HEAD COACH LIAM COEN
MEDIA AVAILABILITY
MONDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2025
(On the changes he can make to increase the pass rush) “I think it’s touch and go. When
we’ve been able to send some pressure and get some blitzes and get these guys moving,
we’ve had some more opportunities. It’s interesting when you speak to a lot of the guys in
LA after the game and how much [Rams QB] Matthew Stafford, [Rams Head Coach] Sean
McVay, multiple guys, all they did was talk about our front and what it causes. I think more
in the run and some of the pressures and packages and guys that are able to do stuff. So,
it’s a fine line. It’s a balance of being able to send five, send four, send pressure whether it’s
zone or man behind. It also impacts sometimes the front and their ability to get home when
the ball has to get held onto it for another click. I think you look at our third downs and I
think in the last two games people are like two or three [out] of 20. It’s like one of the most
insane third downs going, that you can see out there. If we’re able to do it on third downs
and get after the quarterback and impact the receivers and the coverage, we’ve got to find
ways to do it as well a little bit better on first and second down. And some of our early down
fronts, looking at what fronts we’re playing. Are we getting more four down, five down,
whatever it is, to be able to create an advantage for our guys to be able to go? And I think
having Travon [DE Travon Walker] back a little bit more this week and get him going a little
bit more on early downs, we kind of saved him a little bit more for the rush downs and we’ve
got to give him some more opportunities. But yeah, it has to improve just like the rest of it.”
(On if he is getting enough out of the other players on the defensive line) “I think that you
always want more every week from everybody when you don’t win and so, I think it’s not
just that group. Those guys know they can play better. We can put them in better positions
to be successful. We hadn’t played great. The last two weeks, these two teams have been
able to stay on course a lot. You gave up 80 something yards rushing and it felt like 150
because they were able to just kind of stay on schedule and then when we did stop on third
down, we have a penalty. So, it compounds when the team is able to stay on schedule,
you’re maybe not going to feel as much of a rush and I think that those guys know they can
play better and we can help them a little bit more as well.”
(On still being 4-3 heading into the bye week despite the two consecutive losses) “That’s
what we just talked about as a staff was, we cannot, absolutely not, go back and try to
reinvent the wheel here. We’re sitting at four and three, everything’s ahead of us. We’ve got
to play cleaner football. That’s the reality and until you play cleaner in between the
whistles, in between the white lines of playing more fundamentally sound, having better
situational awareness, executing and handling the controllables, that’s where we’re at. We
have to pour into that and find out, okay, these two days that we have as a staff, what do we
do best? What are the things that we do best in all three phases, go and dive into and pour
into those things? How do we continue to trim it? Trim the inventory as a group so that we’re
not watering down the fundamentals and techniques of our core principles of the things
that’s going to make up 80 percent, 85 percent of your calls, your call sheet. That’s just how
I’ve been taught to get back on track personally. There’s times where you’ve got to go and
dig deep and go reinvent the wheel because you’ve got a bunch of holes. Well, I don’t think
that’s the case. We have not played our best the last two weeks going into the bye, which
does kind of suck. It does. It’s not a great feeling, but everything’s ahead of us and my thing
to this team is going to be, ‘Man guys, we have done so many good things. We are a really
good football team, but not when we hurt ourselves.’”
(On QB Trevor Lawrence’s performance and room for improvement) “Yeah, I think you
looked at the last—really even going back to Kansas City, the one interception was as we
know, a tough call there, but he’s taking care of the football. We have thrown for—now I
don’t want to throw the ball as many times as we’ve thrown it. Not because of him, just
because of staying balanced, but we were able to create some explosives in the pass this
past week, obviously it became one of those kind of games. We’ve got to start faster. We
have got to start faster as an offense, at the quarterback position, not take a little bit of time
to get into the flow. That’s on us to also help. Alright, ‘Hey, these are exactly what we’re
thinking early on. Hey, these are the calls, these are the thoughts. This is the exact looks
we’re thinking about getting’, how do we prepare better and continue to take advantage of
our operation, trying to be an edge. I mean, we were better in and out of the huddle last
week. We’re better from that standpoint, but we’ve got to make the easy ones easy. And
we’ve also—I mean, I thought he stood in there, took some shots too. We’ve also got to—
we can’t take so many sacks either, from all 11 though. Sacks are all 11. It’s the route, it’s
the quarterback, it’s the running back, it’s the OL. Those are things that we can control.”
(On if he is considering bringing in a kicker) “No. I’ve got a lot of confidence in Cam [K Cam
Little] still. I do. I just talked to Cam [K Cam Little], he was in here today. He’s not going
anywhere and we’re not going to do anything with it. He’s going to get away from this thing
for a few days and go reset. The good, the bad, the ugly, whatever it is, we’re starting fresh
when we get back in here. We have to. Got a lot of confidence in the guy, I do. He’s very
talented. And look, when you walk him out there, obviously a guy that was struggling a little,
and you’d love for the first attempt in the game to maybe be like a 30-yarder or something.
Just, alright, whew, here we go, I’m good. Well, he strolls out there in a 21-0 game where
you’re struggling to find points. You want to just see points on the board for morale, and you
walk him out there for a 50-yarder in Wembley [Stadium] in a game that not much is going
right. So, it’s hard to sit there and say, man we’ve lost—he knows he’s got to make these
kicks. It’s not excuses, he takes so much accountability and so he’s going to kick his way
out of this thing, and he is going to make some big kicks for us this year.”
(On if he expects LB Devin Lloyd to return after the bye) “It’s still TBD on this week. Hopeful,
but we’re trying to be also smart with it. With figuring out, okay, what’s the best to get him
feeling as good as he can to go play at the highest level.”
(On the team’s struggles with penalties) “Not easy. Yeah, if you look at them, and I was
talking to our game management coordinator this morning, [Senior Director of Football
Strategy and Game Management] Jon Dykema, just talking through when he was at Detroit
and they had a new staff. You look at the top five teams in penalties in the NFL right now,
four of them are first-time head coaches. Four out of the top five right now in the NFL are
first-year teams. So, you’ve got controllable penalties, you’ve got some uncontrollable,
you’ve got some calls that may or may not have been, and you’ve got some really bad luck
when it comes to penalties. I’m just talking about in general, right?
Those happen and we are let’s just say putting it in their hands too often. And that’s with,
like, moving our feet in coverage and there’s a difference between your hands being inside
and there’s your hands being outside. There’s a difference there. That’s technique, that’s
fundamental, that’s not panicking at the moment of a truth. We’ve got obviously the
unnecessary roughness on Dewey [S Andrew Wingard] in the end zone; I don’t know how to
coach that one any different. But you’ve got the roughing the passer then we had two illegal
ineligible men downfield on screens. Those are controllable, we can detail those better in
practice. The timing of it. Who’s getting out when they blitz? That’s on us as coaches as
well.
So, there’s a bunch on it. There’s some controllables, some non-controllable, there’s some
bad luck. Look, until we clean up our football, guys, it’s going to be hard. And so that’s the
message and the amount of detail that all I know of how to fix this is to pour into the
fundamentals and the details and the basics because it’s not like, oh, we’ve made up some
new annexation of Puerto Rico play and we got a penalty on it. It’s like we’re playing half
field and there’s a seven-cut and we hit them before the ball gets there. We can control
that, so the ones we can control by coaching and practicing and playing, that’s on us and
we have to control those.”
(On what he attributes penalty issues with new head coaches to) “New. New. New
fundamentals, new techniques, new what you’re asking them to do, new style of play. I
don’t know. That’s what I’m kind of going off of is you’re ultimately all new together and so
maybe some of the fundamentals get blurred or that’s why I’m saying guys, we have to
simplify. The answer for me to fix penalties is to simplify what we’re asking them to do so
that when you’re in a moment of crisis or time of a big play or something, well, you’ve
played this technique this many times, you know exactly what the call is. You are
anticipating what your opponent is doing, and now you’re playing cleaner. You’re playing
cleaner on blocking mid zone, and my hand is not out here. My hand is inside the way that
we practice it to be every week. I mean guys, there’s a lot of teams in this league that don’t
have officials at practice every day and don’t put up the penalties and stuff of the week.
And I almost feel like you’ve got to emphasize it—I don’t know how to emphasize it more.
And that’s what I don’t want to have, these guys playing in the back of their minds, like if I do
this, I’m going to get a penalty. It’s not about that. It’s about guys, we’ve got to play cleaner.
We’ve got to play cleaner with our hands, with our feet, with our mind. Are we getting
fatigued, physically fatigued, which is now slowing down the brain and the legs and now
we’re reaching and grabbing for straws. We’re trying to make a play when you’re down 21 or
14 to nothing playing against a good team. A lot of that goes into it, guys. And so, I don’t
know what that is, but that’s my kind of long-winded answer.”
(On if he feels like he knows the team’s identity at this point) “I think there’s definitely
glimpses of who we want to be in a lot of ways I think. You’ve won four games, and
everything is right in front of you. I think this is an actual test of adversity. When we lost to
Cincinnati, I didn’t think that — there was no question that we should have won the game,
right? You’re leading the game for 89 minutes and you lose. You didn’t feel like the ship was
moving. It was still very steady. You’ve lost two games in two weeks, not playing very well
and against some darn good opponents. And when you don’t play very well and you’re not
clean and we’re not fundamentally sound, you’re not doing those things, you’re not going to
beat playoff-caliber teams like that. I think I do know this team in terms of I believe that we
compete, that we’re tough, that we care a lot, that we don’t quit. The reality is what we need
to do better is we need to coach the details, and we need to rep the details and put them
into action on a more consistent basis or else this is not a fun result that we’re living in right
now.”
(On how he assesses WR/DB Travis Hunter’s play thus far and updating the plan for him)
“Yeah, I think that is absolutely going to be a part of the conversation this evening with both
sides of the football. I thought that there were some definite flashes yesterday in terms of
on offense specifically, had a great pass breakup as well on defense. And we are going to
play the best 11 as much as humanly possible after this bye. We’ve kind of gotten a sample
size, as you mentioned, a sample size of everything, the totality of the first seven weeks of
every position, but specifically with him. There was definitely some really good things the
other night, specifically on the offensive side of the ball. There’s still a lot of things that
need to be cleaned up and corrected. And then we’ve got to just make sure we’re playing
the best guys at all times and see what that looks like. So that will a hundred percent be a
part of this evaluation and conversation over the next few days here.”
(On how the team self-scouts when they see other teams picking up on tendencies) “Yeah,
that was the same exact play [Rams TE Terrance Ferguson’s touchdown] versus a very
similar defensive structure. It was fourth-and-one. We’re in our essentially 6-1 front, a front
that we use a decent amount in goal line, short yardage, low red zone situations that a lot of
people are using. Maybe we need to play a little bit more post-safety or something like that
in some of those situations to not give up the middle of the field. We sold out a little bit up
front, and they hit us on the same play. So, kudos to Sean [Rams Head Coach Sean McVay]
and them, they did a great job of scheming us up, but if we don’t jump offsides on the
previous play, then we’re not in that situation. So, I definitely think that we’ve got to look
at—that’s exactly to your point is the things that we’re looking at. Okay, we’ve gotten hit on a
similar type play. I don’t remember exactly what the D-and-D [down and distance] at
Seattle was. I don’t recall the exact D-and-D. Yeah, I don’t think it was short yardage, but
similar play. And so, okay, you’re clearly showing something that’s there for them to take
and when you get into heavier sets, what are we playing? They played a lot more 13
personnel the other day than we expected and anticipated. We expected some more 12
with Puka [Rams WR Puka Nacua] being out, didn’t necessarily envision or see a ton of 13
show up and that was what they hit that play out of as well, so they were able to max-pro it
and get Ferguson on the lean post and runaway. So yeah, that was definitely a brutal one.
And then that’s exactly what we’re looking at. In these situations, in these personnel
groupings, exactly what are our best calls and priority calls that we can put these guys in?”
