Brian Flores – September 8, 2019 (Postgame)
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Sunday, September 8, 2019
Postgame – Baltimore
Head Coach Brian Flores
(How do you explain what happened out there today?) – “Well, it starts with coaching. It starts with me. I’ve got to do a better job of coaching this team. We’ve got to play better. It starts with me. We’ve got a long way to go. We’ve got a lot of work we have to do. The good thing is, is we get to practice tomorrow, we get to practice this week, and we’ve got an opportunity to get better. That’s the goal, and that’s what we’ll try to do.”
(What surprised you the most about what you saw out there?) – “We talked about playing penalty free. We talked about having a clean operation, alignments, assignments, trying to play turnover free, and we didn’t accomplish any of that. We talked about starting fast. We didn’t accomplish that. But the good thing is, like I just said, we’ll come back tomorrow. We’ll make the corrections. We’ll try to get this team better on a daily basis, and that’s all we can do.”
(Of course, the score really reflects the way the game went. From where you’re standing, is there anything you can hang your hat on now that you can start to build forward on?) – “I thought we had a good drive at the end of the second half. I thought we were moving the ball, getting some plays in the pass game in the first half. I think we can build on that. But aside from that, we didn’t play well. We didn’t play well. Too many penalties…”
(QB Ryan Fitzpatrick, the way he played, he certainly was pushed around, hit, did everything he could to try to get the offense going.) – “I thought he did well trying to move this offense. I thought he made some throws, got some explosive plays in the first half. We had a couple drops that could have been bigger plays. I thought he played – He had the turnover, which we don’t – it was a bad decision there.”
(The timeouts at the end of the game, were you just trying to get QB Josh Rosen some more reps?) – “I was trying to get the ball. I was trying to get the ball back. Look, I’m going to always play to try to win, get reps and get our team better. There’s nothing like game reps, so let’s take the timeouts and try to get another drive. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to stop them, and they kneeled the clock out.”
(What was the thought process behind putting QB Josh Rosen in the game at that point?) – “The score got to a point where we felt like we just wanted to put Josh in there and get him some work. Look, getting game reps are important. Get him in there, get him some work. ‘Fitz’ (Ryan Fitzpatrick) will be the starter next week, let’s be clear on that; but we just wanted to get Josh in there and get him some game reps.”
(The opponent went fake punt up 35-3 and went for it on fourth down up 52-10. What were your thoughts on that?) – “It’s our job to stop them. Those are my thoughts. It’s not their job to let off. So it’s our job to stop them. (Ravens Head Coach) John (Harbaugh) is a good coach. They’ve got a good team. It’s our job to stop them. I’m not looking for handouts here.”
(What was your message to the team at halftime?) – “Again, there’s a lot we could have done better in the first half, so the message was, ‘Let’s play better. Let’s not have as many penalties. Let’s get aligned. Let’s tackle. Let’s not turn the ball over.’ There’s a lot that happened in that first half. I just wanted us to stick together, play together and fight. We’ve got to fight. We can’t lay down. We’ve got to fight, keep fighting.”
(Pardon me if I misunderstood, did you say QB Ryan Fitzpatrick starts next week?) – “’Fitz’ starts next week, yes.”
(How difficult will the problems on defense be to fix?) – “We’ve got problems on offense, defense and special teams. We’ll try to fix them all. Schematically from a personnel standpoint, we’ll try to fix them all. We’ll try to put our players in the best position to win. We’ve got a lot of work to do from that standpoint.”
(How do you evaluate a situation where you’ve got guys that weren’t even here last week inserted in the lineup, trying to get things going with them? How do you make an evaluation on them?) – “You watch the tape, evaluate it, as we’ve evaluated the entire training camp. Do they know their assignments? Are they playing penalty free? Are we tackling? Are we getting aligned? We’re just making our normal evaluation. The good thing here, the silver lining, is we’ve got an opportunity to come in tomorrow and go into this week and get better and try to improve and we’ll have another opportunity to play next week. I’m looking forward to that.”
(We saw S Minkah Fitzpatrick got pulled in the second half.) – “We were rolling guys the entire game. Reshad (Jones) was in, Minkah was in, Bobby (McCain) was in, (Steven) Parker was in, Walt Aikens played in there, so we were rolling guys. But I would say everyone has got to play better across the board. We’ve got to coach them better. There’s no doubt about that.”
(How much concern do you have about whether the roster is talented enough to be…) – “I don’t worry about that. We’ve got the guys we’ve got. We’re going to coach them. It’s our job to coach them. It’s our job to get them better. It’s our job to put them in positions to play well and make plays, and that’s my job. I’m not getting into – Look, I’m not an excuse maker. I never have been. Put that in the excuse bucket and you can kick it to the curb, because I’m not into that.”
(You’re going to play your former team next week. How does that affect you?) – “I’ll just go through my normal process, my normal routine. I’ll obviously reflect on what this was this past week and try to improve it and try to do a better job. At the end of the day, how this team plays is a reflection of me, and I have to do a better job, and this team has to do a better job, and we’ll come to work tomorrow and try to do that.”
(What did you think you could do defensively against that team that you thought this could work?) – “Obviously, what we thought we could do, we didn’t execute. I thought we could execute. We didn’t do a good job of execution. We’ve got to do a better job there. I didn’t think there was a scheme issue. There was an execution problem and we weren’t getting aligned. We’ll be better next week.”
