you are when you play. I think they had a little chip on their shoulder. I thought they did a nice job last week. I think they followed it up really well in this game. I thought our defensive line played extremely well. I thought our back-end was covering well, because I think when you get sacks like that it’s a combination – the guys up front and the guys in the back end. [Derrick] Henry is a great running back, very difficult to tackle. I thought we had a good plan, good tackling plan. I thought we had them sometimes in the backfield, but we still weren’t able to get him down. I thought we did a good job on their screen game. It’s a good football team we played tonight. I was happy to come out there with a win. I’m going to take a couple of days, get ourselves rested up, get our minds right, come back, we go on the road, and we got to be ready to play a game again. We got guys coming back, which is a great sign, healthy, doesn’t look like we went and had anything major happen tonight injury-wise to my knowledge right now, so I’m just happy to get this win.”
(On Gardner Minshew II’s performance, both good and bad) “It’s all good. I really think it’s good. Actually, it’s remarkable, to be honest with you.”
(On the offensive line their performance tonight) “I think in my opening statement I covered it when I said you know obviously we’re disappointed and we understand that we need to run the ball better. That’s everybody: tight ends, receivers, running backs, everyone is included in that. I do think we’re doing a very good job protecting the quarterback against a team that has shown they can rush and pressure and there’s a lot of different looks. They threw a ton of different looks at us and like I said before, you watch the tape of them and they’ve got guys running free in almost every game. I give a lot of credit to Brandon Linder and Gardner [Minshew II] because they’re the ones who are really dictating the direction the protection is going. He knows where to go with the football. There’s things that you miss out there and there’s things we can do a better job. I think the line will continue to get better. We had some guys out there playing. Communication is tough. You guys talk about continuity all the time. I get that question. You work together in individual, but it’s a whole different ball game when you go out on the field and you’re under the lights, especially in a night game and guys are coming back and things are happening in split seconds. You got to communicate. A lot of times when you play next to someone for a long period of time, you’ve got a feel. Those guys have a feel. They’ve seen a lot of things. I think tonight we got some cover zero, guys came free, there’s some things that went on that I think we’ll learn from them and guys will get better.”
(On if those communications issues within the offensive line would have been alleviated if they’d played more together in the preseason) “Oh, absolutely, if they’d just played more together. So I just want to make sure I’m right on this. The communication is because the players have been injured, not because they haven’t played together.”
(On the thought process going for it on fourth down instead of kicking a field goal late in the game) “I wanted to be aggressive. I knew they didn’t have any timeouts, so I wanted to go ahead and score and just end it right there. I knew that if we didn’t score that it would still be very difficult, possible, but obviously extremely difficult.”
(On if he’d like to play seven offensive linemen like tonight, or five) “That’s a great question. You know, I like playing guys if I’m going to be able to play a combination of two players at one position and at the end of the day I can stand up here and say that they’ve been productive. That’s a little tough. As a player, I understood when they switch guys in and out it kind of changes the way you play a little bit because guys are different and you have to play in unison. To answer your question, if I knew I would have two guys who were equal and at the end of the day I was going to get better production, yes. Would I like to do that? No, because I think as the game goes on and you’re starting to see things and you’re playing with each other, there’s a lot of times anyone who has played this game, especially up front, you see something going, your guys are on the same page. You don’t even have to talk. You don’t have to say anything. I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, obviously, but that’s the case. To answer your question, yes, I’d like to have five playing together all the time. I think when you look at the NFL, and you look at the teams at the end of the year that are playing well and doing well, one of the things we look at is the offensive line and when you see they haven’t played a lot of different players, they have a pretty good chance of being good.”
(On Calais Campbell’s performance) “I thought he had a real strong game the first game. Then against the Texans it was tough. You really can’t say enough about the consistency of what type of player he is, the tenacity he has, the way he goes about the game. He’s long. He’s relentless. He’s just a great pro. It’s very difficult to stand up here and say anything. He had a hell of move tonight. I was like, ‘Where did that come from.’ I don’t think I’ve ever seen that, honestly. I’m like, ‘Where did that come from.’ He’s a guy that studies and works. You talk about Calais, but it opened up…guys like Yannick [Ngakoue] where they constantly have two guys and they’re chipping and doing things to him, can free guys up on the inside and you saw our inside guys get some good pressure. Taven Bryan had some nice pressure. Obviously, [Dawaune] Smoot has been really playing well for us. He hasn’t gotten a lot of time or people haven’t asked me a lot of questions about him. He’s a guy that’s been with us obviously, but the way he’s worked, how hard he’s worked, I think it’s really starting to show. Marcell [Dareus], he’s been injured, not practicing a lot, but he came back, had a play. Abe [Abry Jones] fighting in there with the run game. Defensive line-wise, we have a pretty good wave of guys that are going in there. They are pretty different, which is also another…being an ex-offensive lineman you have all these different types of guys you are going against. You’re constantly going through in your mind, ‘What’s his best move? What’s his countermove?’ It’s Calais. It’s this guy, this guy.”
(On if he’s surprised that DJ Chark Jr. is playing at this high a level) “I said what I said before about how hard he works, but what’s interesting, probably in the production meetings that we have, the coaches are like hey listen, we come out and ESPN ranks us 32nd, last, with our position group. We come out and we like our players, you know? We didn’t play it up to them or throw it in their face or do anything of that nature to try to motivate them. We don’t have to do that with our guys, but one of the things that we talked about, at least from me, I said, ‘If DJ Chark could come out and really have a strong showing early where they can take the top off the defense, that’s really going to open up a lot of things for us.’ [Director of Public Relations] Tad [Dickman] has been in those meetings and I’ve said that and he’s done that and played to that level. Like I said before, he’s playing at a high level and it’s going to open up a lot of things for us.”
