Brian Flores – August 16, 2019 (Postgame)
Friday, August 16, 2019
Postgame – Tampa Bay
Head Coach Brian Flores (Transcribed by Tampa Bay Buccaneers)
(On how QB Josh Rosen performed…) – “I thought he played well in the first half. I thought he made some smart decisions early. I’d like to see him not take those couple of sacks on that one series. He did step up in the pocket on that one. Overall, he had good command of the huddle. He did a lot of good things overall. It didn’t help when you had two dropped balls that would’ve kept those drives going a little longer. I think overall as a team there was too many penalties, too many missed tackles, too many dropped balls. Those are the things – in a close game like that, those are the difference. We’ll keep harping on those things, We did a lot of good things over the course of this week and tonight in the game. I’m encouraged by that.”
(On his decision to start Rosen in the first half…) – “We felt like we wanted to get him in early against Tampa’s first group and also get him some snaps with the center and some of those receivers in that group.”
(On the quarterback battle…) – “I mean it’s hard to say going through the film. Fitzy (Ryan Fitzpatrick) went in there and did a good job. Jake [Rudock] went in there and did a good job took us down the field at the end and scored that two-point conversion. Look, it’s always a competition, that’s the way it will always be around here.”
(On whether or not he saw enough out of Fitzpatrick to make a quarterback decision for Week 1…) – “Nah, we will probably start him next week.”
(On the play of the offensive line…) – “I think it was better. We protected inside out, kept the pocket clean. A good amount of the night there were some instances where the quarterback position was able to help those guys out and stepped up in the pocket. But again, I’ll get a better look at it tomorrow. There were some holding penalties that we didn’t like that kind of stalled some drives. Those are the things that hinder an offense more than anything. We were down in the red zone early, a holding penalty pushed us from 2nd-and-7 to 1st-and-19 – not exactly sure but it was somewhere in that realm. We’ve just got to a better job overall as a team of limiting the penalties, doing a good job of ball security, tackling, basic fundamentals. Look its an imperfect game, so I know we are going to get a holding there, a missed tackle here and there and a drop the ball there. As much as we can limit those things, that will help us.”
(On how WR Preston Williams performed…) – “He had a drop early. He’s a young kid, it was his second full game. Every experience is good for him. He had a couple punt returns. Guys in this league are fast, if you are going to go east to west, you better be extremely fast, and even then, you got those fast guys chasing you. That’s an experience for him … hopefully he’s learning from that. He’s had a good camp, he had a good week. Look he’s young he’s going to make some mistakes. We’re just going to correct them and he’s going to be good.”
(On whether this was the most successful outing of training camp for the front seven…) – “I would like to see us start faster. We made a couple first downs there, missed a tackle there, a sack, a potential sack. That’s one of the problems we’re not really attacking the quarterback very often, you know at all. We haven’t done it at all actually. It hasn’t happened at all. Jameis [Winston] is a big, strong quarterback. There are a lot of quarterbacks in this league that are that way. Defensively, we talked about right after that series, break down then accelerate, wrap up, put these guys to the ground. We made that adjustment, and again, another good experience for us.”
(On what makes LB Jerome Baker a good blitzer…) – “He’s got a good feel for it. Also, he has got good speed, good athleticism and he’s got good timing as well. He does a good job of studying cadence and he times them up pretty well.”
(On QB Ryan Fitzpatrick lowering his shoulder…) – “Fitz is tough. This isn’t the first time seeing him do that, he’s as tough as they come. You kind of cringe a little bit, you don’t want to see a quarterback doing that, but that’s a part of this game. Talk to these guys about coming loose and turning and cutting loose. I think they did that overall as a group. I saw a lot of encouragement from the guys for their teammates. You know they’re having fun out there. Should have seen the sideline light up. I’m not encouraging that, but we love his toughness and leadership. Guys want to play for a guy who can put it on the line like that.”
(On the pass interference call that was challenged and overturned…) – “No, I’m still not convinced … Those are the rules and that was the call, we’ve got to move past it, move on, move on to the next play. We know there’s going to be some adversity. We know there are going to get some bad calls, not saying it’s a bad call, but there’s going to be bumps in the road and you just have to play through it.”
(On how to judge whether or not to challenge a pass interference call…) – “I think it’s still a work in progress, that’s why I’m asking the officials all the questions I can ask. Practice setting – we had the officials there at practice in our training camp, so I ask those guys a lot of questions. I show them certain things and say, ‘Is this a good opportunity for me to challenge?’ So, it’s a work in progress. We’ve got a team of people and staff who are charged with the rules and challenges and penalties. It’s something that we need to work on. I think a lot of it is an opportunity where we feel like field position is a part of it.”
(Does Fitzpatrick’s toughness play into the evaluation process…) – “I think it’s all a part of it – the toughness, the grit, the leadership. We want to see it from all our players, specifically the quarterback position. Yeah, it plays into the evaluation, but at the end of the day it’s about production on the field. He had a good scramble, made a couple good throws. Josh [Rosen] made a couple good throws, Jake [Rudock] made some good throws and they made some not so good decisions. It’s all a part of the evaluations.”
(On how the pass protection was…) – “I thought early on it was good. The quarterbacks had a clean pocket, more space. I was disappointed we had some drops. We had space, we had time and the drops were disappointing. Overall, I thought it was good at the start, then the second quarter there were some issues. Protection-wise we had guys coming off the edge … Overall, I think it was better than last week. That’s really the goal is to try to improve on a day-to-day basis.”
