Emmanuel Ogbah and Christian Wilkins – December 19, 2021 (Postgame)
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Sunday, December 19, 2021
Postgame – N.Y. Jets
DT Christian Wilkins and DE Emmanuel Ogbah
CHRISTIAN WILKINS: Excuse me. Before I answer any questions, before we answer any questions, we definitely want our thoughts and prayers and ask everybody for their thoughts and prayers to go out to Elijah Riley, number 33. Obviously, you know he got carted off the field today, and it’s bigger than the game. It’s bigger than competition. We’re all brothers in arms in this league, and so we definitely wish him the best.
Q. What’s up, Christian. How are you doing, bro?
CHRISTIAN WILKINS: Mighty fine. Mighty fine. Thank you.
Q. You’ve never shied away from letting us know how athletic you are over the course of the past few years, but your dance moves were on full display after your very athletic touchdown. You pretty much did everything but throw out the kitchen sink. Just talk about the dive into the crowd, the worm, the windmill…
CHRISTIAN WILKINS: You said on full display? I was holding back, honestly. You ain’t seen me at a wedding or at a bar mitzvah or nothing like that. That’s when the moves are on full display. But it was definitely exciting. It was cool. I was happy I was able to make a play for my team. But yeah, I don’t know how I squeezed all that into 40 seconds or into however long the play clock was because I felt like I was going for a while. I enjoyed it. It was fun. Glad I could make a play for my team.
Q. Christian, to stay on the celebration, how long have you been planning that choreograph out, and have you ever jumped into the stands like that before?
CHRISTIAN WILKINS: Nope, never did none of that. I just went with it. Just did whatever felt good in my soul. None of it was planned. I did mess up because the one thing I did have planned if I scored today, I wanted to do the “Waddle.” Obviously, Jaylen (Waddle) didn’t play today, so I wanted to give him some love, so sorry about that, ‘J’ (Jaylen Waddle). Yeah, I kind of went rogue with my celebrations. That was the only thing I had planned, but yeah.
Q. I do want to stick to the – what dances do you break out at bar mitzvahs and weddings?
CHRISTIAN WILKINS: Like I said, I don’t really like to talk about it. I’ll be about it. If I’m at a bar mitzvah, I’ll do my thing and have a good time with it.
Q. If there was a dance battle between you and Robert Hunt, who is taking that?
CHRISTIAN WILKINS: I don’t know. I’m competitive, so I’m going to go – I’ve got to go with me. I’m never going to say anyone is better than me at anything, or at least I’m going to get an A for effort always.
Q. I’ve go two for Emmanuel. Can you rate your teammate’s dance moves for us, and then obviously rate the performance at defense. Six sacks today.
EMMANUEL OGBAH: I was pretty excited for him. I didn’t know what he was going to do, so I kind of just ran out there and waited for him to do something. I’ll rate him a 10 out of 10.
CHRISTIAN WILKINS: My dawg. (laughter)
EMMANUEL OGBAH: He put something together, but as a defense, getting six sacks, I’m proud of how the defense fought back. We started off a little slow, but we got better during the second half. I’m just glad we finished off strong.
Q. Emmanuel, I wanted to ask you and Christian, too, if you want to chime in, what was the difference between the first half and the second half defensively because it looked like two different defenses out there from one half to the next.
EMMANUEL OGBAH: I’ll start off. I feel like we started a little slow coming off the bye week. We were a little sluggish. We can’t start off slow like that anymore. We’ve just got to start off fast every game, and we’ve just got to keep getting better together and keep striving for the best.
Q. Christian.
CHRISTIAN WILKINS: Yeah, Ogbah hit on it. Bye week is obviously good to get off your feet and things like that, but we definitely started off – we were just shaking off the rust, I guess, and we did a good job of making adjustments and everybody just stuck with it. We dug ourselves in a little bit of a hole, but that’s what’s good about this team. We always just stick together and just try to get better.
Q. You guys’ defense had a couple of situations where kind of late in the game you guys are asked to make a big stop. At this point of the season is that a position you kind of relish to be on the field last and get that last stop, and what’s kind of the message in the huddle when you guys are going out for that last drive?
EMMANUEL OGBAH: It’s complementary football. When we’re given a chance to stop the offense, we do a good job in stopping them, and also, when the offense is given a chance to make some big plays and create a big play for us, we’ve just got to rally together and just play together, so that’s what we’ve got to keep doing.
Q. Christian, I wanted to get this opportunity. I’ve been asking some teammates about the one thing that they would want to take from Emmanuel Ogbah’s game. What would you want from his game?
CHRISTIAN WILKINS: Definitely Ogbah has elite get-off, and that gives him the ability to make so many plays in the pass game and really just the run game. He is explosive and things like that. I would take definitely his get-off. That’s where it starts. I got a lot more behind me. I got a lot bigger legs and things like that, so it’s a little harder to get that good explosion, but Ogbah has a great get-off, so I would take that.
