Brian Flores – September 13, 2020 (Postgame)
Download PDF version
Sunday, September 13, 2020
Postgame – New England
Head Coach Brian Flores – (transcribed by New England Patriots)
(I wanted to ask your thoughts on how Ryan Fitzpatrick played today?) – “Had some spurts there where we were moving the ball, but obviously with turnovers, those are huge. We talk about that a lot as a team. It’s tough to win when you turn the ball over. But I do think he had some, put some drives together. We only finished the one. But just too many turnovers at the end of the day.”
(Coach, they ran for over 200 yards. What did you think of the run defense and the ability to stop Cam Newton running the football?) – “We’ve got to do better at run defense. Obviously the quarterback was an issue. Yeah, we’ve got to do a better job.”
(Wanted to ask you, we saw a lot of Myles Gaskin today. Was that the game plan? Was that because Jordan Howard was injured? Or was it just the plan to play him over Matt Breida today?) – “Myles (Gaskin) has practiced well. There’s a rotation there at the running back with (Jordan) Howard and Matt (Breida). (Patrick) Larid got a few snaps as well. He had a couple of good runs, some good plays in the passing game as well; so we left him in there.”
(What can you say about Jerome Baker’s day? He had the stop at the goal line with N’Keal Harry. Also had the push on Cam that led to the touchdown and then the penalty with Edelman on that final drive there. What can you say about his kind of up-and-down day?) – “It’s a team game. It’s not one guy. It’s not just Jerome (Baker) or ‘Fitz’ (Ryan Fitzpatrick). We’ve got to do a better job as a unit and as a team offensively, defensively and in the kicking game. We didn’t do enough to win today. We’ve got to do a better job, so we’ll go back, learn from the tape. We meet on this tomorrow and then close the book on this one and move on to the next opponent.”
(Without the benefit of being able to review the game on tape, it seemed like the offensive line held up fairly well. What was your assessment from field level?) – “I thought from a protection standpoint we were okay. We had the one sack late in the game. But other than that we were able to protect. He had time in the pocket. It’s a good rush, good secondary. But again, that part of it, it’s a team game, so you can play well in one phase and not play well in enough phases. And not enough (is) not good enough.”
(What were your first impressions of Brandon Jones slotted in there in that first drive?) – “I thought he had an up-and-down game without reviewing the film. Again, he’s practiced well. We stuck him in there. I thought he made a couple good tackles in the open field and did good job in the kicking game from what I saw, but we’ll go back and learn from the tape. Again, he’s a rookie. This is his first NFL game, so he’ll learn from it just like all the other rookies.”
(Just curious, you mentioned Cam Newton’s running. How much of their 217 yards do you think was based on that and how much was just outmuscling?) – “It was based on a lot of things – bad technique, bad tackling. We’ve got to clean up a lot of things in the run game, which obviously that will be a focus this week.”
(Do you have a status update on DeVante Parker? We saw him leave and not come back.) – “He’s in there. We’ll take a look at him over the course of the week. I don’t have a status update right now, but obviously he didn’t return, so we’ll see what it looks like tomorrow and in the coming days.”
(Wanted to ask you about the last drive. Did you consider kicking a field goal earlier or was it all along you were going to go for the touchdown? And also do you think that Gesicki was (indiscernible) with that last throw?) – “We were obviously trying to score a touchdown. If we didn’t pick up the last one we would have kicked the field goal. Unfortunately the ball was picked off. Whether they made the call, didn’t make the call; there’s not much we can do. We’ve just got to live with the calls that are made or made on the field.”
(What was the view on the field of Preston Williams on those two interceptions from Fitz in the first half, the one where he kind of lost his footing, at least one of them, and one he was jammed up by Gilmore? What did you see on those plays?) – “I’ve got to go back and watch the film. All I had was the tablets. I didn’t look up for the replay. We were just kind of moving on to the defensive side of the ball. I’ll be able to tell you that probably more tomorrow.”
(How did Xavien Howard look to you, and obviously it seemed as though there was a rep range that you guys wanted to stay within. Is that right?) – “Again, I’m not going to be able to say how he looked until I watch the tape. But, yeah, we wanted to, obviously coming off the injury, no preseason, no games; just wanted to get the three guys in there along with (Jamal) Perry. So I think we got that accomplished. And I’ll be able to have a better evaluation once I watch the tape.”
(You just touched on it but without the benefit of having the preseason, I’m curious of your evaluation of kind of the first time these guys got to live tackle and their conditioning from that standpoint.) – “I felt like overall the tackling could have been better. The conditioning could have been better. Obviously without — we’re not going to make any excuses on whether we had preseason games. They didn’t have any preseason games either. But all things we can improve on. We can improve the tackling. We can improve the run defense. We can improve the conditioning. We’ll work on those things over the course of the week and we’ve got a tough opponent next week and we’ll get back to it.”
