WR Mack Hollins
(I got to ask you about this play because you had the best view of it out of everybody in the stadium. Did you feel that the punt the touched the finger of WR Jamal Agnew, the returner of the Jaguars? You reacted it did.) – “Yeah. I thought it touched but at the end of the day, if the ref didn’t call something, it didn’t happen. You play this game long enough you realize that guys get held every play and if it doesn’t get called it’s not holding. I thought the ball got touched and it didn’t get called, so it didn’t happen.”
(I got to admit that I admire your energy, and effort on not just special teams, but when you play offensively. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like everybody is out there playing with your level of effort, not that it’s the standard. As a leader, what can you do to get this team to give more?) – “Well, first I appreciate the compliment. I think as a leader, you learn that it’s hard to motivate people. You’ve got to learn from each individual person what each individual person needs. There are guys that need to get mother f’d, there are guys who need to be brought over to the side, there are guys that you need to tell their best friend that you need to talk to them. Being able to maneuver that is something all leaders – you never complete that job. It’s never I know how to work with everybody because especially in this league there are all always people changing, there are always new teammates, there are always new players. My job, and Jesse (Davis), and ‘E-Rob’ (Elandon Roberts), ‘Fej’ (Clayton Fejedelem) and ‘J-Mac’ (Jason McCourty) is to learn our teammates the best we can and know how to get the most out of each individual guy.”
(Obviously the receiving corps is depleted and you’re getting the opportunity. This is year five for you now. What’s it like to finally be in the mix offensively?) – “I think throughout my career I’ve had the opportunity to get some offensive stuff going. That’s what coaches have always told me is ‘Mack, be prepared, and know all the positions you can. Know tight end, know the slot, know the outside because you never know.’ This is a 100 percent injury game. Guys are going to go down and the game is going to go on no matter what. The more you know, the more you’ll be able to do, the more opportunities you’ll have to play. I’ve been lucky to have a few opportunities and if they come in the future, so be it. If they don’t, as long as we’re winning, I’ll be happy.”
(You were here last year when you guys turned the slow start around. What is missing, or what can you put your finger on as one of the core leaders that’s missing that will help you guys get over this hump?) – “I think it’s hard to pinpoint anything in the game of football as the reason something is not going one way or the other. The margin is so slim with wins and losses in this league. Between a team that’s 8-8 and a team that’s 13-3, it’s probably 10 points a lot of the time. For me to put my finger on it, I’m not really sure. I think you just have to continue to practice at a high level. You have to continue to find ways to outplay your opponent just like any business. You’re not always going to the most successful quarter, but what you have to do is how can I make the next quarter more successful? What do we need to do as a business, as a team, as an organization to make our plays out on the field and during the practice week.”
(Going off the question about being a team captain, and how to communicate with the different guys. How can you work with Head Coach Brian Flores to communicate his message to the guys, and how much is he leaning on you guys as the team leaders in this rut?) – “I don’t know your sports past, but if you’ve played sports, you know that a player coming to talk to you is much more influential than a coach. Even an active player talking to you over somebody who got injured. Because when you’re taking off the field, or court, or whatever it may be, you don’t have that influence over the locker room like you may have once had. Yes, ‘Flo’ (Brian Flores) is the head coach, but this is a player’s game at the end of the day. It will always be a player’s game, it always has been a player’s game. Our job as captains and leaders of this team – and this goes for really everybody, we just happen to be the guys that meet with him more often than the rest of the team –our job is to convey what he’s speaking onto the team and try to push that message on. If there is a disconnect, that’s when you have more problems than solutions. Our job is how can we convey his message to the team because it’s going to be more influential coming from us than from him.”
(Do you feel like there is a disconnect at all?) – “No. I think there are games where we lost by a lot of points. You guys heard my frustration after the Bills game. Then you make improvements, then the next week is a little better, then the next week is little better, but it’s tough in this league. There is no week that’s easy. I think outside of the locker room, everybody probably thought, ‘Oh, the Jaguars haven’t won in a while. They are a sorry team.’ There are 22 guys that start on their team that are in the National Football League that are the best of the best. There are no easy games. It’s really hard to win in this league. I don’t think there is a disconnect. You just have to keep pushing, practicing hard and preparing well in order to win games.”
(Do you sense any frustration on the part of the players? It is five losses in a row. What is the mindset?) – “I can only speak for myself. I think as a competitor, as a player, I’m always frustrated or disappointed when we don’t win. The goal of the game is to win. Your little league coach can tell you whatever he wants about it’s all about having fun, but no one has ever had fun losing. For me personally, yeah there is frustration that we’re losing, but all of that is is fuel to continue to work hard and continue to prepare well, and that’s all you can do. You can’t dwell on the past and boohoo about we’re this record and we have this many losses. All you can do is focus on the next opponent and get ready to bring your best game to the table.”
G/T Robert Hunt
(The first no-sack performance for this offensive line. Obviously you guys have been working on improving every week. How big is that and how can you build on it?) – “That’s the thing, we are going to try and build on it. It’s one of our goals that we’ve been trying to do this whole season. But we still got a lot of work to do. It’s good when you can keep the quarterback off the ground. That’s pretty good. But like I said, we have a lot of work to do and we all know that. Keep working and doing what we can do to keep him up.”
(You guys are at practice and you are putting in so much time and energy and then the results just don’t come as a team in the form of wins on a Sunday. With the NFL being a business of results, how frustrating is that? That all that time and energy just doesn’t get you in the win column?) – “It sucks because we all want to win. I think we do prepare well. I think we do practice hard. I think we do have good coaches. I think everything is good. I just don’t know what it is. It’s hard to win in the league. Little things can get you beat. We just have to keep trying to improve on the little things.”
(How do you do that?) – “By keep coming in every week and preparing. It’s all we can do. We can control what we can control.”
(How are you guys ensuring that the locker room stays together, that everybody continues to be pushing towards the same direction?) – “We all got to go. We all want to win. We all know how big it is, how important winning is. We all want to win. In the locker room, you can tell that everyone wants to win. Sometimes it just doesn’t go our way. Tough one yesterday. I don’t know. It goes but I think everybody in the locker room has their mind on right and I think we are in the right headspace to continue to perform and compete.”
(The fourth-and-1 at the end, RB Malcolm Brown was stopped. What do you feel that you could have done better to execute there, pick that up and then potentially everything goes the other way after that?) – “That was a tough play. We wish we could have got the first down is what we wish we could have done, but it didn’t go that way. It’s part of the game, sadly, that you get some good ones and sometimes you don’t get good ones. That wasn’t one of our better ones.”
(It’s a step-by-step process but you guys right now are last in the league in rushing yards per game. How do you get that headed in the right direction?) – “I just control, like I said, what we can control. Once we get the runs called, just execute the runs. We’ve got to work on what we can do. We’ve got to come in to practice and there’s a lot of things we can do to get better. That’s what we are going to continue to try to do each week.”
(Do you still feel high energy levels around this team? You guys just had another crushing defeat, a long flight there, a long flight back. As you get set for another week, do you still feel that around this team?) – “The energy is still up. We want to win. This team, I think we can definitely turn this thing around. We are just going to keep coming in and working, competing at practice and doing what we got to do. The energy is definitely up and I was just around and I don’t see anybody with their head down. I think we got the right type of men in the locker room.”
CB Noah Igbinoghene
(How did you approach when you learned you’d play a bigger role in this game with CB Xavien Howard and CB Byron Jones out? How did you assess your performance?) – “Just like I always have, just playing the way I always do. Just coming to work every single day just practicing. It really starts Tuesdays watching film, getting with (Cornerbacks Coach) Charles (Burks) and continuing to build each and every single day leading to the game. Just doing what you need to do in practice and then in the game it’s going to happen itself if you do it in practice. That’s really what I did.”
(What would you say have been the biggest challenges for you this year? Again, first time this year being on the field defensively. What have been the challenges of trying to get back out there and handling the limited playing time up to this point?) – “I’m honestly just getting a feel for the game. The game is of course way faster than we practice. Just getting used to it, continuing to build on that and continuing to get more reps. I think that’s the biggest thing. Continuing to get more experience and it’ll all come by itself.”
(With the season that you’ve been having, the amount of inactives, how did you manage to keep your focus and keep your spirit upbeat?) – “You have to make a decision to just come in to work no matter what’s going on. Just come in to work every single day and give it your all no matter what’s going on. Some things you just can’t control. Just control what you can control. You can control your effort, you can control how hard you go and just going full-out every single day and no matter what, that’s going to happen for itself. Everything is going to turn around and you need to just continue to remain positive, don’t focus on the negative things and keep a positive mindset and positive mind at all times.”
(Head Coach Brian Flores said you were pretty much in good position on the two plays that Jaguars WR Marvin Jones got you on. What could you have possibly done better in those situations? Give me the touchdown, for instance.) – “The touchdown, the first one, I would say at the line, I probably could have widened him out a little more and that probably would have allowed me to be in a better position at the end of the play. I kind of opened the gate at the beginning allowing him to run. No, he didn’t run past me or anything like that but he’s a tall guy, so if he gets in front of you, if he gets that position on you, it’s easy for him to make that play because he’s so tall. So I have to widen him out on the line just to get myself in a better position. Of course, I could have looked back faster as well. He’s not going to take a long time to throw the ball. He’s going to throw the ball. He’s going to catch it and really throw it because we were in the red area, I believe. Just getting my head around and finding the ball as fast as possible and playing it of course. I’m going to work on that this week and I can’t wait to improve on that part.”
(What is it like for you mentally and physically to go from a couple games of being inactive to literally playing every snap?) – “It was fun. I love playing. I love being out there with my team. What was it like? It was honestly just the same thing, just continuing to prepare every single week no matter if I was inactive or not. I prepare the same way like I did this past week. That’s going to be the same way moving forward no matter what happens. That’s how I prepared this week.”
(I wanted to ask you about – there’s been a lot of attention on the last play that they ran before the field goal. What did you see? What were you expecting them to do? Were you thinking Hail Mary? And how did it play out?) – “I wasn’t really thinking anything. Honestly, I wasn’t really – it was just kind of a tough situation all around. The call. It was everything. It was just a mixture of everything. It wasn’t one particular person. It happened. They made a big – he made a big-time kick to win the game. That was a long field goal so big ups to him. We’ve just got to come back next week and just keep going harder.”
S Jevon Holland
(I know you’re an NFL rookie but what are you learning from the struggles that you are going through early this season?) – “Really just coming together as a team. I’ve never really been in a situation like this besides in seventh grade when we went like 0-7. Obviously we are kind of in a slump right now but it’s about bonding together and attacking each week even more. That’s basically what we are really focusing on. That’s what I’m focusing on – trying to bring guys together, make sure I’m always putting a positive light in the locker room and on the field.”
(What are the guys doing to ensure that you guys are bonding, that you guys are sticking together?) – “That’s something that we are going to keep in house. I don’t think it’s really for the media to know.”
(How are you all feeling right now? It’s a long flight that you guys just went over there and back. What’s the energy level like around the team right now especially after it was another very difficult loss on Sunday?) – “You just have to put that stuff behind you. Focus on the next week. We got Atlanta this week. It’s a good team so I’m looking forward to going out there showcasing talent and see how we respond.”
(Since you haven’t lost five games since seventh grade, how do you snap this streak and do you actually see yourself as a team getting better each week even though you are losing?) – “How do I see myself?”
(More as a team. How do you see this team getting better each week even though you are still losing?) – “Like I said, we’re coming together. Pieces are falling in place but it’s just about execution. It really is. I think that’s what I see for myself and I think that’s what everybody else sees. We just have to be able to finish and I think we are heading in the right direction even though the result of the game isn’t what we want. Week by week, I feel like we’re getting better and we’re getting there.”
(From your end personally, the last two weeks you’ve been out there basically every snap defensively. How do you feel you’ve progressed and just the fact that you’re getting the consistent playing time after taking the first couple weeks to get used to the NFL level?) – “I’m feeling pretty good. Every week I learn more about myself and how I’m feeling comfortable and finding my own zone out there. But yeah, every week I’m feeling like I’m getting gradually better. I hope so, that I’m getting better. My dad is telling me I’m getting better. (laughter)”
(In terms of the assignments and the game speed, has it slowed down a bit for you now that your playing time is accelerated?) – “Yeah, the more you are out there, the more you experience, things tend to slow down – in the sense of processing information. Obviously everyone is still very fast. But I definitely feel like I’m picking things up quickly, playing a little faster, which is what I want to be. It’s where my comfort zone is. Gradually, I’m getting better which I’m happy for.”
Head Coach Brian Flores
(I wanted to ask you a question about where you go for guidance. When you first got here, you had Jim Caldwell briefly and he as the veteran coach on your staff and then he wasn’t here. Chan Gailey had veteran coaching experience last season and could be used as a sounding board. Right now, when your team is 1-5 and you have so many issues, where do you go for a sounding board or veteran guidance?) – “I talk to the guys on our coaching staff. The first person that comes to mind is Danny Crossman. Then our coordinators – George Godsey, Eric (Studesville), Josh (Boyer). And then the people on our support staff – Kaleb Thornhill, Drew Brooks and Kyle Johnston. It’s really a team effort. I think those are the people that have a good pulse of the team and just try to get a feel for where guys are at, how guys are feeling and what I’ve gotten is that there is still a lot of belief in our team and the players on our team. I think they support each other. I think they are a resilient group. We are going through some struggles right now but I think they are sticking together. We are going to continue to stick together and try to prepare and practice well this week to have a better performance next week.”
(Most of the time, teams have a bye coming off the trip to London. Your team doesn’t this year. Was that by team request to the league to have a later bye and if so, could you break down the thought process behind it?) – “We don’t have a bye and quite honestly, I think we want to get back out there, especially after a tough loss yesterday. We’ve had west coast trips, obviously this was a lot longer than that but we’ve come back late, gotten in at 2, 3 or 4 a.m. in the morning and then kind of turned it around over the next couple of days. We are going to have to do that again this week. We have a tough opponent coming in here. We are going to have to prepare and have a good week of practice. But yeah, the London trip took a little bit. I would say it’s a long flight back. Nine hours and a long flight out there, the time change, etc. So we are going to have to get our rest the next couple days, make sure we are getting hydrated, make sure we are eating the right things, make sure we are getting ourselves back so we can have a good week of practice.”
(It seemed yesterday’s game was decided by two fourth-down plays. The fourth-and-1 that you guys had and the fourth-and-8 that they had. In looking at the tape, do you think it was more about the decisions you made for the plays or was it more of an execution issue that both of those plays didn’t go your way?) – “It’s a combination of both. When you re-watch it, there’s always, ‘Hey we could have done that, we could have done this.’ I have peace with the calls we made, both offensively and defensively on those fourth downs you mentioned. In the moment, given what we thought could or might happen, the players we wanted in there. We came out of it feeling like those were the right things to do. You’ve got to give credit to Jacksonville, they executed in those situations and we didn’t. You can always go back and say, ‘Hey man, maybe we should have done this or maybe we should have done that.’ But in the moment, it just felt like we were putting our team in the best position in both instances.”
(Watching the game back, it looked like QB Tua Tagovailoa did a pretty good job of mitigating some of the pressure and getting out of pressure within the pocket yesterday. Just wanted to get your take on his ability to work around muddy pockets and when there is pressure, how you thought he did when watching the tape?) – “I thought he did a real nice job yesterday. I thought he played well. I thought he threw the ball well. Obviously, he’s playing with a little bit of discomfort. He made some nice throws, pushed it down the field. There’s always throws he wish he would have made or could have had back but I think overall, he did a lot of good things and I was pleased with the way he played.”
(How was the flight home for you guys? Was it quiet? Was everybody trying to catch up on some sleep? Were you having conversations with some of the players, checking in with them?) – “Guys were disappointed. I was disappointed as well. These guys put a lot into this – a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of preparation and a lot of practice time, so they were disappointed. It was a long flight. Some guys went to sleep, some guys were watching the tape, asking questions about what they could have done here or what they could have done there, what they can do to help this team. There were a lot of conversations like that on our flight.”
(I know a lot of the conversations you have are in confidence, but I was just wondering if broadly you could tell us the reaction Stephen Ross has had to the season so far and yesterday in particular?) – “Obviously he’s disappointed. I don’t want to speak for him but I know that. He wants to see our team have success but that’s really everybody. He’s no different than the players, the coaches, the support staff, the fans. We’ve got to be better. I’ll be the first to say that. Our players are disappointed as well. What I know about our guys is we are going to pick ourselves up, we are going to go to practice on Wednesday, try to improve, try to get better and make the corrections we need to make. Look, we all know this – there is a very small margin for error in this league. Very small. The mistakes we make, or we’ve made, they’ve cost us. We have to try to limit those mistakes as players and coaches. Yeah, there’s a slim, slim margin for error and we’re on the wrong side of that right now. We just need to continue to work. I trust their preparation. I trust the things that they’re doing, the players. We’re always going to evaluate, re-evaluate and see if there’s anything we can do better. But yeah, I think collectively, Steve, Tom (Garfinkel), Chris (Grier), Brandon (Shore) and the entire organization, there’s disappointment and they want better.”
(In talking to a couple of guys yesterday – TE Mike Gesicki and DE Emmanuel Ogbah – they were saying that you guys are so close. What do you need to do to go from so close to getting there?) – “I think it’s work. I think they’re right. I think there are a handful of things in every game where the ball bounces this way, the ball bounces another way, we get a call, we don’t get a call, we make a call, we make the play, we make the tackle, we make a block, we spring somebody and it’s a different ballgame. Again, that’s what I mean by – and they understand this. There’s a very slim margin for error here in this league and that’s for all teams. That’s the beauty of this league. We understand that. We’ve got to do a better job. I’ve got to do a better job of limited the errors that are showing up that are ultimately costing us. Penalties – pre-snap penalties. There’s things like spacing in the pass game. Some things defensively from a run-fit standpoint. There’s just very little things that are the difference between a guy getting three yards and a guy getting six yards. We’ve got to be better in all of those situations.”
(You had a long list of players who weren’t able to play yesterday. I’m wondering if there were any guys who were close to playing and are looking very positive for this Sunday? Or for that matter, are there any guys who might wind up on IR who missed yesterday’s game?) – “I don’t think anyone – I don’t want to speak out of turn but ‘X’ (Xavien Howard), Byron (Jones), (Adam) Shaheen, Preston (Williams), DeVante (Parker) – I don’t see any of those guys going on IR. But we’re day-to-day with all of those guys. I think we’ll just see how it goes in practice. We’ll see if we can get them to practice on a limited basis, although some of those guys practiced last week. Byron practiced last week and Preston practiced a little bit last week. ‘X’ did not. DeVante did not. Shaheen practiced. I think the guys who practiced are probably a little bit closer than the guys who didn’t. But obviously we’ll know more – they’ve got today and tomorrow to treat and rehab. We’ll just take it one day at a time.”
(Given the length of this losing streak, are you as a head coach having to fight frustration or anything along those lines?) – “I think there’s always frustration when you’re dealing with adversity. They kind of go hand in hand. I think as an organization and as a building, it’s a very supportive group. Players support players. Coaches support players. Players support coaches. Support staff supports really everyone. While we’re all frustrated that we’re not getting the results we want, I think everyone kind of believes in what we’re doing and believes in our process. We need to do things just a little bit better really in all areas and if we do that, I think we’re all confident that things will turn.”
(I was listening to some of your comments here and I think there were some common threads about mistakes and figuring out how to minimize those. Correct me if I’m wrong but I think early in the first couple of years, you guys were really minimizing those mistakes. I’m curious why you feel like maybe you guys have taken a step back in maybe the mistake and discipline perspective of the game?) – “Every year is different so it’s hard to say one year to the next. It’s always different players, a different team. You’re dealing with different circumstances. We harp on all of those little things and all of those things that I mentioned earlier. We’ve been – those are always points of emphasis. Every game is a little bit different. I think it’s dependent on some of the things that we’re seeing – the players are seeing and some of the things we’re seeing schematically. Then at the end of the day, there are definitely instances where I know we know what to do but there’s a mental error or somebody goes down and we have somebody in there who didn’t practice it. I’m not going to sit here and make excuses – I’m not going to do that either – but we’re making a lot of mistakes and we need to clean them up.”
(Having practiced against the Falcons in training camp, will that be some benefit this week as you try to get ready for the game on Sunday?) – “I think the one benefit is we’ll have some familiarity with their players. But I’m sure Arthur (Smith) didn’t show all of his cards and we didn’t show all of ours. They’ve got a tough competitive team. We know it will be a tough game. But as far as them coming down here and practicing, I thought both teams got a lot out of that. I think it will be a competitive game.”
(When you go through a stretch like this – I think five straight – how do you balance maybe feeling like you as a coach may have to make a statement versus counting on your player leadership to say something to try to change this?) – “I think this is a team effort. Players, coaches – we’re all in this together. Obviously I have my thoughts and my message that I give to the team. Then the leaders on our team, whether it’s Elandon Roberts or Jesse Davis or Mack Hollins or whoever it may be, I think they have their own message. I think the coaching message is one but the player message, that’s a different thing. But it’s all encompassing and we all kind of work together.”
(I’m wondering now that you’ve reviewed the tape, what did you see out of CB Noah Igbinoghene’s play yesterday in that spot start?) – “I thought Noah did some good things. I thought he tackled more efficiently. Obviously he had the two balls caught on him. I thought he was in good position on both of them. We just talked about going up and being more aggressive to try to get it out of him. I think (Marvin) Jones made a couple of good plays on him. But overall, I thought he did some good things and filled in competitively.”
(Was it the type of performance you’d expect out of CB Noah Igbinoghene considering how much he’s been able to sit on the sideline and take the game in in a different perspective and learn while he’s inactive?) – “We’ve got confidence in Noah. We put him in there and again, he did some good things. That’s what I expected. I expected him to play competitively and tackle well, know where he’s supposed to be and communicate well. Obviously like we all saw, there were a couple of balls that were down the field. I think he had a chance to make a couple of plays on them. I think that’s the next step for him is to go up and get a couple of those out.”
(I know you talked a little bit about that fourth-and-1 with RB Malcolm Brown and liking what you saw there. But a lot of times you’ll see coaches put the ball in their quarterback’s hands in those fourth-quarter situations. I’m curious how much you thought about letting QB Tua Tagovailoa get that and why wasn’t that the answer there?) – “We thought about that. We just felt like we had some success with Malcolm in that instance and felt good about the play. Look, you have to give (Jacksonville) credit. They made a good play there and we didn’t get it done.”
