HEAD COACH DOUG PEDERSON
MEDIA AVAILABILITY
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2024
(On if close losses stick with the team longer) “They do. Any loss, right? It’s a tough one to
deal with after the game. Obviously. today we’ve got to go back through it, but I will say
there was a lot of good too that came out of this football game. Things that we can coach
and teach and correct and show the guys. But games like this—they’re always going to
hurt.”
(On if the team played conservatively in the second half) “I don’t know what game you were
watching because we had a backed-up drive started at the three-yard line. We ripped off a
26-yard run, I think. Then, we came back and hit Gabe [WR Gabe Davis] and we hit TJ [RB
Travis Etienne Jr.] in the flat. Next thing you know, we’re at the 15 and we fumble going in.
That’s pretty aggressive to me in the second half. So. no, I don’t feel like—I elected to go for
it on our end of the field, showing sign of aggressiveness there. Defense did a great job of
stopping them and missing a kick. So, kind of a wash, but no, not at all. Third down was our
nemesis.”
(On WR Brian Thomas Jr. not getting targeted in the second half) “No. It’s really the tale of
two halves. Offensively, I felt like in the second half we did some good things in the run
game to try to stay ahead, which we did. But it was nothing in the game plan that took us
away from not throwing it to Brian or not throwing it to Gabe or Christian [WR Christian
Kirk]. If you go back and look, even look at some of the third downs that we had, they were
in unique situations and they were third-and-really long and gave up a couple sacks in
those situations too.”
(On CB Tyson Campbell’s injury status) “Yeah, he’s going to miss some time.”
(On Campbell’s expected timeline for return from injury) “I’m not going to put him in a box
that way. I’m not going to put any expectations on it. We’re just going to let him go week-to-
week and see where he comes.”
(On any other injuries to report) “No, everybody’s good.”
(On if there is any concern carried over from last year about the ability to close out games)
“Yeah, I mean, you take that play away, or say you make that play, right? You’re in the end
zone, it’s 24 to 7 at the end of the third, right? Then, you’re kicking off as opposed to giving
them the ball at the 20. We can stand here and play ‘should’ve, would’ve, could’ve’ all day
long. Bottom line is, we did not do enough to finish the football game. These are all the
things that as coaches and players, we need to fix and get corrected before this week.”
(On giving up sacks and how the offensive line played throughout the game) “To me, sacks
are a combination of a lot of different things. There’s a lot of factors. Miami was in two-man
on the last one. Great job. Covered us up, right? The other one, Trevor was off on his
progression a little bit. It happens, there’s quarterbacks, there’s the offensive line, there’s
receivers, there’s the defense. So, sacks can go a bunch of different directions. From that
standpoint, we need to be better in those situations. If you look at the bottom line, you
rushed for 128 yards. On paper, great. They played really well. Now, we’ve got to do better
in short yardage. We’ve got to do better in fourth-and-one. We’ve got to do better in certain
areas. But overall, I thought they played physical, they came off the football. We had, I
think, a few communication errors that took us off some blocking schemes. All things that
we can fix and get better.”
(On how to convert short yardage third and fourth downs) “Keep doing it. Keep doing it.
Keep doing it. I’m going to continue to trust the players. We’re going to continue to put them
in good situations and good plays and we’ll just continue to execute better.”
(On if this was RB Tank Bigsby’s best game as a pro) “Probably so. Still a little room for
improvement, but he did some nice things and there’s some things that we’ve got to
continue to, as a young player, continue to detail with him as well.”
(On if a productive game can give Bigsby confidence) “Sure.”
(On CB Montaric Brown’s role amid Campbell’s injury status) “We’ll see. Yeah, we’ll see
how the week goes, what the plan is going to be and how Ryan [Defensive Coordinator Ryan
Nielsen] wants to handle that.”
(On CB Jarrian Jones’ NFL debut performance) “I thought he played really well. I thought he
played really well. I didn’t think there was much hesitation in his play. He did the things he
was asked to do. He played physical and what we saw in training camp. To go against
somebody like Tyreek [Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill] your first game out in the NFL as a pro, I
mean, that’s a large task. I thought he did a nice job. I thought Darby [CB Ronald Darby] did
a nice job. Again, we’ve got some things we’ve got to clean up back there, but overall, the
guys played hard and played physical.”
(On if he expected Dolphins WR Jaylen Waddle to cross the field on his 63-yard touchdown)
“It’s just, we were in cover two. Unfortunately, I’ll say this, and I’ll never do this, we have to
coach the play better.”
(On if Hill’s 80-yard touchdown play was a result of strong execution or by design) “We need
to coach it better. It’s a play they ran all game.”
(On if calling majority-run plays in the fourth quarter was situational or by design) “When
you say by design, I don’t know. There’s a time in the game where we as offensive coaches
felt like our offensive line was taking over the football game. When you get in that sort of
frame of mind, the idea, especially when the big guys are ‘feeling it a little bit, as we say, is
you continue to run the football. If that’s by design, then that’s what we did. If it’s by
execution, then that’s what we did. If it’s by our offensive line playing well, then that’s what
we did. Three minutes to-go in a game, it’s 17-17. The game was not won or lost at that
particular time. We didn’t do enough at the end of the game offensively to stay on the field,
which came down to third downs. We had some second down situations in there. So, those
are all things that we need to fix.”
(On QB Trevor Lawrence’s performance in the game) “I mean, it was good. There’s some
things that we showed him today that we can get better at. It’s just a matter of him just
continuing to see it, trust it. But I’ll tell you this, he made some really good throws too. Be
able to see BT on the first the first deep pass for the DPI [defensive pass interference] and
then the throw to him for the touchdown and Gabe a couple of times. He made some really
good throws and just things that we’re going to continue to work with. But we know we’ve
got to get better there, pitching and catching.”
(On if he anticipated Lawrence’s touchdown pass to Thomas Jr.) “To your eye. You don’t see
practice like we do. That’s a play we’ve repped in practice and he made the exact same
throw over the safety. We make sure that we try to put our players in these situations during
the week of practice so that when they get to the game, they can execute and execute well.
There wasn’t much room back there and it was a perfectly placed, it might have been like
the Atlanta preseason game where you might have been thinking that he was throwing the
ball away to Evan [TE Evan Engram] and Evan comes down with the touchdown. So, just a
great throw, great catch by two players that we practice all the time in our red zone days.”
(On not utilizing the quarterback sneak with one yard to gain and if he feels there’s a
personnel challenge preventing that play from being called) “Yeah, those work. They do
work. It was more than a yard. It was about a yard and a ball so it’s a little bit harder in those
situations to get the full yard and a half on a sneak. We look for opportunities. Even on the
fourth-down play, you saw Trevor stand up and gesture and do different things. There are
opportunities, but when the look doesn’t present itself, we have to do something else. We’ll
always look for opportunities to sneak the football.”
(On LB Devin Lloyd’s game performance) “Yeah, I thought Devin played really, really fast. He
played physical. He was downhill. He took on blockers and tackled well in space. I thought
he played real well.”
(On the defense’s overall performance against the run) “Good. I think that Tua [Dolphins QB
Tua Tagovailoa] ahead the longest run of the day, I think it was a scramble potentially. So, I
thought against the run, we did some really good things stopping that. To me, it just came
down to those three plays. It was like 182 yards on three pass plays. The first third-and-
eight screen went for 39, I think, then the 63 and the 80. So those are the plays we have to
eliminate, and I think it’s a different outcome.”
(On if he got what he expected out of DE Arik Armstead) “Yeah.”
(On if he thought the time away due to injury did not seem to affect Armstead’s play)
“Right.”
