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Matt Burke – October 23, 2018 Download PDF version

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Defensive Coordinator Matt Burke

(I’m not asking you to throw any person under the bus can you candidly say among your defensive ends, defensive tackles and linebackers, which of those three groups had the most breakdowns in the run game on Sunday?) – “I’m not going to throw anybody under the bus. That was a collectively crappy effort. From the coaching staff down, we obviously didn’t prepare well enough. We had breakdowns across the board at every level – misalignments, missed assignments, missed tackles. We’re not going to point fingers at a single group. If you have a game like that and give up that number of rushing yards, that’s not a single position or a single player or a single coach. We’re owning that as a group, so that’s not a question that I’m going to answer in that sense. We didn’t play well. Our offense did a good enough job at the end of the game and we didn’t. That’s on us as an entire unit and we’re going to try to fix that and move forward.”

(Are there going to be playing time changes as a result or is it too soon of a turnaround with these 96 hours to do that?) – “We’re going to play the best players we can to win this game. In some sense, a short week like this is a blessing because we can’t dwell on things. Obviously, you can’t brush past it so that’s sort of the blessing and a curse part of things. We can’t ignore what happened but in the same sense, we can’t dwell. We move forward, we have to prepare. Like you said, it’s a short window. It’s 48 hours now at this point. We’re going to prepare to try to win this ballgame on Thursday night. Just like every week, we’re going to put the best groups and the best players that we think give us the best chance to do that. That’s where we’re at right now.”

(What’s the most difficult part about defending the first drive of the game?) – “Obviously, offensive coordinators put a lot of time into that. A lot of times, they’re scripting sort of their best plays. Usually, you’re getting multiple personnel groups, multiple stuff sort of unveiling one of their thoughts in terms of their approach and how that game is going to go. I just think that a lot of times, there’s some unscripted looks, stuff you haven’t seen. Again, we happened to play two teams coming off bye weeks so you know they have a lot of time to prepare for that stuff. I don’t think that there’s anything specific to the first drive of the game. I think a lot of times … I’m not saying you’re getting the offense’s best shot but I just think you’re getting some stuff that you haven’t seen because that’s where a lot of coordinators will put in what they’ve sort of whipped up for that week. We have to do a better job in general of just sort of playing our keys. I didn’t think that was the case necessarily last week, if that’s where you’re kind of heading with it. There wasn’t anything un-scouted from that team. We just didn’t execute a lot of the stuff that we were supposed to execute. We have to do a better job of focusing and being prepared. I’m obviously at a little bit of a loss for words for how things went. We have to do a better job preparing them to be ready to play from the first whistle.”

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