Jakeem Grant – December 24, 2017 (Postgame)
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Sunday, December 17, 2017
Postgame – Kansas City Chiefs
Dolphins WR Jakeem Grant (transcribed by the Kansas City Chiefs)
On today’s missed opportunities: “We got to capitalize and not have those penalties. We started moving things forward, but then we started shooting ourselves in the foot with penalties. We just got to get those corrected.”
Did you feel that the passing game was the best that it’s been? “It was good, but I’m not worried about the passing and being involved, as long as we win is what I’m more focused about and we didn’t do that today. All that doesn’t mean anything to me.”
Is “missed opportunities” going to be the one thing that stands out when looking back at this season? “Yeah, there’s some things you wish you could go back and change. It’s the game of football, you got to execute it right there. We just got to hope and get better next week, each and every week. We just have to worry about this next game and executing it as best as we can.”
On his touchdown reception: “It was just a screen, like a previous screen I ran before. I just made a play and lowered my pads and ran over the guy. I didn’t think I was going to run him over, but I did. When he fell off, it was easy running. It was great execution by the whole offense.”
On being eliminated from playoff contention: “It sucks, just going off last year being in the playoffs, you just want to get back into the playoffs. It didn’t happen this way. You can’t say anything about it and we just got to go and execute the next game.”
T.J. McDonald – December 24, 2017 (Postgame)
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Sunday, December 17, 2017
Postgame – Kansas City Chiefs
Dolphins S T.J. McDonald (transcribed by the Kansas City Chiefs)
On today’s loss: “We just didn’t do enough. Point blank. We just didn’t do enough. We got to be more consistent. Hats off to them.”
Did the defense under achieve this year? “You always think that you can do better. I feel like we have good players here. We have guys that can play good football, but it didn’t happen for us. We have one more game and we’ll go out there and put on some good film and it’s something to build on.”
On being eliminated from playoff contention: “It is what it is. It is what it is. It sucks. It sucks. You want to go to the playoffs, you want to continue to keep playing. The whole goal is to win and when you don’t win it sucks. You can’t sugarcoat it. It doesn’t feel good.”
Jay Cutler – December 24, 2017 (Postgame)
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Sunday, December 17, 2017
Postgame – Kansas City Chiefs
Dolphins QB Jay Cutler (transcribed by the Kansas City Chiefs)
Seemed like offensively you had to settle for field goals instead of touchdowns – how did that aspect of the game hurt you? “It’s hard to win football games only kicking field goals. The offense was rolling pretty good at times. I thought we moved the ball really well. There was only one three and out and other than that, a couple fumbles and missed opportunities here, a penalty when we were driving. It’s those types of things can hurt you in a big way.”
Does it just seem like the same story to you over and over again? “I think all those things are recipes for teams, win a few, lose a few. If you’re going to be consistent in this league those are the things that you have to eliminate. You got to eliminate turnovers, key penalties, got to be in the red zone, third down efficiency. I think it’s a hard recipe or solution. You look at the top 10 teams and the guys that are getting into the playoffs, probably doing all those things really well.”
With the playoffs out of the picture now, how do you approach next week’s game? “Same as this week. We’re going to keep going until they tell us not to. I think there’s still a lot of fight left in that locker room. It’s a good group of guys. We’ll get ready for next week and we’re going to give it our best shot.”
Anything you can say about the season right now through 15 games? “No. I don’t think it’s fair. These things, after 12 years it takes a little bit of time for these things to sink in. To gain perspective I think you have to step away for a little bit to really look back at it and know exactly what happened.”
Adam Gase – December 24, 2017 (Postgame)
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Sunday, December 17, 2017
Postgame – Kansas City Chiefs
Dolphins Head Coach Adam Gase (transcribed by the Kansas City Chiefs)
On the amount of penalties, third down conversions and negative plays: “We just never could play together again. That’s the biggest problem. We get a stop, then we turn it over. We had an early turnover that’s just not going to cut it against a playoff team.”
On Jay Cutler moving the ball well: “Yeah, he was good. There’s a couple of things I’m sure he’ll, when he goes back and looks at things, probably want one back, but I thought for the most part he did a really good job. He controlled the game for as much as he could. In the second half, he didn’t really do much.”
On how he feels about being eliminated from the playoffs: “It’s tough. This is what you play for. We’ve had a couple weeks here in a row where we’ve had good opportunities to do something with the opportunity that we had. Instead, we just came out, didn’t perform well, and didn’t get it done.”
On what had been the issue on the defensive side of the ball: “We got beat by a couple of the guys who we talked about stopping. That’s really what hurt us. We thought we had a good plan coming in, got in a couple of situations that we couldn’t use what we had planned and we couldn’t find a way to be consistent and get them off the field.”
On how surprised he was seeing Kenny (Stills) and Jarvis (Landry) stripped balls: “Yeah we’ve been pretty good for the most part with the wide outs. That was the one thing we talked about was Marcus (Peters) does a good job. That’s what he does. He goes after the ball and gets those; probably the fifth or sixth one that he’s gotten out or recovered.”
On what the difference this year was this year with penalties: “Yeah, we had a really bad streak there the first eight games and then it looked like we were going to clean it up there for a while then we kind of got in the pre-snap penalties for a few weeks and then we get called for a holding at the wrong time and then we get some defensive holdings. We just have to play clean.”
On his perspective of Ted Larsen’s unsportsmanlike conduct call: “I didn’t see it. I was trying to figure out what happened the play before, basically on that play. It was a little bit of a surprise the way Jay (Cutler) threw the ball away. I was trying to figure out what happened on that and then somebody said there was a flag.”
On what happened when it appeared he was yelling at Jarvis (Landry): “It’s just part of the game. It just happens. Not the first time. You guys just noticed this one.”
On what Jakeem Grant showed today: “That he’s a guy we think we’ve got something there. Him and (Kenyan) Drake have done a great job of stepping up especially in the last eight games of the season making plays for us. I feel like Jakeem, we wanted to get him the ball. We’ve been trying to find ways to do it, it’s tough sometimes because when he goes into the game, it’s a big red flag. We’ve been trying to keep him in there. It’s tough with those other three guys because you like them being on the field too. So we just try to find ways to get him on the field and we kind of used him as really a relief for Drake a lot of the times. We were able to get him involved today and if he would have had a few more that would have kept the game closer.”
On a possible recurring theme for those nine losses this year: “Yeah that’s probably going to be more of an offseason deal. I wish I had a great answer of ‘this is why’. The best I can give you is we haven’t played one game of complimentary football the whole season. That’s just really not going to cut it and we’re not going to win many games if we do that.”
