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Jaelan Phillips – November 22, 2021 Download PDF version

Monday, November 22, 2021

LB Jaelan Phillips

(Are you aware of your sack numbers? Obviously fans and media are into that sort of thing. Do you know how many you have? Do you keep track of it at all?) – “I mean yeah, afterwards. My mom is the one who keeps track. She’s the one who tells me. I know it’s like 3.5 now or something like that.”

(It is. I know obviously you’re measured on far more than that. You’re measured on pressures, on how you contain the run as an edge player. But did you have a sack goal coming in and is 3.5 you think a good number for a rookie after 11 NFL games?) – “I really didn’t try to set too many expectations on myself just so that I can manage it. I didn’t want to come in with over lofty expectations and say I need 10-plus sacks or else I don’t feel like I’ve succeeded or anything like that. I feel like that’s kind of setting myself up to fail because the reality is you can have a lot less numbers and still be productive and still learn and improve every week and do good things. So for me, it’s not necessarily the numbers that are important to me as the production. But it’s obviously always nice to get to the quarterback. I love getting sacks. It’s great for the team. It’s great for everybody.”

(There’s a little bit of a difference between QB Lamar Jackson and QB Joe Flacco. I’m curious what the thought was inside the defensive meetings when you found out the Jets were going to be starting Flacco on Sunday.) – “Obviously it’s a different gameplan. Every week is a different gameplan, regardless of who it is. Obviously there’s a pretty stark difference between a guy like Lamar Jackson and an older guy like Joe Flacco. Not that he’s not athletic in his own regard but he’s obviously more of a pocket passer. So this week we still wanted to be aggressive and when it comes to rushing the passer against guys who are less likely to roll out of the pocket and be very elusive, you can kind of be more aggressive when you rush and it kind of changes things up a little bit. But yeah, we game-planned this game and I think we executed for the most part. There’s definitely some things to improve on. But obviously the most important thing is that we got the win.”

(Did you personally think, ‘Okay, QB Joe Flacco is back there. I should be able to take this guy down?’) – “I called it out. I’ve been trying to manifest it so I always tell my friends, ‘I’m going to get this guy. I’m going to get a sack.’ But I wasn’t underestimating him by any means. Obviously he’s an elite quarterback. He’s won Super Bowls and been doing his thing for a long time. I definitely didn’t underestimate him but I was definitely glad to be able to get back there.”

(I know this is not a favorable thing to address but the penalty that you had with the shove, maybe not shove. What were you thinking and do you feel like there was a bit of acting involved or was that just a bad mistake?) – “Yeah, I mean that’s just me. I know better than that and obviously that won’t happen again. It’s just in the heat of the moment. Obviously, sometimes you make mistakes. It’s something I’ve got to own up to. It’s not great. Not smart.”

(I wanted to ask you from the team perspective – we usually ask you guys questions from your individual perspective – but from the team perspective, what the different has felt like within your first NFL season from that early impression of a seven-game losing streak to now reeling off three straight.) – “The thing is, I feel like as players and even as coaches and as a staff in general, I feel like our energy has always been very optimistic and very positive. Like even during that seven-game winning streak, I didn’t feel like every day I came into the facility people were hanging their heads and people were down and out and worried about that. I think everybody realized that we were really close and we just had to execute better and we just had to do the little things better. I think the energy in the building is great right now. Obviously it’s great to win three in a row but our focus is just on continuing to improve and stacking these days and stacking these weeks. Right now obviously we have Carolina ahead of us, so that’s what our focus is on.”

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