Byron Jones – October 27, 2021
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Wednesday, October 27, 2021
CB Byron Jones
(What’s the mood been like? Is it easy for disappointment to set in? Not depression – that overstates it. But is there a sadness, a melancholy at all?) – “No there’s actually a really good pop and a sense of focus and a sense of urgency to get it right. I think we all understand how hard it is to be in this position, just to be an NFL player, and we’re not trying to squander this opportunity so the sense of urgency is very high. It’s actually nice to see.”
(How do you feel like your season has gone?) – “Mine personally? I don’t think anyone can say that they feel good about anything at this point. As a team we’re not performing well and usually when you don’t have team success, individual success is not following either. So yeah, we’re still trying to turn everything around.”
(Is there any sense of surprise that it’s gone this way given what you thought of this team in the offseason and where you guys were?) – “Yeah, no one ever comes into the season and thinks you’re going to have a six-game losing streak at all. I think we understand what our issues are and now it’s about correcting those. It’s no easy task, but that’s a challenge that we all accept as NFL and professional players. So no, no one envisioned this. We didn’t want this. But let’s dig ourselves out. Let’s see what we can do and let’s see what we can shake from this point forward.”
(You said you know what the issues are. What would you define as maybe the biggest issues?) – “Just critical situations. You see flashes of good football, but we make mistakes where it’s just too hard to overcome. We’re putting ourselves in bad positions. It’s all three phases as well. It’s not just one side of the ball. We’re working on that.”
(Switching sports here but in basketball sometimes on an off night, you just need to see the ball go through the hoop. Is there one of those analogies I guess for breaking out of a slump like this?) – “No, you just need to win. You just need to win and we’ve had games where we have tremendous momentum in the game. We’ve got to figure out a way to complete that throughout the finish of the game. I think just winning would cure a lot and just that good feeling and knowing okay, the work we put in in the week, it mattered and now we know how to win. But we’ve got to get that win. No question.”
(When you talk about critical situations, I assume it would very much include Atlanta getting the ball on the 25-yard line at the end there and driving for the field goal. What went wrong there and how frustrating must that drive have been for you?) – “They made a really incredible throw and an incredible catch on the sideline. And those are the situations we’re talking about because there are 20, 30, 40 seconds left before the half and we’ve got to find a way to get off the field. There’s no way that they should be able to drive that many yards down the field so we’re getting that cleaned up. No question.”
(You talk about just getting a win and maybe that would be the first step in the right direction. Is there any added excitement when you’re going up against a team like Buffalo who you guys have struggled against and it’s just kind of another team, but it’s not another team to get a win over anyway?) – “For us honestly, any team that we’re going against, we’re all excited. You only get so few opportunities. It’s an incredible challenge this team coming in – or going to them. They have good receivers, good quarterback, a good running game, have a great defense, good coaches. So we like those challenges. That’s fun for us. We see a really good opponent in front of us and we see an opportunity to win. That’s why we’re going out there. We’re going out there to get a win.”
(How do you think the secondary has fared in instances of playing man versus when you change to zone?) – “It’s tough to say, but we watched our third-down tape – I’d say probably two or three weeks ago – and the one thing that I saw – all the third downs that we’ve given up this season – and a lot of it was guys weren’t out of position, nothing like that but we just need to finish at the point of attack. We’re covering but in terms of getting the ball out or getting another interception or changing a PBU to an interception and stuff like that, I think we could do a better job of, especially in man coverage because we are a defense that’s predicated on playing man. No question.”
(Last year you guys had obviously a lot of success and obviously it’s a different year but do you see anything teams are doing or figuring out differently about your defense that maybe…) – “Honestly, I just look inward. I think it’s about us, to be honest. Like I said, when we saw our third-down clips it was a lot of great coverage and good positioning. It’s just about getting the ball at that point. You get a couple of third downs in a game and that changes the course of a game. You give the ball back to the offense immediately. So finishing those drives and getting their offense – even when their offense gets the ball in the red zone, not letting them score as opposed to – not letting them get seven points as opposed to just kicking a field goal. I think that also is a momentum shift for us as well, too. I think it’s just what we’re doing. I don’t look at teams and say they’re scheming us up in a specific way because they were doing the same thing last year, to be honest. We’ve just got to finish those close calls, 50/50 balls.”
(Any time you play a quarterback like Bills QB Josh Allen – his caliber – it seems like disguising coverage is tough, we come up with a lot. So your experience as a cornerback and safety in this league, what’s the different roles in terms of how you disguise coverage for a cornerback compared to a safety?) – “It’s all got to be married together so the corners can’t be doing something different than the safety. If you want to show Cover 2, it’s not just the corners and it’s not just the safeties and in fact it’s also the linebackers, too. It’s where they align, some of their checks and what their calls may be. Disguising is really a whole secondary thing and oftentimes it does include the linebackers, so it’s not one group doing one thing. It’s really all of us operating on the same level in unison.”
(Defensive Coordinator Josh Boyer has been very hard on himself in sessions with us saying he needs to do a better job to put you guys in position. Has there been any sort of sessions with Josh where he’s solicited ideas from his veteran leaders like you and DE Emmanuel Ogbah, CB Xavien Howard and others about things you could be doing without giving away what those are, has there been a session like that?) – “I think Josh (Boyer) is smart enough without our input. I think he understands exactly what we need to be in and what his best coverages are and what best suits us. He can be hard on himself, but I always look at the players. You’re never going to get the perfect call in a situation. It’s really up to us to execute it and sometimes we haven’t, as players, been the best at doing that. I love the fact that everyone is taking accountability and ownership, but I’d like to do the same as well. I’m not going to point fingers at him. It’s definitely us.”
(As cornerbacks playing through some injury, is it easier, more comfortable to stay in zone as opposed to in man where you’re sprinting more often?) – “No, I’m healthy. I’m healthy. I’ve been healthy since Day 1 so no issues there.”
(Sometimes when you see teams going through a lull like this, they have meetings where they’re player-led or team-led to get on the same page. Have you guys had that or felt a need to do that?) – “That’s confidential.”
