JAGUARS HEAD COACH DOUG MARRONE
(On an injury update) “Josh Lambo will be significant time, so we’ll probably be placing him on IR. Laviska [Shenault Jr.] seemed to be better than we expected and we’ll see how he progresses during the week, so that was encouraging. Doug Costin, who I thought did some really good things, he’s in concussion protocol. We’ll look at Dakota Allen, see where he progresses during the week, see if we can get him back. Both D.J. Hayden and [Andrew] Wingard are eligible to come back this week, so we’ll see where they are with that. Gardner [Minshew II] is progressing but it doesn’t seem like he’ll be progressing enough to be ready, so Jake [Luton] will play quarterback.”
(On options for a replacement kicker) “We’re working on it, so I think as soon as it becomes official, like everything else in this league, you guys will probably hear about it from agents and things like that. But we’re working on it, as soon as we get it official, we’ll get it to you guys right away.”
(On K Aldrick Rosas returning to the team and his eligibility) “He’s serving a suspension, so it’ll be most likely some time at the end of November where he’ll be eligible to participate in games.”
(On QB Jake Luton’s performance yesterday) “I think everything that we said after the game, I pretty much reiterate it and I think I felt the same way. Then I think it goes back to, ‘Hey listen, what are the next steps?’, talking about some footwork stuff, some scrambling drill, accuracy when he’s scrambling, and then just see, just keep bringing him along and hopefully he’ll get better the more he plays. I mean, you almost look at it as almost that’s really like preseason Game One as far as getting out there and going to play. He did some good things and like I said, I think when Gene asked a question last week, you don’t get too high, you don’t get too low. He doesn’t, so he prepares the same way every time, works hard, and we’ll just see how he goes out there and preforms. We’re going on the road playing one of the best teams in the league.”
(On QB Jake Luton’s ability to complete throws downfield when most rookies tend to overthrow) “I think he was about, I don’t know what his exact numbers [were], 4-7 or 5-7 on our potential shots going down the field, which is pretty good, something to build on. I would say that was a good job. I think that does happen quite a bit, the one thing you don’t want to be is short so you see a lot of overthrows when guys are early and that’s what you try to get in practice. That’s how you want to train them, you want to train them to get the ball out there and let those guys run underneath it. That’s the first thing you want to do so he did a good job of that.”
(On his assessment of the defensive line against the Texans) “Kind of what we said during the week, we were kind of scheming it up a little bit as far as getting guys to be able to [do that] when we simulate the pressure of what’s going on. That really worked for us. That’s something that we haven’t really done in the past. I think you have young players that weren’t around, I think they’re starting to play better. We’re starting to get pressure. We let a couple sacks get away from us where we had him [Texans QB Deshaun Watson] in the grass a couple times, and we let him escape and I mean Deshaun Watson’s really good at that. I think we’re trending in the right direction, probably not fast enough for all of us. It’s been increasing. Obviously, it’ll be a great challenge this week with their line and their quarterback. Any mistake and you’re in trouble. I think there’s a couple of these young guys, like I said, [Doug] Costin went in there and did a nice job. I really liked the way he played. Daniel [Ekuale] played about 19 snaps at nose. He did some good things. Talking about some of the younger guys, DaVon Hamilton, he’s going to be a good player. I think everyone sees that. He played 30 something snaps. Taven [Bryan]’s snaps were reduced. He came out early, did some good things and we have to keep him improving. Josh [Allen] and K’Lavon [Chaisson], they missed some opportunities but made some plays, especially Josh. I think he’s starting to get into a groove and go. We just have to keep him focused and not trying to make every play. That’s one of the problems that happens upfront a little bit when you’re trying to make every play and you’re getting out of your gap and you’re doing thing. I think Adam Gotsis has been real solid for us. I think he’s been real good first, second down player. I thought that Kamalei [Correa]’s probably coming off his best game for us. In the snaps, I think that we have to see if we can get Aaron Lynch up this week, see where he’s at. I think that he might be able to help us. We have to continue to keep doing that, keep working on these combinations, keep putting different combinations in there to keep improving and find ways to get better. I think that’s the one thing I’m most happy about is that when we have recognized we’ve had some issues that we just didn’t stick our head in the sand and just keep pounding it. We just keep trying to do different things to improve and that difficult and that’s challenging for all of us as coaches and players, but you have to do it. You’re fighting out there every week and those guys are fighting hard and we’re fighting hard in here, so we’re going to continue to keep doing that and see how we can get the best guys out there and best combinations, best scheme because obviously we’re away from a lot of the principles that we’ve built on to try to win games.”
(On not being able to convert on third-and-1 plays) “I think when you look at it, there are times where you feel like we have control and we’re doing well and we’re running the ball, at least at a pretty decent pace, and then you get these critical situations of third-and-1 and fourth-and-1 where you can’t convert. That’s really on everyone. It’s discouraging because normally, I believe, you guys would have to check it, but I think on fourth-and-1, it’s like a 69 percent chance of conversion around the league. Right now, I think we’re 0-3, so we’re last in the league at those conversations. It’s harder to make those calls on the sideline from a game management point. You feel like you’re going to be able to get it. The first one gets collapsed a little bit. Second one, we have somebody fall and slip, we have another guy come into the hole. There’s really no excuse for that and that’s [the] kind of thing you look at that and you get so upset and sometimes you forget some of the good things they’re doing. But make no mistake about it, we talked today as coaches, I told them, I said, ‘We have to make sure we get our mentality straight in those situations. You know they’re going to be coming downhill. You know they’re going to come after us. You know they’re going to be hunkering down and we just have to move them.’ We’ve shown that we can do that, and we haven’t done that at a critical time. I think that’s a lot of times [when] I look at the line and it’s like maybe five or six things that didn’t go well, but you look at the rest of the game and you’re like, ‘Wow, they did a pretty good job’ and then what about the five or six things? You go back to the third-and-1, fourth-and-1, well that’s two of them right there at a critical time and that’s where we need them and that’s where we need to step up. I guess my answer would be it’s unfortunate. I think I will still have that same mentality though going forward when I think that we can still keep a possession going and do it and we’re just going to get better at it.”
(On the reduction in DL Taven Bryan’s snaps) “Doug [Costin]’s in concussion protocol, but I like the production we have with him. This is the first time that he really started, so he went in that game and started for the first time and [it was] probably the first time it really flipped from a standpoint of the snaps. I think that Taven [Bryan], he started off well, but we have to keep that consistency throughout the game to get the type of production and just keep working with him. These are all guys that, Doug, like I said before, we liked him. Like I said, he was a free agent and coming out of training camp, we didn’t want to expose him to the practice squad, we kept him on the roster. We were worried about that and think he’s gone in there and played well. I think the guy that’s probably getting lost, for how well he’s playing, is probably [DaVon] Hamilton. He gets lost in there because it’s hard to see it, even for me sometimes on the sideline. I’ve always prided myself that I can see the whole game and answer all the questions afterwards, but a lot of times after the game the next day when I’m watching the film, there’s a lot of good things I see out of those guys. I think Taven just has to go in and keep working and get that discipline technically, technique wise with his feet and seeing it. So, we’re not discarding him, we’re going to keep trying to get him better and trying to get those snaps because the one thing at that position, you’re going to have these, especially inside, where a lot of things start off with two. Just think about it, you have two 300-pound guys coming off a football, usually hitting the one down lineman, so you need a pretty decent rotation in there, whether it’s 20 something snaps and another 20 for someone else. When you start getting those high 30’s, high 40’s with certain players, you can wear those guys out pretty quick and that can hurt you later in the game. It’s definitely going to hurt you later in the season. So, we’re still trying to find a couple different combinations, not for first and second down, but really on how we want to rush different combinations of guys putting them inside.”
(On his assessment of WR DJ Chark Jr. and his expectations for the rest of the season) “I think yesterday was a good indication of what we would like to see to keep going forward. I think that DJ [Chark Jr.]’s done a good job. We haven’t thrown as well at times in the season and that might have been due to Gardner [Minshew II]’s injury when he was in there playing, but we were able to throw yesterday and he made some big plays. I’d like to see him continue to make plays and I thought yesterday he did a really good job of stretching the field for us, really getting it down the field. I thought Tyler Eifert did a couple good things to stretch it. Then [Keelan] Cole [Sr.], obviously we didn’t have as many targets, we need to get him going because he’s been really having a good year for us. Laviska [Shenault Jr.], we had a lot in for him and he unfortunately had the injury come up, but he’s made some plays. I think Collin [Johnson] has made the plays in practice, but we need to see it transfer over to the field more consistently, but he’s a young player, a first-year guy. So, I expect this week if Jake [Luton] continues to grow, I think those numbers could pick up.”
(On CB CJ Henderson’s development) “I think there’s been injuries, which always give you a little bit of setbacks. Those are always difficult for anyone to deal with. I think that he had some opportunities yesterday that he could’ve made some plays and I’m sure he’d like to get some of those back. Opposite him, I think Sidney [Jones IV], he’s been playing really well for us. We’re real happy with the way he’s playing at corner defending plays. He’s doing a really good job. Tre Herndon probably had his best game for us on the inside. He made 4-4 in plays that he was able to make. I think [Chris] Claybrooks, we’re getting everything we can from a corner position, which we didn’t even expect coming in. One thing about him yesterday, you think about the story of he gets into one game, has some drops, the question is the confidence level. You keep working in practice, keep working in practice, then you throw him in there and you’re like, ‘Okay, are you still going to go after it and still hit it like the way we want you to?’ I thought he did a really good job yesterday of hitting it and especially the big return right before the half was critical to get some points out of that. So, I was happy to see him come back because here’s someone that was doing it and then had a problem, worked on it, came back, and did it to a point now where I think we can get what we wanted, what we thought we would get when we took him.”
(On S Daniel Thomas getting more snaps last week) “I think I’ll still stay with what I said last week, I still feel that way. Josh [Jones] has made a lot of plays for us, he really has. Daniel [Thomas]’s been a guy that has a potential to make plays. I think it’s unfortunate when you have two players at the same position that have the ability to play well and that’s a unique position so it’s not like we can have both of them on the field at the same time unless we put some different types of packages in. We’ve looked at a couple of things and I believe maybe two weeks ago we did something to that effect, just very minimal. So, Daniel didn’t do anything bad. He had the good man coverage; you saw that in the tight end down the sideline. Now Andrew Wingard comes back, so he goes back to the safety position. Those guys are much better up than they are back, so we’re constantly looking at it. But I don’t know if I can answer that question. My goal was to play both those players, get Daniel in there some to hopefully get better production out of that position and more production out of that position and I think we did help ourselves a little bit. I don’t know, we’ll evaluate that during the week.”
(On getting WR Chris Conley more involved this week against Green Bay) “That’s one of the things you look at and Chris [Conley] is such a good pro. What he really did was he filled in for Laviska [Shenault Jr.]. Laviska gets injured, Chris goes in there and really does a good job. We feel like there’s a good snap count for Chris on what he has to do and really feel like he did a good job in the run game, he did a good job in the passing game. It’s just that rotation of guys that we’re trying to get done. I have no problem when Chris is in there. I have the upmost respect for him and I respect the hell out of not just him but any player that when someone gets injured and you’re ready to go in there and you play at that level. You don’t see that all the time, but for Chris to do that is obviously something he expects of himself and I have a great deal of respect for that. So, I’m very happy with him and if Laviska can’t go at the end of the week and we have Chris up, I feel comfortable with that too.”
(On how the defense played against the run against the Texans) “I thought we missed a couple, two or three in some of the misdirection stuff that they got big yardage on early on. I thought the quarterback scrambles hurt us obviously during the game. I think the wide stuff, the stuff on the outside, I thought we did a good job. At the end of the game, I think [QB Deshaun] Watson was their leading rusher with 50 yards with mostly scrambles and I think it was whatever they averaged, like 3.5 yards a gain, which is not bad.”
(On former Jaguars TE and current Packers TE Marcedes Lewis) “I haven’t watched him yet. I try to get to this press conference without looking ahead as far as watching the film. But again, when Marcedes [Lewis] was here, he was great, loved everything he did, really played extremely well for us, was great in the locker room, great with the younger players. It doesn’t surprise me [that he’s still playing]. He’s a guy that’s always taking care of his body. That’s one of the things, like I said before, guys that have played this long, they really have to do a good job of taking caring of their bodies. I have a ton of respect for him. He was great, never had any issues. If anything, he helped me out a ton. So, I’m happy to see he’s still playing and I’m happy to see that he’s healthy.”
(On why other teams are able to make big plays and this team hasn’t) “I think when you look at the game and the games [plays] that are called you see… I want to make sure that I answer this correctly. There are some things that, I always say, if you’ve done this for a long time, there’s always four to five calls that went against all the analytics, all the things that you were expecting when you’re really trying to help like, ‘Hey, we have this now.’ I always thought that after a game when I used to go to, and it’s a great question for, the coordinator. I go through the sheets and I’m like, ‘Okay, I wish I was in zone and I played man. I wish I would’ve pressured when I played coverage, or I wish I would’ve had this play up knowing that they were going to play us in quarters for a big play.’ So, there’s a couple things like that, but I think that goes on throughout the whole league. Then a lot of times, the big difference with some of those things is some guy will just make a play: catch, break a tackle, go. You see yesterday the explosive plays that we had given up, guys that are able to make a play where we can’t get a guy down, things like that. I think it’s easier for everyone to kind of look and see when these positions come of you’re in position, but who’s going to be the playmaker? Is it you or is it your opponent? It’s easy to see it a lot of times on the perimeter, on the outside, with jump balls and all those things like that. I think right now we have to keep trying to put them in the best position we can and that’s a lot of things. You can play a lot of different leverage positions and keep working to try to schematically facilitate making plays in all three areas.”
(On it’s on the players to step up more to make plays) “No, we have to do a better job as coaches. I’ll just stick with that.”
