JAGUARS HEAD COACH URBAN MEYER
MEDIA AVAILABILITY
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2021
(On whether Sunday’s offensive struggles were on everyone) “Of course, that thing gets time-tested, and I would be surprised if anyone ever said something different. Sure, people have off days, but when you struggle like we struggled in the first half, it’s certainly not a player and it’s certainly not a quarterback. And same thing when someone plays great—the first thing I always usually do is talk about the offensive line or the receiver that made that player look great. So, I know that’s a little bit not what people want to hear, but that’s actuality when you really watch. We had six penalties on offense, six. We had guys make some mental errors, we had a sack that shouldn’t have been a sack, someone had a missed assignment at the receiver position and it turned out to be a sack. So, yes, I think that’s time tested.”
(On whether he’s absolving QB Trevor Lawrence from culpability) “No, I say ‘we’ and he’s part of the ‘we.’ We have to play better. The encouraging thing is, the second half, there was—that was a recipe of getting your tail kicked in and it came back. On the road, tough crowd, very good team. I was talking to Amy [Palcic] walking down here—when you start getting for that game, you start looking at the team; that’s a very good team.”
(On their successful third-and-long conversion in the fourth quarter and whether that brings encouragement) “Absolutely. I’m not going to let this—there’s a lot of positivity. Most important is the locker room, a bunch of street fighters. We got whatever games left and we’re going to try to win this one. The hardest thing is that this one stung because I thought that our guys put us in a position to win that game. Some great efforts, we had a plus-17-yard field position average in the second and third quarters. Which that’s serious business, usually you win those games. We were tight with the—we didn’t get any turnovers, but we didn’t have any until near the end. So, there’s a lot of encouraging things. Most importantly, the team is growing and defense is playing much better. Obviously, the first drive and a half was not good, but I’ve got a lot of respect for that team and standing on the sideline, we are not far off. I refuse to believe we are far off.”
(On the difficulty in developing a winning culture when the team isn’t winning) “That’s a great question. I’m learning that as well, that’s hard. That’s hard to do. Football is a player’s game, even in college. It’s a locker room game. In professional football, you do your very best to put them in position to go win. But obviously, that’s where you’re expecting players to watch. They’ve got to go make the plays, they’ve got to have that refuse to lose. I really believe we’re getting there. I really believe. You saw it against the Buffalo Bills, you saw it—I thought— last night. I really believe they were in a ‘refuse to lose’ mentality. And the players do that.”
(On whether he watched the back funnel film to figure out what went wrong there) “Yeah, missed assignment by one of the players on the left side and bad punt.”
(On which player missed a block on the punt that was blocked) “I don’t like to call out guys for that. But it was on that left side.”
(On whether S Andrew Wingard was culpable) “No. No, that wasn’t his guy. He tried to save it, but it wasn’t him.”
(On creating a positive culture despite a loss) “Sure. No, not like a win because a win is completely different. I want everything to feel different, taste different, act different when you win. When you lose, you just show the—that’s what video tape is for. I’ll start each meeting, reward the guys that play well and then you have to show [the tape]. I think it became that way in college as well and I don’t want to keep relating college to pro, but that’s where I spent a majority of my time. These are grown men. These are people you have conversation with them and explain the plan to win, explain the situation where we lost by six points and where those six points could’ve been made up. It was all over the field, we could’ve made those six points up.”
(On why the long yardage passing game wasn’t clicking) “[I’m] trying to get my mind right on that one. The downfield throws, why it wasn’t clicking? We hit one, right, obviously to Marvin [Jones Jr.]. We actually had some opportunities, and we didn’t [connect]. We either pressured or we had some opportunities to launch it down the field, got behind them a couple times. But [it was] a little bit of miscommunication, a couple back shorted throws versus throwing it down the field. Those were two off the top of my head.”
(On if creating a lot of pressure on the quarterback is as good as a sack) “No. To me, sacks are like turnovers because usually something bad happens after a sack. You usually get the ball or a turnover. But once again, our defensive line and our pressure packages I think, first of all, hats off to our players and also our defensive coordinator [Joe Cullen]. I think they’re really doing a good job. I feel the same thing. I felt Josh Allen the whole day was [pressuring the quarterback]. We had a bunch of QB hits in this game and [Colts QB] Carson Wentz is hard to get down. On that play he made in front of us, that was one that took everyone’s breath away when he did that because I felt we had him in our grasp and [it was] time to get the ball back and he gets it down there.”
(On DL Taven Bryan having good performances two weeks in a row) “He did really well on a screen pass and Malcolm Brown when he hit that tackle for loss and Josh Allen and Myles Jack. I could keep going on and on. I just think they’re playing well.”
(On RB James Robinson playing through injury yesterday) “I just talked to him. He feels it a little bit. He felt it a little bit in the second half. He doesn’t have the same [power/speed]. A couple times we got him in open field, and he has to bust one of those tackles and he would’ve I believe. But he’s getting better, he’s a tough cat now. He’s fighting through some stuff that some guys probably wouldn’t fight through, but he ran really hard.”
(On an injury update on LB Dakota Allen) “We’ll find out more in the next two days, but he’s questionable.”
(On the value being able to line up WR Jamal Agnew in multiple positions) “You just list the players with big play potential, he’s No. 1 or 1A, that’s why we put that in there for him.”
(On WR Jamal Agnew’s 66-yard touchdown bringing life to the team yesterday when down 17-0 to the Colts) “We don’t have enough big plays. That was a probably last year. Then you look at [DJ] Chark [Jr.], you look at [Travis] Etienne [Jr.], we don’t have them. But you do have enough and he’s one of them. He’s not a guy that, to be honest, we counted on for offense that much, but he’s become that guy and you saw it. He just ran away from angles on defense and [WR Laquon] Treadwell did a great job blocking that, so did [TE Chris] Manhertz.”
(On what he likes about OL Andrew Norwell) “I have been around him a long time, but he’s a tough cat that loves his teammates. He plays the game, number one, for his teammates and he’s just a tough player.”
(On how big yesterday’s game could be for a player like CB Tyson Campbell) “Huge. That was [something he was working on] early in the season all the way from training camp, not training camp but preseason games, just locating the ball. [Secondary Coach-Corners] Tim Walton, they work extremely hard on him, and you’re starting to see the rewards of it. I thought our pass defense was really much improved. I mean it was not very good early and a lot of guys are playing pretty good back there.”
