Terron Armstead – November 6, 2023
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Monday, November 6, 2023
T Terron Armstead
(Good to see you back yesterday. You played well. Did you feel totally back to normal with the knee?) – “Just not playing for a month, just getting back in the groove, back to play shape, play speed, technique, fundamentals, chemistry, all those good things. It’s always a learning curve no matter how long you’ve been playing the game.”
(How do you feel today, the day after the game?) – “Good. Postgame soreness, all that good stuff that comes with it. The bumps and bruises of a physical game – it was a tough one yesterday. A tough, physical fight. But I’m good.”
(What happened? What was the injury that kept you out?) – “You talking from Buffalo?”
(Yeah, what happened a month ago?) – “I had a blow to the knee. Got rolled up on in pass pro. Just had to deal with some instability that I had to wait and let it heal up to get back on the field.”
(You knew right away that surgery wasn’t going to be needed?) – “Not really. I knew I wouldn’t be able to play right then in that game.”
(And the rest of you is okay?) – “Just ready to get back to take some time, see some family, get back to workouts and treatment, all those good things, and then get back here and continue to press and go for our goals.”
(How happy are you for the way OL Austin Jackson has played this year and where have you seen the most growth in him?) – “He’s been great. He’s been great. His technique, his attention to detail, his fundamentals, his approach every day, his willingness to work and the desire to be great every day, it’s hard to do. That’s the hard part about this league, especially up front, is the consistency of it. But he approaches it the right way. He’s ascending. It’s been great to watch and be a part of.”
(A long-winded question here about your guys’ health and getting everybody back. You’re back. OL Connor Williams is back. CB Xavien Howard and CB Jalen Ramsey played together. CB Nik Needham is back. Possibly RB De’Von Achane comes back. Maybe OL Robert Hunt comes back. Do you look at the last eight games in terms of look at everybody that we’re getting back and we can go on a big run here? Or do you just look at it like it’s still week by week?) – “Most definitely week by week. Yeah, week by week. There’s a lot of unpredictability that goes on in this game from week to week. We’ve got people that get banged up, can’t play one week, be back the next. That’s part of the game, part of the depth and filling out the roster. So we’re definitely just looking at the next game.”
(I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I would imagine yesterday was kind of a sense of a missed opportunity. You were in position, you guys as a team, just kind of some self-inflicted wounds. What is it about some of these bigger games that you guys, maybe the focus just is a little bit off? Because penalties are down from last year, but the games that you’ve lost, you’ve been penalized and had drops and things like that. Where does that mental sharpness go in some of these moments?) – “That’s a good question. That’s a good question. I feel like we have the right intent. We play hard, we fly around the field. That’s what you want to see every game. That’s what you want to see. In order to win those big games against those better teams, the penalties, the costly penalties, the big plays that need to be made at certain times has to happen. We feel extremely confident that we can and will, even though the narrative is that we haven’t, which we haven’t. The facts are the facts and we can’t argue that. The outside world has every right to make those, create those narratives and guidelines. But for us internally in this building, we have all the confidence in the world. We’re going to keep pressing and we can win the next game. We can only play the team in front of us and our goal is to win every game. We fell short three times. We’re going to continue to go and battle, work to get better, work on that mental sharpness and toughness in more of those close games, late game situations. The execution has to be at an all-time high, especially when you get into the postseason. All of this is in preparation for the postseason. We’re halfway through the season. There’s no rings being given out in November, no champions in November. So we’re working. It’s a work in progress and I can promise you that our arrow is pointing up.”
(I’m sure every Monday there’s a message from Head Coach Mike McDaniel. I don’t know if he shows you cutups, things like that. Did he show you four or five plays today from yesterday that if one of those had gone the other way, it could have been a completely different game?) – “Every game. Every game we have a few that we missed, that could change the game. Fortunately, we’ve won a lot of games despite having those mishaps and miscues. Yesterday, we didn’t. We didn’t win the game and we had opportunities to execute and really would have just changed the whole feel of the game and the perspective of what we see right now. But it’s our job to continue to work and practice and minimize that, minimize the self-inflicted, minimize the missed opportunities and take advantage of them because they will be extremely important.”
(The theme after games like that has been that we’ll take this and we’ll learn from this, we’ll be better off from it in the end. You’ve been around this league a long time. You’ve played in a lot of big games. What specifically can you learn from those games where you do come up short? What do you take from those games positively, even if you lose the game?) – “Everything that happens in life, football, whatever – anytime something happens to you, you either learn from it, or you let it just weigh on you. With us and our approach – and that’s why I feel so confident about what we have going on and where we are – is that no one is wavering. No one is second guessing can we actually or do we have enough. None of that is in this building. We get ready for the next one and we’re going to approach that game with complete confidence that we can go out there and win and we let the outcome be the outcome. Then the one after that, it’ll be the same approach. We let the outcome be the outcome. As we continue to get better and work on those missed opportunities and miscues and miscommunication, we’re going to be harder and harder to beat, tougher and tougher to beat. That’s the goal. We want to be peaking at the right time going into the postseason and we’re working our way towards that.”
(You mentioned that no one in the building is wavering in their confidence that you can win these big games that are coming up. When you think back to your time in New Orleans, obviously there were a lot of times that you had statement games, really big games where you got over that hump. You talked a minute ago about learning from losses, what did you learn from those big wins?) – “It’s kind of all the same, really. You just would rather learn and make corrections after a win. Because even after every win we’ve got, all six of them, we’ve had mistakes, we’ve had miscommunication and miscues. But it always feels better after a win. So after a loss, everything is magnified. You pay more attention to it. There’s more detail. In New Orleans, we had big, big wins. I specifically remember, I think the Rams were 10-0. We were 9-1 in New Orleans. Like Sunday Night Football, we came away with a huge win and we learned what we did wrong. But it was in November. It was a November game. Fast forward to the NFC Championship and we lost to the Rams, the same way. So it doesn’t necessarily directly guarantee you anything in the postseason but you want those because it feels good. When you make corrections after a win, it’s great. But it doesn’t guarantee you anything. I would love to have reversed that, maybe took the L in Week 11 and went on to the Super Bowl, but life’s going to do what it do.”
(Was that the pass interference game?) – That was the pass interference game. (laughter)”
