Raheem Mostert – December 11, 2023 (Postgame)
Monday, December 11, 2023
Postgame – Tennessee Titans
Miami Dolphins RB Raheem Mostert
(I know you’re about the team, but 18 touchdowns now and the season ties a franchise record. Just the season that you’re having, how much did you expect this?) – “I’ve got a standard for myself and I’m trying to do my best to uphold that standard. And going back, if you would ask me that I’m at 18 touchdowns total, I would have told you – I’d have been on the fence. I’d have been like, ‘I can see it, but then also I just still got to work on it.’ So it’s a blessing and I’m just happy I’m in this position. But I would take all those touchdowns back for a win, that’s for sure. Because it means a lot to me especially for this team. We’re doing unbelievable things and if that means take away a couple touchdowns in order for us to get a win, then I’m all about that”
Postgame – Tennessee Titans
Miami Dolphins LB Bradley Chubb
(Your group is so good about keeping focus this season. Was tonight just football or was it a lack of focus during the week or at times tonight during the game?) – “I wouldn’t say during the week. I feel like we’ve been locked in as a team, taking each day as it comes, attacking each day on the practice field and in the meeting room. So I wouldn’t say during the week. We just probably had a couple plays here and there that we let get the best of us and we just got to be better as a team bringing it all in, reeling it all in and finding ways to win games like this.”
(This is a defense that likes to close out teams. You’ve had that opportunity before. I think they went 64 yards in four plays on that last drive. What happened on that last possession?) – “I have to watch the film and see what actually happened, but probably just guys not playing with each other. At the end of the day, we’re only going to go as far as we take this. That’s going to require us playing together, playing with each other and being on the same (page) at all times. Like I said, I’m not sure what happened but obviously we weren’t on the same key, and we’ve just got to find ways to be better in those situations.”
(Speaking of emotions I know that first half, you got the penalty. Can you take us through that?) – “Just being frustrated with myself and I let my problems be bigger than the team’s problems and hurt the team in a way that I don’t want to do that. Looking back on it now, just two more steps and I would’ve been perfectly fine, so it’s just frustrating when I let my emotions get the best of me, but at the end of the day, I tried to do everything I could to combat that in the second half and after the second quarter so just got to find ways to be better as a player, as a person, as a leader, as a teammate and I will be and it’s just one of those things that lapse judgment got the best of me and I will be better next time for sure in that situation. But hopefully that situation won’t happen again and I’ll make the sack instead of falling off of it.”
Postgame – Tennessee
Miami Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill
Q. Can you explain what you were feeling, what you were going through as you were out of the lineup and then worked your way to get back in?
TYREEK HILL: It was a lot of pain, man. It sucked. When it actually happened, I’ve obviously been dealing with some ankle injuries this whole season, and when it happened, like my first reaction was like, man, my ankle is gone. My adrenaline kicked in, I ran off the field, then I sat for a while and it got stiff and I was going through a lot of pain. Then I just made up in my mind, I came in at halftime, I texted my wife, I was like, ‘this (expletive) hurt.’ I need an ankle massage tonight, and she’s like, ‘you’d better get your ass back in that game, dawg.’ I was like, ‘all right.’ So I just made up my mind that it’s going to hurt. It’s going to suck. Tonight and tomorrow morning. I just went back in the game on my own, without anybody saying ‘Reek, go.’ It was like, no, (expletive) this, I’ve got to get out there and bring some energy and be that spark.
Q. What do you think a team like this can learn from a loss at this point in the season? The margin of error starts to slim up a lot more.
TYREEK HILL: As a team, we can never take any opponent lightly. The Tennessee Titans are a real good team. We’ve seen that tonight. They had a real good defense plan. They got some real good players over there. Coach Vrabel, he’s been doing it for a while now, so he kind of understands how to stop or slow or even contain us. Shout out to them guys. Props to them guys.
Q. You guys have been on such an emotional high for a long time. As one of the team leaders, how do you guys kind of get past what just happened, to blow that kind of lead that late and just move on to the next week?
TYREEK HILL: Well, it starts tomorrow, man, because we’ve got a short week. Once we get back, tomorrow we’ll come in, watch the film, knock it out, correct the errors and stuff like that. That’s when we move on and realize that we can’t make mistakes or turn the ball over or – we’ve even got to get more than three points in the red zone, because every point matters, especially in situations like this, going against a real good team like that. I feel like we’re going to be able to move on pretty quick with the great leaders that we got on this team. I feel like we’ll be fine.
Q. What was the message from Head Coach Mike McDaniel? Obviously it’s been a while since you guys lost. You guys normally take care of business against teams you’ve been expected to. What was the message from Mike after kind of a loss like this?
TYREEK HILL: Oh, kind of what I just said, man. We’ll come in tomorrow. We’ll fix the mistakes. Obviously I feel like to me, this was probably one of my better games blocking, so I can’t speak for nobody else. Just come in tomorrow, fix it, take accountability. If you did mess up, and I feel like every guy on this team will do that because everybody wants to win. Everybody wants to find ways to get better.
Q. While you were out of the game and watching a lot from the sideline, what were you seeing was going on with the offense?
TYREEK HILL: You know, man, our offense is so special. It’s such an electric offense. We were doing good. We were moving the ball up and down the field. Raheem was breaking some runs. ‘Ced’ (Cedrick Wilson Jr.) made a few big plays. I feel like we were doing typical stuff, like what we would normally do.
Q. If you could put a percentage point on how you felt when you reentered the game, were you able to cut and change directions like you normally could?
TYREEK HILL: No, I could not. It was just one of them things where like you just got to make your mind up, like ‘hey, I’m going to do it, man.’ One of them (expletive) them mindsets. You feel me? And it’s going to be like that until the end of the season. I feel like at this point of the season, everybody is typically hurt, and right now I don’t need – nobody is going to give you pity for just being injured, quite frankly. That’s just the reality of this league. My mindset is like I’m going to go in, I’m going to dominate no matter how I feel. If I get locked up, it happens. If I drop a pass, it happens. But just know I’m out there. I’m going. That’s my mindset.
Q. Knowing that this is a marathon and not a sprint, do you then think to yourself, maybe I should sit out a week just to try to get back, or is it just, I’m always going to go?
TYREEK HILL: You know what, man, that’s never a question in my head. That’s never something that I would be thinking about. But if the trainers come to me, if they see something in the scans whenever I get these scans, they say, ‘hey, Reek, you can sit out,’ I do it. But me being me, I don’t want to sit out. I want to be able to help this team any way I can, and that’s just who I am. I just don’t want to miss any games.
Postgame – Tennessee
Miami Dolphins Head Coach Mike McDaniel
Q. From your perspective, what culminated in not being able to put away a 14-point lead with four minutes left in the game?
MIKE McDANIEL: Well, what didn’t. I think it was a legitimate team loss. I think everybody had their hand in it. I don’t think it was intentional. I don’t think people went through the motions during the week. It was a really, really good week of practice, I thought. But you had a lot of yards given up in a short amount of time. You had a shorter field position, and you had an offense that went three-and-out. That’s literally the only way that that could happen. So yeah, we all get to share the blame in my opinion, or at least I know the locker room felt 100 percent responsible. I think that’s what you want. I think there’s a lot of people that are going to be – it’s going to be tough to go to sleep tonight, including myself. That’s not something that you can do and expect to win football games, and you can’t – it’s a hard, hard lesson, but no lead is safe. I think that’s one of the tougher parts about it.
Q. In what ways do you think facing adversity in this game, a loss in December, can be a catalyst for positive change?
MIKE McDANIEL: You know, I know right now it doesn’t feel anything but frustration and regret about what more you can do. I do know the two — I have experience with it personally. The two most successful seasons that I’ve been a part of, around this week we lost a game, and at the end of the season, near December, we’ve spent a lot of time together, and you don’t have – you can do one or two things with a loss like this for me personally, and just my belief in the individuals that I work with on a day-to-day basis, I would expect whatever things haven’t been done in the direction of trying to win football games, collectively I think the guys will rise to the occasion. I think you have to because it’s a humbling game, and you think that you’re a good football team, but then each and every week you have to prove that on the field and you can’t take anything for granted. Right now it feels terrible, but that’s everything that we’ll be trying to do moving forward because these types of losses can be very galvanizing, but it takes literally every person in the locker room and coaching staff, and you have to – as long as guys aren’t pointing fingers, which I feel like there’s a lot of people looking internally, you have that chance, and that’s what we’ll be spending our time doing.
Q. Connor Williams is such a key player. Is his knee injury feared significant?
MIKE McDANIEL: I think we’ll find out more tomorrow. Honestly, so much happened in that game from that point, I haven’t seen talked to the training staff about it as of yet. But I know it would take a lot to keep him out. It’s probably not the most positive.
Q. The offense was kind of (indiscernible) what went wrong for the unit, especially in the red zone the first couple drives?
MIKE McDANIEL: Well, that’s a place that we’ve made a point to do a pretty good job down there, and we did not tonight. You could point that as the No. 1 reason. There’s several people and several phases that will say they’re the No. 1 reason, but you can point to that as the No. 1 reason we didn’t win the game. For me, you call plays for them to work, and they didn’t. So you’re trying to play to the team when you’re making decisions to go for it or not. A couple of those, I felt like we just lost a lot of points there. In two particular instances I think inside the five, that’s eight points total there. We had a blocked field goal. We’ve done out-of-character things to almost find a way to lose the game. The guys still fought, but you have to play a certain type of football to expect to win, and it’s hard to get all the way down there and not to come up with touchdowns. It’s not something that we’ve had success this season, and we haven’t done that. It’ll start with me, but I think that the locker room will — I always just look at it like we have really good players, and we should be successful down there. So when we don’t, I start with that, and then we’ll go comb the tape and make sure that the certain things that kept us from getting in the end zone don’t in the future.
Q. Can you speak to the type of adjustment that it is when Tyreek Hill is out of the lineup for you guys?
MIKE McDANIEL: Yeah, there’s a good amount of offense that goes through him. However, we have – ‘Ced’ (Cedrick Wilson Jr.) made a couple plays. It wasn’t the reason for the lack of first half or really first three-quarter points. I think there were just critical times that we would be off a hair on first or second down and you’re put in a third down situation, and our protection wasn’t exactly what maybe we’d be used to on a play or two. Then there was a misfire on a play or two and those things add up, but I didn’t see it as we were – obviously a player of Tyreek’s caliber, it hurts when he’s not in. However, I think there was plenty of offense to be had and we’ve got a lot of guys that I trust to do that. I think that just bottom line, you have things like that happen in a game, you’re going to lose and those are lessons that are learned usually one way and that’s the hard one.
Q. I know you said that things like this are fickle and that if the play goes the other way, nobody is questioning it. Everybody is praising it. What went into the decision not to run the ball those first few trips to the red zone or stick to the pass those first few trips to the goal line?
MIKE McDANIEL: You know, I think it had – kind of approached it like I usually do and we passed the ball because we thought it was going to work and it didn’t. That will always – that’s not a big deal to me, that it’s like part of inherently in the job, if you’re going to get high fives for success, so that was definitely the wrong call because it didn’t work. You have to try to forecast as much as you can and do right by the time as best you can, and I think anytime we’re that close to the end zone and we don’t come up with a touchdown, I think that it will 100 percent of the time be second-guessed, as it should be, because who am I? Am I above second-guessing? It didn’t work, so that’s the – you’d better be tough in this business if you want to be in it and I would expect nothing less. Stuff didn’t work.
Q. What were the late defensive play calls? How did the Titans work their way down the field so quickly twice?
MIKE McDANIEL: I’m going to have to comb the film. Live, I think there were a couple communication issues on the back end is what I saw, in terms of specifically the crossing routes. There was one big one to ‘D-Hop’ (DeAndre Hopkins) that was pretty hurtful in the overall grand scheme of things. But also you could easily say that that situation, the defense with a couple guys that got hurt within the game should have never been in that situation. I know the defense – specifically multiple players and coaches came up to me and let me know their feeling on how the end of the game went, and it’s not acceptable to them, and that’s how you want the team to look at it. You don’t want people to be like, 14-point lead, however long – you let people hang around and you let them off the hook when you’re inside the five and you have six points as opposed to 14. It changes the math for sure. We’ll work to clean that up. I know that there’s some very, very frustrated individuals on the defensive side of the ball, and we’ll look at the tape. I would hesitate to place all blame – this was as much of a team loss as you could have in my opinion before watching the tape.
Postgame – Tennessee
Miami Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa
Q. You guys take a two-touchdown lead; did you have any feeling, any inkling that you would actually end up losing that game?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: It’s the NFL. Anything can happen. We’ve got to do a better job finishing the game with the time that we had while we had the ball, not allowing their opposing team’s offense to get that opportunity to potentially go down and score. It’s a team sport. You can’t blame one side. But I would say from an offensive standpoint there’s things that we could have done a lot better to not have gone through what we’ve gone through tonight.
Q. I know Tyreek was in and out of the game with the ankle, but what do you think was kind of the trouble in the passing game? I know the run game, you guys had over 160 yards, but in the passing game what gave you guys struggles?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: I think what they wanted game plan-wise was to put a shell over our team, forcing us to run the ball, forcing us to beat them that way. But when you have someone like Tyreek go down, it does make it tough, but when you also have a couple of your key o-linemen go down, as well, it does hurt the guys up front and sort of the way we operate.
Q. I wanted to ask about that. What was kind of the hardest part of obviously Connor Williams goes down, you’re already without Terron and Rob Hunt. What was the hardest part of getting things aligned?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: Well, I think one of the toughest parts of that is a lot of those guys haven’t gotten reps at some of the positions. It’s not to say that we practice for situations like this to happen. It just so happened that Connor went down and we already had a couple of our guys out. But needless to say, I know the guys up front will get better. I know the guys around me will get better. I will continue to get better. That’s the only way we can grow. We’ve just got to watch the tape. Tough loss tonight, but it’s going to linger like this if we don’t do anything about that.
Q. The final fourth-and-2, can you break that play down from your perspective?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: Well, the play happened. Trying to look for an eligible. Then as I tried to maneuver through the pocket, I was trying to get a clear lane to find someone, but that’s how that went.
Q. How much of a collaborative process is the play calling in the red zone once you get close to the goal line? Has Mike ever asked, what do you see here? Do you chip in? Or is it pretty much him making the decisions?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: We talk about those decisions as far as plays that we like down there with what their defense runs. The night before we sort of go over, talk about each play and reasons as to why we could call this versus this or that versus this. The plays that he’s called, that’s sort of what we went over and what we trusted as far as what we saw on tape from the Titans.
Q. We’ve seen some Dolphin teams in the past have a loss like this in December and things kind of snowball. As one of the leaders here, how do you keep that from happening when you have a result like that at the end of the game?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: Yeah, I don’t think this is the same Dolphins team that everyone thinks about. We’ve got a lot of really good players. We’ve got really good coaches. It’s one loss home this year. It’s not like the world ends because we lost this game. We’re human. We’ll continue to get better from this. This is the NFL; no one is perfect. That’s that.
Q. You now have over 1,000 career completions. At this stage in your career, thinking back to last year, what are some things that you appreciate the most?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: I’m appreciative for the entire journey that I’ve had since I got here, the draft process, the games that I’ve been able to go in, the people that I’ve been able to learn from. But as far as right now, I’m not even worried about any of that. I’m not even thinking of that. I’m a little disappointed that we put out that type of performance offensively, and it should have never been that way today.
Q. What was your perspective on the lost fumble play down near the opponent’s goal line?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: That was my fault. I’ve got to catch the snap. I don’t get as many reps with Liam in practice. I get some reps as far as quarterback-center exchange, but because Connor is our starting center, that’s the only person I’m working with as far as getting those reps. I’ve just got to continue to work those with Liam, but that’s not his fault, that’s my fault and I’ll get better from it.
Q. Did you have a firm grasp on the ball after you picked it up?
TUA TAGOVAILOA: I did, but the problem there is I didn’t drop. I picked it up and turned to throw it already, and the defender was already in my face, and he made a good play on hitting the ball. That’s no one else’s fault but mine.
Postgame – Tennessee Titans
Miami Dolphins CB Jalen Ramsey
(It seemed like there was a play where Titans WR DeAndre Hopkins caught a pass and there might have been like a miscommunication. I don’t know if you could tell us maybe what happened on that play. And one of those late fourth quarter drives looked like he was near you, but maybe not your guy, I don’t know if your guys were out of zone.) – “Dover route? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another one of those execution things. We got to execute a little bit better. I just got to continue doing what I got to do. Maybe be a little bit tighter, squeeze it a little bit more. And I got to watch the play I didn’t really see, but maybe we’ll hope for a little underneath help on that. But I really got to watch the film to see exactly what happened. I didn’t even watch that play after I’m on the sideline, so I got to see exactly what went on”
( As a veteran, how do you handle a loss like this? Do you do extra work and all that, or do you just go back to your routine?) – “I work hard as hell. I work my ass off every single day, no matter win, lose, it don’t matter. I work my ass off regardless. That’s just the respect I have for the game. I feel that way about my teammates as well. It’s more so just fixing the little things. I keep going back to execution, fixing those things. Maybe that’s being a little bit more detailed in our work. And our communication, we did have a couple guys down. I don’t like to use excuses, but when you don’t get to practice with certain guys, that hurts a little bit sometimes. But regardless, it’s just football, man and we got to figure out a way to play better in those moments.”
