| October 19, 2020 Opening statement: “Good afternoon, I hope everybody’s well and traveled safe and healthy and everything. We’ll probably just dive right into it, get going here and – what do you guys got?” On the offensive line adjustments during the game at Jacksonville: “When you go into a game and you lose three players in one position, it’s never easy. We’ve gone through that once already this year and it certainly makes things difficult. With the offensive line, those guys working together with a lot of communication, a lot of different groups and personnels defensively that they have to identify and talk through – but really through the course of the week of practice, I think our guys do a great job of everybody preparing. We play a lot of guys in practice itself, especially on Wednesdays when we have those situations when we’re in pads and we can put different guys in positions to work on their fundamentals in a team setting. I think those guys did a great job all week of that. In the game, I think it transferred over into the game. There were some things early on when those guys got in there that we had to settle down a bit. I thought everybody did a great job at halftime of saying, ‘Hey, what do we want to run? What do we feel comfortable with? What do we like? What’s in the wheelhouse of what we want to try to do going forward?’ Just great job by the players, just going out and being ready to go. Certainly had some moving parts, but I think those guys did a phenomenal job.” On if he was happy with the defensive performance against the Jaguars: “I think those guys played really hard on defense. I think they tried to step up to a challenge that we knew was going to be difficult against Jacksonville’s run game. I thought they executed well in those situations. We had some good fundamental pays on tape which was nice, definitely some things that we have been working on the last couple weeks that showed up: pad level, hand placement, a couple different guys in some different positions that we thought maybe fit better to some of the things that we saw that were good, and try to get them in those positions as much as possible. So I thought those guys handled that really well. Definitely thought we missed some opportunities though, and I agree with Romeo (Okwara) – we probably had some opportunities out there that we should’ve capitalized on better. But like I said after the game, give Jacksonville credit, give (Gardner) Minshew credit. I mean, he’s a tremendous athlete, he’s really hard to tackle, and certainly I think, (he) made some plays when he had the opportunity. Just was pleased with the effort – I thought the guys played hard. I mean, that’s the biggest thing, I thought they really went out and tried to execute at a high level. So hopefully we can do that again this week.” On if playing well against Jacksonville will give confidence to the team preparing for their next opponent: “We certainly try to make sure we – we put an emphasis on building from one week to the next, but we do understand that the opponents are different. Everything that they do might not transcend one week to the next. Atlanta has phenomenal players. It starts with the quarterback obviously, he’s great, Julio Jones, I mean, he’s one of the best in the League, (Calvin) Ridley is obviously phenomenal. So it’s another big challenge for us. They obviously had a huge game yesterday, very explosive game – that’ll be a whole different challenge for us this week. Hopefully we can just go out, put a good week of practice together, and then go out and play well next Sunday.” On the importance of forcing a three-and-out on the opponent’s opening drive and how to decide whether to punt or attempt a play to end the half: “I’ll go backwards in order there. There’s a certain time element to that last play that you’re talking about. So just felt that we might have been just on the edge of that time-length, and it was better for us just to have a good play. We knew we had the ball to start the second half, so that was kind of that decision there. “Certainly it’s always good to start the game three-and-out, that’s what you want to do on defense, and you want to start fast, so that’s always positive. But it’s kind of funny – it’s one of those goals where you say, ‘All right, we want to start fast, let’s go three-and-out,’ and then once it’s over, you move on. You say, ‘OK, all right. What’s the next thing we want to do?’ Certainly to start the second half we wanted to do the same thing, you know go three-and-out. I thought that was a big series for us to start the second half, to be able to kind of be in a situation we were in and keep them out of points.” On if being more aggressive was a focus: “I’ll just say give the players credit. I thought they played hard.” On what DL John Penisini brings to the defensive line: “I think John has done a good job all the way through from camp and just steadily improving. I think that’s something that we saw – his play was able to get better and through some of the practices that we’ve had. I thought it was good to put him in the middle and see how that anchored some things for us to allow those other guys, like you said, to move around, and maybe be in some different positions. It was good to see. I thought he played well. He’s strong. He can play very low to the ground. He does a good job with his hand placement. It was good to see for his first chance to get a lot of reps out there and play really well. We’ll see how that goes going forward. I was proud of him for going out and competition hard.” On DE Trey Flowers’ performance against the Jaguars: “Trey is someone that shows up every single week and does stuff that you’re just like – it’s almost clinic-like, teaching. Phenomenal play on the edge. They ran the stretch over to him, he sets the edge on the tight end, and knocks the line of scrimmage back by two yards, escapes off the play and makes a really violent tackle – that was phenomenal. He had a great rush off the edge, obviously, and turned the ball over with the strip sack which was great. I’d say one of my more favorite plays I saw was he actually had a play where he was in coverage, there was a crosser coming from the other side and he looked like he had been doing that naturally all the time. So maybe less coaching is better right there because he played that thing phenomenal. I just think that he’s a guy that pays attention to the details. He goes out, he works extremely hard every single day to just be the best that he can be. I think it’s a great example for everybody that’s surrounding him of how you need to approach every single week. You don’t know what plays are going to impact the game, but just go out on that play. If it’s not a great play, then go out and do the best you can on the next play. I think that’s just how he is. That’s how he’s wired, so that was good to see.” On an injury update for DE Julian Okwara: “I don’t have any updates right now.” On an example of simplifying plays from the Jacksonville game: “I thought really from the start with our kickoff coverage unit. I thought that was really good on those plays we were able to cover and pin them deep inside the 20-(yard line). Some of that stuff, I thought, was simplified a little bit. I thought those guys played really fast and aggressive. We had a big one to start the game. I thought we had another big one in the fourth quarter, too, which put their offense on a long field. So that was really good to see from that standpoint. I thought some of the things we were trying to do, both in the run game offensively and the run defense, was maybe simplified a little bit and maybe some of it was just coaching points, and some of the different fits and some of the different blocking that we were doing up front that I thought freed those guys up to play a little bit more aggressive.” On if you can carry positive momentum week-to-week: “I think you try to stay – you stay consistent, you stay even all the way though. But certainly you want to take what we were able to do yesterday and build on that. I think that’s good for everybody just to have a little bit of confidence in some of the things we were doing and be able to see it – and honestly see what I would call ‘two weeks of work’ really show up in a game. I thought that was really great. The bye weeks are never easy. We thought it was a really good time for us to grind it out and really take a look at what the first four games looked at. We really didn’t have much of an opportunity to do that with the preseason, so we needed to do it. I thought the guys took two weeks, which is always hard to do, and focused on how do we get better. That was really good to see. Hopefully we carry that over and try to string another good week of work in behind it.” On how T Matt Nelson has developed: “Just give him all the credit in the world. It’s obviously pretty hard to believe he was playing defensive line a couple years ago. I think you’ve really seen a guy who took last year to transform his body from a defensive lineman into an offensive lineman, with some of just the weightlifting and the strength and conditioning program that we did with him. It was very specific, and I thought he did a phenomenal job of that. It’s been a huge learning curve for him to switch sides of the ball, and I think he’s done an outstanding job with that. Some of the athleticism that shows up as – defensive lineman sometimes are a little bit more athletic – you can see some of that transfer over, but I thought his bend, his ability to bend and move the line of scrimmage has been good. I think he has a long way to go, there’s some things in the game that happened really fast for him on that stance, just some stuff that he doesn’t have the playing experience built up yet. He’s a guy that comes to work every day. He’s the same. He works extremely hard. He has a grind-it-out mentality – and just really happy for him to get out there and have an opportunity to go play, and really show up in a positive way for all the hard work that he’s done. He has a long way to go but there’s a lot of hard work just to get to the point where he could go out there and play the way that he played yesterday. Really proud of him for that.” On if the team was completely virtual today: “Actually, some of those protocols changed with some of the daily testing and stuff like that, that we’re allowed to do. So, we actually can do more hands-on stuff now which is great from that aspect of it. Monday is a big day for us to get in, to be able to work out and flesh the body a little bit, and do some things there to help us kickoff the week with our strength and conditioning program, and then we roll through the meetings from there.” |
