Mike McDaniel – December 11, 2022 (Postgame)
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Sunday, December 11, 2022
Postgame – L.A. Chargers
Head Coach Mike McDaniel (Transcribed by L.A. Chargers)
(The offense tonight and last week doesn’t really look like the offense we’ve seen up to this point. What’s wrong?) – “This is hard to take. There’s a lot of investment and it’s not good enough. I thought the defense played well enough for us to win. There is stuff we can clean up, for sure, but there’s a multitude of things. It’s easy to point fingers one way or another, but what I’ll challenge the team is to do exactly as I’m going to do, which is you’re just accountable and look at everything you can do better. It’s not to our standard. It’s extremely disappointing. Credit does go to the Chargers. They executed a great gameplan and really out-physicaled us, I thought. Football is a humbling game. These are the things that you have to learn as a team. Unfortunately, we had to learn it the hard way. For what we want to do with this team, that’s not going to get us there. We need a better performance, and it will start with me. Bottom line is we have a fully committed team and we haven’t, like you said, really executed to our standard the last couple weeks. Nowhere else to look but myself.”
(Have teams started defending your offense differently?) – “I think that’s always the case. During the course of the season, things evolve. I think that’s been happening all season — each and every week. There’s kind of a different way a team chooses to attack you. It did evolve to a degree, but I think it was more about their plan was better than ours and they outplayed us in that phase.”
(How would you assess the way QB Tua Tagovailoa played specifically?) – “I thought he did some good things. There’s some stuff I think he would think he’d want to have back. But really, I was just disappointed in the connection between him and some of the eligibles [receivers]. All of the incompletions were definitely not on Tua. When you miss opportunities, I think we had — something we work on all week and we’ve been working on all season, a throw to Tyreek (Hill) that I’ll check it out on the film but between Tyreek not being able to pick it up and Tua’s throw, bottom line is who cares whose fault it is? That needs to happen. I know Tua will expect that from himself. I thought, overall, with the way everyone was playing for us to win the game, he’d probably have to do something great. I thought, at moments, he did do some stuff. He competed and gave us a chance to win, but collectively, quarterbacks are only as good as the offense, and together, we just weren’t good enough.”
(Have you ever seen anything like that 57-yard fumble that WR Tyreek Hill was able to take into the end zone?) – “I feel like there’s a – I think from historical tape, I don’t think in a game. I couldn’t really find the ball at all, so that was unique that it was a scrum and then somebody outside the scrum had the ball and was running with it. Those types of things happen when you’re hustling to block and you’re hustling and straining as an offensive linemen, sometimes when the ball does come out, you can find yourself in a fortunate situation. That was a big play that I was hoping would get us out of our funk and it didn’t really do that as much as I had hoped.”
(I know it’s just several minutes after the game, but you spoke about the Chargers gameplan being better on defense. After the first half, what adjustments could you have made to get the offense kind of rolling when the middle of the field wasn’t open?) – “I think that’s – the way I look at it as a coach is it’s a bottom-line business and things have to work. Sometimes, you’ll call plays and there will still be open people, but if we’re not executing it, then I need to have plays that guys will execute appropriately. I feel like we under-produced what our talent and skill level is. It’s a broad generalization, but I look squarely at myself, and you have to figure that stuff out. That is the nature of professional football – that happens every single year. Sometimes, it’s a gut check that you kind of have to figure out, ‘How can you make sure that this doesn’t happen again? How can you come to the game more prepared? Then, how do you have answers for things that the other team is executing?’ The bottom line is I have a hard time blaming anybody else but myself to start any time things don’t work, then I’ll turn the page and look at were the players preparing themselves enough? Did they invest enough in the gameplan and the opponent? Once you do that, I feel like they did a good job all week. I’ll comb the tape and we’ll attack it with the next opportunity that we have with the Buffalo Bills on Saturday night. No one’s in the business of feeling sorry for us. No one should. We have tremendous opportunities moving forward to play to our standard. If our team wants to play together longer, then they’re going to have to adjust that standard as it is present and continue to improve.”
(QB Tua Tagovailoa had a month there where it seemed like he couldn’t miss, and now today, he was 10-for-28 in passing. He didn’t have a great game in San Francisco. What do you describe it to? Are they doing something defensively? Is it him?) – “Again, I think football is a humbling game and people adjust to certain things and present different issues. I think there are probably a handful of those plays that we will look at the tape and be like, ‘Man, you really can make this play here or there.’ I think there is going to be a handful of plays that were going to say that some of our eligibles [receivers] weren’t doing the job, and I think there will be a handful of plays where it’s hard to expect the quarterback to make a play when the protection is off. So collectively, I that we just are not playing together as an offense in the way that I’d like. I think you want to continue to progress and be your best in December and January. We have had a lot of reps at certain things, and we should be better right now in this last two-game stretch. Again, it is a really cool time realistically for a young team to see what we are all about, so to speak, just because it is hard when you invest a ton and fall short. After last week, I do not think the guys were prepared for this outcome. So, we will learn a lot about people. This is the nature of the beast. Besides one team, you don’t go through seasons without losing games and you want to win them all. The biggest thing is that we have to learn from it. We can’t just push it aside and say it was this, that or the other. You get a bunch of like-minded people, holding themselves accountable and stepping up their game. Then we get a chance to take these feelings from the past two weeks and make them purposeful.”
(Is there any escalated concern when struggles like this happen at this point in the season, like in December and January?) – “I wouldn’t say that, because the bottom line is you do not like that type of output at any point. If you are a team that is all of the sudden trying to turn up and this happens, it would worry me more. I think we have really approached each and every week with diligence, and I think this is like any other situation where — you know what, at one point we had three losses in a row. We had to end the streak at some point. I think the same thing happens now. I have been a part of teams, two teams specifically, that ended up playing in the Super Bowl that had a loss pretty similar to the one we had tonight. You have high expectations and you really take a punch to the gut. I have been on teams where it snowballed even further. I think relative to where the year is at, I think you always want to continue to progress. As long as we learn from all of it and start playing better football, I don’t really care what it is, it is going to hurt. I think our guys’ expectations from what they feel they should be, this is probably the furthest miss we have had all year. So, you really, really cannot hide in these situations. You find out who you are working with and who you are dealing with. I know what they will find out from me, and I am excited about what I find out from them.”
(We didn’t see WR Tyreek Hill in there towards the end of the game, and obviously RB Jeff Wilson Jr. got hurt. With the short turnaround to the Buffalo game, how much of a concern are those injuries?) – “I think they are a legitimate concern. We have obstacles of flying back across the country on a short week, so we have to rest. Regardless of if guys are injured or not, I think I’ll have to tone it down a little bit so we can acclimate to the east coast. As far as I know, nothing has been significantly ruled out for next week with regards to those two players. We are obviously our best versions of ourselves if they’re both healthy, but bottom line is we will play with whoever is healthy and no one cares about our problems. Our job is to go write the ship, so that is what we will be doing right when this press conference ends.”
