Jay Cutler – November 13, 2017 (Postgame)
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Monday, November 13, 2017
Postgame – Carolina Panthers
Dolphins QB Jay Cutler (transcribed by the Carolina Panthers)
RE: Describe interception
We got the coverage we wanted. They just pushed a little bit, and I have to lay it out there a little more. It was a bad ball by me, and it put us in a bad spot.
RE: Decision not to go to the half
We felt good – we made a good call there. I just have to make a better play.
RE: How do the Dolphins regain their confidence
There is a lot of football left. The pieces are in the locker room, I truly believe that. I have been around a lot of good teams, there is a lot of good guys and a lot of good talent in there. We just have to get back to work, it is really the only thing we can do.
RE: Offensive struggles
I will have to go back and watch the film. We did some good things. We have to play better, that starts in the first half. We have to keep from putting our defense in bad spots.
RE: Panthers Defense
They are a really good defense. They did not really do anything that surprised us, just made plays.
Xavien Howard – November 13, 2017 (Postgame)
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Monday, November 13, 2017
Postgame – Carolina Panthers
Dolphins CB Xavien Howard (transcribed by the Carolina Panthers)
RE: Tough loss defensively
We’ve just got to come up there and start fast. We’ve just got to finish the game.
RE: Cam Newton as dual threat
He was out there making plays, that’s all I can say. It was tough to stop the run, especially Cam. Then he would make passes… so we’ve just got to go back to the playbook.
RE: Frustrated with Cam Newton celebrating
No. You’ve just got to come out there and have fun. It’s football. You’ve just got to come out and have fun. You’ve just got to play the game.
Andre Branch – November 13, 2017 (Postgame)
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Monday, November 13, 2017
Postgame – Carolina Panthers
Dolphins DE Andre Branch (transcribed by the Carolina Panthers)
RE: Dolphins defensive performance
What is on the paper doesn’t define who we are. It does not reflect who we are – what kind of team we are. We just have to come back, fix the mistakes, and get it going.
RE: Dolphins defense
There is no way we should give up 350 yards with the players we have, let alone 550. We just have to go back to work, and it will be fixed for sure.
RE: Mood after giving up five-straight touchdown drives
Like I said, we will get it fixed. It was just another frustrating night. The coaches will figure out how to get it fixed, and us players will have to execute. We just need to fix the things that need to be fixed.
Mike Pouncey – November 13, 2015 (Postgame)
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Monday, November 13, 2017
Postgame – Carolina Panthers
Dolphins C Mike Pouncey (transcribed by the Carolina Panthers)
RE: Thoughts on the game
I felt like we moved the ball pretty good on this football team. This team has a really good defense. Obviously, we didn’t put up enough points to win the football game. We’ve just got to play better team football. Whenever our offense is playing good we’ve just got to play better in all three phases. If we can find a way to do that we’ll put together a good game.
RE: Rebound from loss
We’re good. You’ve just got to regroup. We still control our own destiny. It’s just we’ve got to win these kinds of football games. It’s the 2nd half of the season and we can’t lose these kinds of games. We just put ourselves in a deeper hole, but we’re going to keep continuing to work hard and we’re going to get us a win next week.
RE: Kenyan Drake touchdown run
That was nice. They lined up in a really funky defense and Kenyan found his way through and hit a long run. It really helped our offense out a lot. At that point we thought we were going to be able to get back in the football game. It didn’t work out the way we thought it was going to work out.
RE: Has offense been better
I think so. We’re putting drives together. We’re not just going three and out. At the end of the day we’ve still got to stay on the field longer and keep our defense off the field, but I feel like we’re headed in the right direction in our offense.
Adam Gase – November 13, 2017 (Postgame)
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Monday, November 13, 2017
Postgame – Carolina Panthers
Dolphins Head Coach Adam Gase (transcribed by the Carolina Panthers)
RE: Explanation for defense
We had an 8-minute span there where the game got away from us and it just snowballed for us after that. We couldn’t prevent the big runs once they got it going after the turnover – 14-point swing between the end of the half and the 3rd quarter there at the beginning. It’s one of those things you can’t do against a team like this.
RE: Regroup for remainder of season
We’ll have to come in tomorrow and watch the film and make the corrections we need to make. Really kind of figure out where we’re having our issues and get those corrected quickly because it’s not going to get any easier with the teams we’ve got coming up on the schedule.
RE: What was different about this game
It’s hard for me to say from just being on the sideline, so it’s going to be about just going back and looking at film and where we’re leaving on defense and where we need to make the corrections on offense. We have to try to stay in 3rd and manageable against this team and that was the one thing we made a huge point of emphasis on. Once you get past 3rd and 7 not a lot of teams have been converting.
RE: Jay Cutler’s interception
It was…we thought we had the right play on there. A little surprised that (Luke) Kuechly got over there – with the coverage – we really high lowed him, the other linebacker. He pushed all the way over there. He made it all the way over there. I couldn’t really see where the ball placement was. Jay was saying he might have left it a little behind him, but that was a really good play by him.
RE: Why not sit on the ball
I felt like we were moving the ball pretty good. Had a good feeling as far as what they were going to play. I just didn’t think that he (Luke Kuechly) was going push that far on that coverage.
RE: Carolina nearly had a franchise rushing record tonight
It’s hard to look at it like that. Every game is a different deal. It’s all about matchups and for whatever reason we didn’t do a very good job matching up against them today. I thought we were in better shape than what we ended up being. We’ve just got to kind of see what really went wrong for us.
RE: Panthers open receivers
That’s one of the things we’re going to have to do. Take a look at this tape and find out where we were not aligned. Something’s not going as planned and we just have to go back and look at this. Is it personnel? Is it calls? Sometimes just because a guy’s open you’re not really sure of the answer and you’ve got to go take a look at it and figure out where you need to make adjustments.
RE: You said your offense was “awful” 2 weeks ago
We’re doing things better. We’re kind of shooting ourselves in the foot at the wrong time. We get something going and we either have a penalty or we miss a throw or a hole, or we don’t get it blocked correctly. I’m sure there have been calls I’ve made I wish I could take back. We’re making mistakes at the wrong time.
RE: Would you relinquish play calling
No. It’s the one thing I like doing.
Mike Pouncey – November 11, 2017
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Saturday, November 11, 2017
C Mike Pouncey
(You didn’t take a day off this week. Just talk about how well you’re feeling as far as physically.) – “I feel great. I feel great. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be out there practicing, I’d just be playing the game; but I want to get out there to start moving around now that I’ve got my feet back underneath of me and finish the season the right way.”
(Losing T Ja’Wuan James for the rest of the year, just talk about that and how much confidence you have in G/T Jesse Davis.) – “We’ve got a lot confidence in Jesse. Jesse’s a big guy – big and strong – and we think he’s going to block guys really, really well on the edge. It sucks losing Ja’Wuan. He’s a guy that’s been here for a long time. (He’s) a good football player for us, so we hope and wish that he has a speedy recovery, and look forward to having him back next year.”
(What does C/G Ted Larsen bring to the offensive line?) – “He’s a veteran player that’s really smart. He really understands football. He’s a really good guard. He can pass block one-on-one by himself and to me, that’s what I think makes guards really, really good, whenever they can pass block one-on-one by themselves.”
(Now how much does that change your role in terms of not having to help the guards maybe get to the second level?) — “It’s not going to really change. Our offense is already built in for me to help everybody out and I think Ted’s (Larsen) going to do a great job. He’s been a good player his whole career. I think we’re just going to stick to what we’ve always done and if they need help, they’ll tell us on the sideline.”
(You were talking about your practice schedule. Do you think the extra day will help you on Sundays or just the team in general having you out there just benefits …?) – “We’ll see on Sunday if it helps at all; but I just think me being out there around the guys every day, especially a game like this when we’re practicing on our silent count, and Thursdays is our big pass days, so I need to be out there with the team.”
(Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen talked about this yesterday about the fact that two losses on national television kind of hurt him a little, it pissed him off a little. Would you say or feel this in the locker room that this is a chance, the last chance, to show the nation what this team is made of?) – “I mean honestly at the end of the day every game to me, I prepare the same way. I don’t care if it’s at 8:30 p.m. or 1 p.m. I’m going to go out there and play the same; but obviously when you’re on the big stage, you want to play as well as possible, and we haven’t done that these past two times that we’ve been on the stage. We want to go out there and play well just like we do every weekend, but we’re not going to put more into it than what we need to. It’s just another football game.”
(Does a Monday night game get you up more or is it just…?) – “It’s one game. It’s another game. It’s football. We’ve only got 16 opportunities and honestly for me, I cherish every one of them just because of my situation that I went through last year. Each time I get to step on the football field, it’s just truly a blessing.”
(Last year you guys finished strong, winning nine of 11 games. What can help you get that hot finish?) – “I think we just do what we did last year. Last year we were at the same spot, 4-4, and we just started winning football games. We kind of were struggling at first and then we had the Tennessee Titans game, where offense started to turn over a little bit and the next week, the Pittsburgh Steelers game, we turned it on. Hopefully it works out the same way that we hit our stride and we finally find our groove of offense, and we can keep our defense off the football field and help them win football games.”
(Doing that last year, does that really help you as far as confidence going into this year?) – “Yes, just any other football season. Anything can happen. We know that the first half of the season obviously didn’t go the way we wanted. We had a lot of stuff going on. That’s no excuse. We still have to win those football games and this is a new season for us. We’ve got eight games to go out there and try and get into the tournament, and that’s our only goal.”
(What’s it like to have a non-distraction week?) – “(laughter) It feels good. This is what we expect at all times: just come in and worry about football and focus on football. That’s the kind of week we had this week.”
(You’re so consistent with your snaps that when you skip one it’s like … what happened on Sunday?) – “I’ll tell you (Michele Tafoya) jinxed me. She asked me about my snaps before the game and I said, ‘You know what, I hope it doesn’t happen this game.’ And (it) happened. Could you let her know that she jinxed me?”
(You were looking at your gloves.) – “Honestly, it was really humid out there, the field was wet, we were in a no-huddle drive where we just kept getting back on the football. I didn’t really have time to wipe my hands and it just slipped out. I felt it slip out and tried to turn back around and luckily Jay (Cutler) jumped on top of it.”
Adam Gase – November 11, 2017
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Saturday, November 11, 2017
Head Coach Adam Gase
(The decision with T Ja’Wuan James, I guess the second opinion validated the first?) – “Yes.”
(What is the nature of the injury?) – “I don’t know. It’s like a hamstring-ish type thing. They were trying to explain it to me, I was pretty much like, ‘Okay, we’re getting too deep here.’ This is the best decision for him. Really, it’s going to be about him just getting healthy again. He’s got a lot of time right now, so once he gets this going, we’ll just see how quickly this heals for him.”
(Does T Ja’Wuan James require surgery?) – “Yes, I think it looks like that’s what’s going to happen; but I don’t want to say 100 percent and be wrong, so we’ll kind of see.”
(Is there a chance that T Ja’Wuan James would be able to return for a playoff game if he was healthy enough?) – “That’s hard for me to answer right now. We’re a ways away from that right now.”
(Did he tear it?) – “Once again, a lot of the times I don’t ask all of the details because we’ve got to get to the next decision and we just knew where we were at as far as possibly him being out for a good amount of time and possible surgery.”
(C Mike Pouncey went back-to-back practices this week for the first time all year. What led to that?) – “Probably more him. He feels like he needs to be out there more. It was a good thing. We’ll be smart. We’re not going to give him a gazillion reps, but him going out there, especially on the day we work on third down, (was important). We have a lot to clean up there, which has been pretty obvious, so I think he feels like he can help in that area and it starts in practice.”
(The good teams, as you would know from experience, start playing their best football at this time of the year in November and December. What goes right in those scenarios? What do you have to do to make sure you’re peaking at the right time?) – “You get better in the beginning of the year. That’s why when people panic (after) the first four games, don’t. Just keep going to work and getting a good Wednesday, Thursday, Friday in, get better in the game. That’s what makes me excited in the second half of the season. I saw improvement over the last few weeks. Really it was last week. It was a big jump (from) that Thursday game to this last game. We’ve got some things to clean up, which we’re always going to have; but if we just keep finding ways to get better, it will fall the right way for us.”
(We talked to Offensive Coordinator Clyde Christensen yesterday, and he suggested that a pride factor of being on national television twice and not showing up – certainly in the first game and losing close in the second – bothered him a little. Do you feel that sense in the locker room?) – “I think any time we lose, it bothers guys. At the same time, they’ve got to look at big picture and they’ve got to look at process over outcome sometimes. They’ve got to see where we’ve done things better and they have to really take a look at things that we haven’t improved on and that’s what we’ve got to get better at. It’s fairly obvious that one of the things we need to correct is our penalty situation on offense. Sometimes it shows up; sometimes it’s been pretty clean. We’ve made a big emphasis to make sure we’re doing it in practice right. That’s why we have officials out here. We keep looking at, ‘Does it correlate between practice and games?’ It’s hard to really tell, because sometimes it may not be called exactly the same. We don’t have as many guys out there. If we clean some of that stuff up, I think we’ll see a different result.”
(Has it been relatively clean this week, would you say?) – “I think guys have really focused on doing things right. It starts in individual when you’re using the proper technique, you’re understanding what you’re trying to do, your assignment. When you put all of those pieces together, that gives you the best chance of having a clean play. I think our guys are really working towards that.”
(With the officiating, do you instruct the officials that are here to tighten it up or be more aggressive in their calls?) – “They’re pretty aggressive as it is, so I don’t think we have to tell them to tighten it up. The hard thing is we have three and it’s hard to see everything, so we may miss a few here and there, but those guys do a good job to make sure they call it like they would if it was an NFL game. They don’t have the numbers. That’s really the biggest thing.”
(Do you expect the chemistry between S Reshad Jones and S T.J. McDonald to pick up where it left off in the summer or is it going to be…?) – “I think we have a good chance for that to be a pretty good combination there. They have a good feel for each other. I think when you’ve got two veteran players like that, it doesn’t take a long time for them to click, especially when you got two guys that are as selfless as they are where they will do whatever they need to do to win the football game. It’s fun to watch them practice. It has been fun to see T.J. get back out there. It has been a long eight weeks for him. I know it was tough for him. When it’s taken away from you for that long, when you get back, you can tell he’s enjoying every snap.”
(To get back to T Ja’Wuan James for just a second, would you like to see him on the roster next year?) – “We’ve got to go through a long process before we even get to that. Obviously, I’m really big into making sure our guys stay here. We’re so far away from it. It’s hard for me to look past tomorrow. It’s hard to go that far.”
(How would you assess C/G Ted Larsen in a week of practice?) – “I thought it was good. I know he was tired on Wednesday. It was good though. It was good to get him conditioned.”
(Safe to assume C/G Ted Larsen will start Monday night?) – “We’ll see.”
(Does it feel like you’re starting a fresh new line considering they’re probably going to be two newcomers in that unit?) – “I don’t feel that way because we’ve rotated them so much since the start of OTAs that all of these guys have played together at some point. I know you’ve asked me about this in the past as far as the chemistry and trying to get guys together and how that all works out. Sometimes you see a group click sometimes quicker than others. We’re always going to hope for the best as far as how fast things happen. Really, we’ll see what happens. You never really know. Things start getting … Games start getting wild and it’s getting physical, how are we going to react with a new group? I’m excited to watch those guys play.”
(Do you expect teams to attack G/T Jesse Davis?) – “We’ll see. I feel like right now, we’ve been seeing some interesting (things), whether it be pressures or coverages. We’re getting good variety of stuff. Defensive coordinators keep getting creative. A lot of times it doesn’t matter who’s out there. Guys go in there with a certain game plan. I don’t know who they’re going to attack or what their philosophy is behind attacking our (offense) sometimes. When you start seeing things different, you’ve got to make adjustments really quick.”
(Does S Michael Thomas have a very good chance to play?) – “I hope so. We’ve just got to keep taking it one day at a time. I know what his mindset is; but at the same time, we’ve got a long ways to go and we just want to make sure whatever we do is the right thing.”
(With RB Damien Williams having the issue that he’s having and S Michael Thomas battling the knee, how concerned are you about special teams, the core unit?) – “The good thing is we’ve kind of prepared for situations like this. That’s why we do keep a pretty deep roster of special teams guys. (Special Teams Coordinator/Associate Head Coach Darren) Rizzi and ‘Mouf’ (Assistant Special Teams Coach Marwan Maalouf) always have a good plan to make sure guys are in the right spots and what do we take off, who do we put on, where can we have a newcomer in a group. ‘Rizz’ has got a good plan. I feel good when he’s at.”
(G/T Jesse Davis, how much will he benefit moving forward from focusing pretty much on right tackle as opposed to going back and forth?) – “The thing is you always have to keep getting prepared at multiple spots. If you have one injury sometimes, guys start shuffling around. Really at the end of the day, if somebody goes down, whoever it is, you’ve got to do what you need to do for that game to have your best five out there. We’ve just got to keep preparing guys to play multiple positions, because we only have seven up. One injury can really put you in a bind if you don’t prepare for it.”
(What gives you the most hope offensively, overall, that the second half of the season will be different than the first half?) – “Probably the last game. That was really what I I’ve been waiting for. I felt like guys were in a good flow. I loved the energy that we had. We made mistakes, but we were giving ourselves a chance. If we eliminate some of those penalties, it’s a different game. We were inside the 20 – at the 20 or inside the 20 – two other times that we get a holding penalty and we have a fumble. Those are two lost opportunities that we could’ve had points. So, if we can keep trending in that direction and then find a way to keep those possessions where they were at, I feel good where we’re going.”
Cameron Wake – November 11, 2017
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Saturday, November 11, 2017
DE Cameron Wake
(Obviously you’ve faced Panthers QB Cam Newton before but does it change at all in terms of how much you have to manage containment when the quarterback is that athletic?) – “No, not really. The main goal is to get back there. Once you get back there, the goal is always to get the ball on the ground, whether it’s a quarterback who is mobile or stationary. Sacks are hard to get no matter what. You’ve just got to focus in and do your job getting the ball on the ground.”
(Does Panthers QB Cam Newton maybe hold the ball a little bit longer because he wants to make that play? Some might just get it out of their hands but he hangs on and tries to make something happen.) – “You should ask him that. (laughter)”
(You watch more film than I do. What do you see on film about it?) – “He does hold onto the ball a little longer I think. I guess that’s him trying to make a play? At the end of the day, I guess it is risk (versus) reward. I don’t know what’s in his head. If you hold the ball longer and receivers are further down field, you probably have a better yardage type play; but then you’re also vulnerable to guys like me and mis compadres.”
(The reason I ask is that Defensive Coordinator Matt Burke yesterday was saying you guys have played really well despite not having a lot of sacks and pressures and stuff like that because they were getting the ball out of their hands so fast.) – “Yes, I think some of the quarterbacks we’ve played and offenses we’ve played have probably been in the top tier in the league as far as getting the ball out of their hands. I don’t know where (Cam Newton) ranks but I don’t pay as much attention to that as a pass rusher because I fight every play like it’s the play he’s going to have the ball in his hand when I get there and if he does, then finish the play.”
(The good teams seem to separate themselves in November and December late in the year. What does it take to win this time of year?) – “I think at this time of year all around the league, there’s situations that every team has to deal with, regardless of what it is. It could be injuries. It could be a whole host of things. At this time of year, you have to play consistent and you have to play together. There’s no way … Things we haven’t necessarily done will in the first half of the season is playing together. The offense will have a great drive and put points up and then we give up points and vice versa happens; or special teams is doing well and we’re not complementing each other. This time of year, consistency and playing complementary football is the way to be successful and that’s what we did last year; but the reality is nobody cares about last year. Nobody cares about last week. It’s a one week season every week and this week we want to be 1-0.”
