(This is the closest you’ve come in the fourth game. Is that good news?) – “No. I thought we could have played a lot better in that game. I think I come up here and really say a lot of the same things. I think we’re a missed block, a missed tackle, a drop, a missed kick – every week it’s a handful of plays, it’s eight to 10 plays, that if you make them, the game is different. If you don’t make them, the outcome is what it was. And that’s my message to the team. We need to start making those plays. We’ve got to coach it better, we’ve got to play better, and that’s kind of where we’re at.”
(So in your mind you don’t even measure progress?) – “I mean there’s progress, but at the end of the day this is about wins and losses. We’re 0-4. Do I see progress? Yeah, I do. These guys, they work hard, they fight hard. The effort is there. The communication is there. They practice hard. They’re doing everything. But there are some opportunities there and plays that we should make, kicks that we should make, blocks that we should make, penalties that we can’t have. There’s a lot of things that we’re hurting ourselves in a lot of ways.”
(The last three games, you keep it tight in that first half. In the second half you’re outscored 81-0 in the second half. What’s happening between the first half and second half?) – “We’ve got to make better second-half adjustments. We’ve got to play better. We’ve got to coach it better. And that’s really what it boils down to. I think we go in, we talk as a staff and we make the adjustments. We started out okay offensively, and then we got stuffed on the minus play on a run, and we couldn’t move the chains on third down, punted it, and then they went down the field offensively. We’ve got to do a better job. That’s really what it boils down to.”
(Pressure, especially with QB Philip Rivers having the opportunity to pitch and catch out there. How do you develop and get some pressure? It’s been an issue over the last couple of weeks.) – “We can blitz more. We can – Look, we had what we felt like was a good plan going in and we didn’t execute it. We didn’t execute it at all. We really only executed it the one time when we actually got some pressure on the quarterback. There’s a few different things we could do. We could pressure more, but there’s issues with pressuring more. But we had a plan going in and they did a good job, Rivers does a good job getting the ball out. But we’ve got to do a better job.”
(On the positive side, T Isaiah Prince gets a start. You move T J’Marcus Webb over to the left side. It seemed like they held their own throughout most of the game.) – “I thought from that standpoint, the offensive line played well, especially in the first half. We had some runs. We had the quarterback protected, put some drives together and we just couldn’t sustain it. At the end of the day, that’s – One half isn’t – You’ve got to play two halves in this league.”
(You had three missed field goals by K Jason Sanders. Is that becoming an issue for you?) – “I have a lot of confidence in Jason. He’s a good kicker. He makes them all in practice. I have a lot of confidence in him. So, we’ll keep kicking them. He’ll make them.”
(They came out in the second half with 16 plays and ate up 10 minutes, 33 seconds on the clock. What were seeing on that drive and how important was that for what followed given you’re your defense had to be out there for so long?) – “We could have played that better defensively. They had a couple second-and-20 situations where they picked up chunk yards and got themselves into manageable third downs and then picked those up as well. (Philip) Rivers made some really good throws. We’ve just got to make a few more plays and we’re just not making them right now. I would say in the first half we had opportunities to just tackle. If we just tackled better, some of those drives wouldn’t have been extended. We’ve got a lot of work to do. We’ll come in tomorrow, make the corrections, like we do every week and get better.”
(QB Josh Rosen had the one bad pick today. How would you assess your quarterback today?) – “I thought he played well early. I thought he got the ball out quickly, got the ball in space, let the guys – our backs, our receivers – catch and run early. We had the one long play early. We had a couple of drops that didn’t help his cause. I think that would have sustained a couple drives. We had one that I think we may have scored. A couple of them may have extended some drives, and that’s something that we talked about week after week after week. Again, those eight to 10 plays could be the difference between winning and losing or a much tighter game.”
(You’re having trouble scoring in the second half, are you concerned maybe that’s becoming a trend?) – “We’re having a lot of trouble in a lot of areas in the second half. I don’t think it’s a conditioning issue. I think it’s an execution issue, a coaching issue. We’ve got to coach it better, put these guys in better positions, and we’ll do that.”
(What’s going to be your main focus during this bye week?) – “We’ll self-scout everything. We do that every week anyway; but we’ll look at player combinations. We’ll look at different groupings, any tendencies that we have – run pass, first half, second half. We’ll take a long look at the second half, obviously. That’ll be something we’ll spend a lot of time on and try to find a way to create some momentum in the second halves of games. There has been some progress over the first four games. The first quarter of the season is over, and we’ll move on to the second quarter of the season.”
