Opening Statement: “I would open up by just saying that, look, it was a tough one yesterday, but the positives are – we eliminate one explosive on defense and we score one touchdown out of the other four trips we were down there and we win that game, or we just score two touchdowns or two scores offensively. But you make two more plays, and you’re feeling a lot better today than what we did. In hindsight going back and looking at that, that doesn’t excuse the loss and there’s a reason why things happen. But man, you make a couple of plays and all of a sudden you feel a lot different today than the way we feel. I thought some of our young receivers stepped up. That was encouraging. I thought (Quintez) Cephus made some plays, (Amon-Ra) St. Brown. (Kalif Raymond) Lif did a heck of a job out there, not only as a receiver, as a punt returner and as a blocker. I thought our D-line up front for the most part played pretty good. But, too many mistakes, too many errors.” On if T Taylor Decker will return from injury before Sunday’s game: “I think it’s highly unlikely.” On if the first four weeks have been tougher than he expected them to be when he was first hired as head coach: “No. I mean look, I’m prepared for – I was prepared for however it flowed. Of course, I’m an optimistic person and I have high expectations, but I also understand that things may not go the way that you want it to go. That’s life. No, I mean look – yeah, I would love to be 4-0 right now, but I’m not – look, I’m still not discouraged. I still go back to what I said, even as bad as some of the plays that we put on tape yesterday, we were two plays away from winning that game. That’s on us. We’ve got to learn how win and how to close out some of these drives and we will. We’ve got to be better on third down and all of these. But no, I don’t have expectations as far as like, ‘Yeah, well, man all of a sudden this is harder than I thought it was going to be.’ I was prepared for either way.” On the injury C Frank Ragnow sustained in yesterday’s game: “He’s got, basically, a version of turf toe right now is what he’s got. We’ll know a lot more this afternoon with him. I would say he’s probably going to be out, though.” On if C Frank Ragnow’s toe injury happened on the play he walked off: “It happened before that.” On if OLB Romeo Okwara is done for the year with an Achilles injury: “Yes, he is. I hate that for Romes, man. I’ll tell you what, man, the way he works and everything that he’s put into this, he’s a top-notch pro. I hate it for him and I hate it for our team, but I know he’ll come back better than ever next year.” On how he studies analytics to prepare for making decisions in fourth-down situations: “There’s already a set of a numbers that tells you when and where, and I think from that you just go with the flow of the game and then trust in your team is kind of where it goes. And for me, the first one we get down there offensively, third down, and it’s the botched snap, that whole debacle – once we get down there again, I just felt like, ‘Hey man, it’s fourth down, we’re down here tight, let’s go for it. Let’s get a touchdown. If we don’t, we’ve got them pinned.’ It’s easy to say in hindsight, ‘Well, those four trips, man, we just kicked four field goals,’ but then I’ll bet you guys would be real critical then. But look, I just – I do, I go back to what I said about it, I just felt like it was the right thing to do. But I’ll be honest with you, last night I go back and I look and I’m looking at all of our third downs from the first four games, our fourth downs – if that’s what we’re going to do moving forward, I was trying to give us an upper hand, well, you know what? I need to look at that and we’ve got to be a lot better and we’re going to have to live in that world in practice. That’s going to have to be the main focus for us to continue down that road. Those are the facts because we’re not good enough there right now, third and fourth down, two to three.” On if it matters to him that analytics backed his decisions to go for it on fourth down: “It certainly does and that’s how I wanted to start the season, but we’re not good enough right now. We’re not functioning well enough right now, or efficiently well enough, to continue down that road until we really try to work on it, and then let’s see if we can improve and get it to where we want. So, we’re going to have to make a serious focal point on this area to continue that way. Those are the facts.” On the difficulty of building a long-term defensive foundation with OLB Romeo Okwara and CB Jeff Okudah out for the season: “Well, luckily, we still have a lot of young guys here that are still in-line that we have a lot of faith in, a lot of hope for and that we know they will grow and we think can become pretty good players in time. I mean, shoot man, look, we still like Bobby Price, man. The kid’s talented, he works his rear off. We just moved him from safety to corner right before we even started the season. We like him. Look, we like Jerry Jacobs. You’re talking about outside linebacker, we like (Austin Bryant) AB. Charles (Harris) is doing well. I mean, we still have people here that we think can help us and they have something to work with. Those are the guys that – look, my job is to try to get the most out of these guys that are in this building right now. And so, we’re going to do that, but we like a lot of these young guys.” On if he feels good about the depth at outside linebacker with OLB Romeo Okwara out with an Achilles injury: “I do, I like our depth. I feel pretty good about it. I think that there is a chance we get Trey (Flowers) back this week, so, that helps. And then look, we can always shift. To your point, we can always go a little bigger, a little heavier, a little more four-down front type things and so we’ve got flexibility. We can move in any direction we need to move in per our personnel and our depth. So yeah, look, we’re going to make this work.” On if he plans to use RB Jamaal Williams more in third-and-short situations: “That was kind of one of the things I was saying is that all of that stuff – we’re going to reevaluate all of our third-and-short type situations and figure out exactly what we need to do, what’s going to be best for us moving forward. Look, I don’t disagree with you in the fact – look, Jamaal ran his rear off yesterday. He was on point. And so, look, it’s certainly something we’re going to look at.” On how they can to get the younger players to improve at a faster rate: “Some of these guys it may be time to make a shift, but that doesn’t mean that we dislike anybody. Maybe they’re not just quite ready and you move to somebody else and in the mean time when they do come in, you’re giving them just a couple of things that they can handle and know their skillset and what they’re able to do, you’re kind of catering to them a little bit, if you will. That way, they’re able to develop, but you’re not putting too much on them. And so, there again, we’ve got to be selective on how we do it. No, it’s not easy, but that’s part of the game here. Listen, we’re looking at every avenue right now. There again, we do have a lot of young guys, but if we’ve got to tailor some back for these guys, we’ve got to pull some reps back on some of these guys and just really try to condense the box for them a little bit, we’ll do that. So, they will still continue to get a little bit better, but we’re not putting so much on them that they’re not ready for. We’ll do it. We’re looking at every avenue.” On how important it is to get contribution from this year’s late-round draft picks like LB Derrick Barnes and WR Amon-Ra St. Brown: “It is important, but I think it’s not even so much the draft picks as it is the rookies. Any time we can get production out of the rookies and growth, that helps us. It’ll help us as we continue down the road this year and then, certainly, in the next year. Look, I agree Barnes did some good things, St. Brown did as well. I thought Jerry Jacobs did some good things. I know Alim (McNeill)’s a third-round pick, but I thought he played his best game of the season. So, those things are encouraging when you see that. Those are encouraging.” |
