LIONS HEAD COACH MATT PATRICIA QUOTE SHEET
Opening Statement:
“Obviously, tough game for us today. Didn’t make enough plays to win and give Washington credit. They finished the game off and won. For us, obviously a short week. We’ve got to get back to work here on a Wednesday in other words, so we’re already behind trying to get ready for Thursday. Certainly, there are some things in here we’ve got to take a look at and we’ve got to clean up that cost us the game, and we were in a situation where they were able to make plays and we were not. Really not a lot to say other than that. I mean, we know what the mistakes are, we all saw them out there and we’ve got to do a better job coaching it and we’ve got to do a better job of executing it on the field. For us, that’s kind of where we’re at.”
On CB Darius Slay’s struggles this season:
“I think it’s a team game. I think everybody’s out there trying to do everything they can. [CB Darius] Slay certainly works really hard. He’s given us everything he can do and we’ve got to have better complimentary play. It’s got to be everybody working together. He makes a lot of plays for us. He does a lot of great things for us and certainly from that aspect of it, he takes a lot of tough duty on and goes every single week and tries to do the best he can with that aspect of it. We’ve just all go to do better.”
On whether he had taken over defensive play-calling responsibilities:
“Like I’ve said before, I have a lot of different roles on gameday. Certainly from that standpoint, I’m very active in the communication from all phases of the game – all three phases – and so there’s going to be plays out there that I can call. There’s going to be plays [Defensive Coordinator Paul Pasqualoni]’s calling. There’s going to be plays out there that certainly are just automatic for us.”
On whether holding the play sheet indicates that he’s calling more plays than Pasqualoni:
“I try to remember to cover my mouth as much as possible when I talk to those cameras from that standpoint. I actually have four different lines that I’m clicked into. From that aspect of it, there’s a lot of different people I’m talking to from that standpoint.”
On the percentage of defensive plays that he called:
“I don’t know. I’m not going to get into that stuff. Again, I’m not really going to get into details. It changes week by week.”
On QB Jeff Driskel’s turnovers:
“I think turnovers, in general, no one’s excited about those, no one is happy about that stuff. We’ve got to do a good job with the ball from that standpoint, but even if we’re running the ball, we can’t have it stripped out either. And look, when those plays happen we’ve got to go out on the other side of the ball and we’ve got to try and get it back, too. We just can’t give opponents extra possessions from that standpoint. It just makes the game really hard.”
On allowing the Redskins to return a kick for a touchdown:
“I mean, looking at the pictures for us, we didn’t execute our lanes well enough on that. It looks like when [Steven Sims Jr.] kind of bobbled the catch, we maybe got out a little bit, distorted a little bit with our coverage. He’s a dynamic returner. He sets some guys up and was kind of able to dip in and dip back out, but I think the initial juggling of the catch there to start kind of threw our guys off there a little bit.”
On whether there’s a lack of cohesion from the kick coverage unit:
“From a kick standpoint, the kicks are the kicks I think, but there are some coverage change-ups in there – some guys that rotate in and out, or have rotated in and out, or did this week, too. So, that’s something you’re always concerned about. It’s a defensive play. With defense, the more consistent you can be with those guys out there, the better.”
On being unable to make defensive adjustments:
“Again, give them credit for making some plays in those situations where they made plays today. Obviously, we will go back and take a look and see if there are different things we could have done – certainly the execution and obviously there are going to be other things out there. I wish we had put them in different situations to try to help them out from that standpoint, too. But right now, just give Washington credit for being able to make plays.”
On what went wrong this season:
“I mean, I really don’t think we can get into all that summary stuff right now. We are 30 seconds off from coming off the field from this game and we will go back, take a look at that and see what this game is. We definitely know that there are
some things that we talked about earlier in the week, as we mentioned, that are just giving us issues within each game. We’ve got to eliminate those because they are just causing us a lot of issues and really putting us off track and really making it difficult from that standpoint. We have just really got to eliminate those.”
On his job security and how the team is fighting for him:
“I definitely think the team is fighting, I think we are working really hard, I think everyone is out there playing very hard. I think you see that even with all the lineup changes we have had and the different guys we had out on the field, whether it’s injuries or whatever it may be. I think everyone that goes out there goes out and tries to compete at a really high level and steps up and tries to do their job. Certainly, we have to do it better from that standpoint to try to turn the tables here on the win-loss. We know we’re in a lot of close games and we’re real close on all of these things. I think everyone is going to have the same frustration of not being able to close them out or finish it or whatever it is, but the good thing for the group is they really do work hard and go back at it. We have a short week, we don’t have a lot of time to worry about a lot of things rather than getting mistakes fixed and then going and trying to get ready for the Bears, so it’s a little bit unique in that situation for us.”
On allowing CB Rashaan Melvin to start:
“I think we were close with him before he kind of got off track with a little bit of an injury and we didn’t have him for a while. Just slowing him down, building him back into the package we had before. We had confidence in him this week and he felt good with his assignment in those situations. A lot of those guys – [CB] Mike Ford and [CB] Amani [Oruwariye] – those guys are ready based on what happens in the game. It wound up being a situation real late in the week where we had to make a switch because of [CB] Rashaan [Melvin] and we just felt prepared.”
On fixing issues that have persisted this season:
“I think some of it too is even with spending a lot of time here with the penalty stuff. Really understanding in certain situations. We’ve got to know when the particular play is over and we can’t get that extra pull or that push or that extra grab or whatever it might be. Just understand there are going to be times where we can’t do those things and cost us bigger plays from that situation. Just trying to keep emphasizing those points and coaching the techniques, so we don’t get in the situation where we’re called for penalties. Certainly, the ones that happen before the snap, those are the ones that hurt you the most. Those are the ones that have got to be better.”
On whether the team is getting used to losing:
“I think for me, I absolutely hate losing. I am a super competitive person and I can’t stand it. It gets me and then everybody – for all of us, you have to turn it around and just get ready for the next one. You can’t really stay in that mode too long, you’ve just got to keep working harder, try to get better and try to fix it. I think for us – especially for this week – there is not a lot of time to stay in this mode. We are going to have to flip the page real quick and try to get ready for the Bears.”
On [RB] Bo Scarbrough’s fumble:
“I didn’t hear any whistle on the play. I mean, obviously I saw the ball come out. At that point it was a pile-up, that’s all I saw.”
On what Scarbrough means to the team:
“I think he has done a great job with his opportunity. He is learning the offense, he is running hard, he gives an element of toughness downhill from that standpoint. It means a lot to him, he cares and it is important. From that aspect, he’s trying to do everything he can to try to help us and he is trying to get better, so I appreciate that as a coach – someone that goes out and he works really hard. So, from that aspect of it, really good. Got to try to eliminate some of the mistakes and go forward from there, but he is definitely, from that aspect, trying to do everything we are asking.”
LIONS QB JEFF DRISKEL
On his frustration with interceptions:
“You have to put your team in a position to win. I thought all day the defense did a great job of giving us the ball back, holding them to field goals and we had a chance to go down there and win the game. You just have to take care of the ball. That’s what it comes down to, going through your reads [and] throwing it to the open guy. Taking care of the football, that’s first and foremost, which is the quarterback’s job and I didn’t do that today.”
On what has gone wrong this season:
“We’ve had a bunch of penalties. We had some penalties again today. We talked about cleaning those up and we didn’t get that done. We turned the ball over four times. It’s hard to win in this league doing that. It just comes down to not making plays at the end of the game and that has been a common theme over these last few weeks. You just have to find a way to make them. At the end of the day, we have the confidence that we are going to go make them and we just didn’t do it. It’s frustrating when you’re in a position to go win football games and you come up short.”
On whether the team might lose confidence after this loss:
“No, I think we have the guys in our locker room that go to work every week. I think we take accountability for our mistakes. We’ll move forward. Like I said, we just didn’t make enough plays – I’m sure everybody out there can say that. For myself, I didn’t make enough plays and I turned the ball over. It really is frustrating. You know, you’ve got to go into that locker room and take accountability and that’s what I’ll do. Those are on me.”
On his interception late in the fourth quarter:
“We had a good play on for the look. [Cornerback Quinton] Dunbar did a great job of anticipating the route a little bit. We knew going into the week that he had a good feel for route running and concepts. I just have to get my eyes out in front, I can’t just assume it’s going to be there because of a certain look. He made a good play, but it comes down to taking care of the football and I just threw it right to him.”
LIONS TE LOGAN THOMAS
On failing to capitalize when in opponents’ territory:
“You can’t let one drop lead to the next drop. We did some really good things, we ran the ball well at times and sometimes we didn’t – we were going backwards, we had the early fumble. Other than that, we could have done better in a lot of areas.”
On what the offense’s success in the third quarter:
“We came out with a great tempo. A downhill run got us a good again and got us into the redzone pretty quickly. Guys were making plays and we were able to get six on the board, so we started doing things well and just couldn’t sustain.”
LIONS G GRAHAM GLASGOW
On the locker room’s confidence in Head Coach Matt Patricia:
“I mean, he’s our head coach and he’s the guy we rally behind. I think that he’s trying his hardest and we’re also trying our hardest. We just need to execute and I think that at the end of the day that comes down to everybody on the team, the coaches and the players. I don’t think that it gets pinned on one person.”
On how players deal with questions about Patricia’s job security:
“You guys can speculate. It is what it is. It’s the same thing you can say for everybody in the locker room and their job status.”
LIONS LB JARRAD DAVIS
On getting ready to play Chicago Thursday:
“We just have to move on to the next game right now. It is one of those things where it is hard, but it’s fair. We just can’t let this loss turn into another one. We have to go out and fight hard for a division game on Thursday night.”
On the Redskins adjustments to the defense in the fourth quarter:
“They came out, fought hard and out executed us in the end and that is what it came down to. They didn’t show us anything new it came down to how they executed their play calls. It is a tough pill to swallow.”
