HEAD COACH JOHN HARBAUGH
Opening Statement: "I appreciate everybody being here. [We're] getting ready for Denver. We're looking hard at that team. [They're] a team that's been playing really well [and] that's been hot. We're going to have our hands full, but we're looking forward to the challenge and [we] can't wait to get back at it this week."
You have made changes along the defense, adding Dean Pees and going with other personnel over S Marcus Williams. Do you foresee making any other changes to help the defense along? (Jamison Hensley) "Well, it depends on what kind of changes are available to us. We're going to continue to turn over every stone with our defense and with every other part of our team, too, to get as good as we can get it over the course of a long season. Ups and downs, challenges, good plays and not good plays, so there's a lot of things we can improve on. We'll do whatever we can do."
You expressed confidence after the game in S Marcus Williams saying he would go on to play great football for the rest of the year. Do you expect what happened yesterday to be a one-game thing? And do you expect him to play against Denver? (Luke Jones) "I'm not going to try to get into too much [detail] about who's going to play and who's not going to play in the game, but I'll just reiterate what I said before – Marcus [Williams] is a heck of a player. I have the utmost confidence in him as a player, as a person, as a pro. He's a great person; he's a hard worker. [He] plays hard, practices hard, does everything at the highest level, and I anticipate him playing great football for us all season and very soon."
Was there any thought of S Marcus Williams not being active yesterday? (Brian Wacker) "We don't ever really get into too much in the thought process of that kind of stuff. It goes the way it goes. We make the decisions that we make based on the best judgement we can make to try to do our best to do what we can."
You guys spent a lot of time with the defensive backs catching balls in practice. Why isn't that translating to games? And what else can you possibly do? (Todd Karpovich) "That's a great question. That's a really great question. There's probably a lot of factors that are pretty hard to measure on that. There's no doubt. We lead the league in those drops – interception-wise – that's no secret, and those are huge plays. Those are huge opportunity plays. I'm going to choose look at it like those plays are going to get made, and that's [an] upside for us. That's low-hanging fruit, the way I see it, going forward. That's where you can make a huge difference in your play. How many fewer plays you have to play, how many fewer scoring opportunities they have, the difference in points – it's massive making those plays. So we'll make those plays, we'll work hard at it, and we'll continue to work even harder at it, because it's something that we want our guys to have confidence in. We have guys with good hands; they can catch the ball. I'm very confident that we're going to do it going forward, but I'd like to see it happen really soon."
On that slant touchdown, ILB Roquan Smith is screaming to OLB Odafe Oweh to come back across the line of scrimmage. He's still in motion getting set while the ball is snapped and guys are not ready. What's happening there? (Bo Smolka) "That's what happened. Every one of those are different, and we've had a few of those this year. If I watched defenses around the league, I can tell you [that] it happens a lot. It's not unusual with all of the no-huddle [plays] and all the different things you get, but we didn't do a good job with that. We have to do a much better job with that. Especially, we don't want it to happen in the red zone, because when you have it in the red zone, that's going to be a score a lot of times. It's what defenses face nowadays in the NFL – there's a lot of moving parts to the offenses, and when you're trying to match personnel and match formations, you have to be on point, and we were not on point with that play."
I know that's something you're continuously trying to improve at, but is it frustrating that it seems like communication issues seem to flare up pretty often? (Cordell Woodland*)* "Yes. Like I said, I watch a lot of tape, and I see it all around the league, so I'm not going to single out our guys, but we're going to coach our guys. Our guys are our concern, so yes, we're concerned with our guys and our guys being the very best they can be, so we'll chase that. We're going to get it better and better and better, and I don't know if we're going to get it perfect, but we're going to try, or we're going to die trying."
Are there any regrets looking back at the fourth-down decision? Or was it a lack of execution when you looked at the film? (Jerry Coleman) "Well, that's a pretty clear-cut 'go [for it]' most of the time around the league, especially at the plus-10-yard line, and I have confidence in our guys to get that, plus the ability to keep them backed up is probably a real plus there at the 10-[yard line], that's why it's a clear-cut go. I think most of the time we're going to get that. If you look at last week, we got that was more than that, and we scored a touchdown on it. My only regret – if you want to call it a regret – is that we didn't make it. I'm not in love with the fact that we didn't get it; I hate the fact that we didn't get it, so that's the disappointment there."
I just want to clarify something on S Marcus Williams. You said yesterday it was a personnel decision, but you also said it was an internal type of situation. I want to make sure ... (Jeff Zrebiec) "I don't really think I have anything else to say about that. It's what we do. There's a lot of things going on all the time. A lot of it is kind of our business – it belongs in house – it's between us, and it's not something that we need to tell everybody everything about. I don't think you're telling everybody about your family business. I don't think everybody's asking about everybody's kind of things. There are some things that we can just choose to kind of keep to ourselves, and that's going to be one of them. I never get up here and talk about why we put guys up [on the gameday roster] or put guys down – I never have, so I'm probably not going to start doing that now."
Are you facing a depth concern on the defensive line this coming weekend? NT Michael Pierce had the injury yesterday; DT Travis Jones is hurting; DE Brent Urban's in concussion protocol. It's a tough situation right now. (Childs Walker) "Yes, [it's a] tough situation. We have guys ... I would like to have those guys out there. But we also have guys that can step up and play. We have guys on our practice squad, and we're going to have guys that are ready to go. Stopping the run this game is going to be really important – it's going to be huge. [The Broncos are] a running team, and they run it really well, and they run it a lot, so it's going to be a big part of the gameplan."
Is NT Michael Pierce possibly a longer-term thing? (Childs Walker) "Yes, I don't know. It's Monday, we'll see."
Along those lines, just in terms of the personnel – I know you can't get into specific players and so forth or other players – is that something that you and executive vice president & general manager Eric DeCosta will look at with the trade deadline approaching – that you guys will look hard at, whether it's an edge rusher or another position or things like that? (Brian Wacker) "I think that we definitely will, because that's what [executive vice president & general manager] Eric [DeCosta] does. Eric and his guys do that. I'm not ... I love our guys. I love our roster. I feel like our roster is really good, and I think every one of our guys is going to play really well down the stretch to the best of their ability. I know we lost a game; it's disappointing; it's tough, and we hate it – we all hate it. We didn't play well enough. We didn't make the plays we needed to make, [and] we didn't make the calls we needed to make to win the game. But that doesn't mean I don't love our players. Our players and our coaches – they're great. They're great players, and we're going to play great football."
Yesterday it was kind of a unique circumstance with your numbers on the defensive line with the injuries. What are you seeing with the pass rush? In the second half, you guys did blitz a little more than you typically have blitzed this year. Do you think more needs to be done from a scheme standpoint; is it guys with one-on-one matchups? I know it's never just one thing. What are you seeing with your pass rush? (Luke Jones) "Yes, I'm happy with it. A lot of the times if you look at the stats and all that – kind of what you're referring to – it's not as consistently there as you're going to want it to be. Some of that is the fact that we've played some really mobile quarterbacks who we've had to kind of cage rush a little bit. That wasn't the case yesterday. That's one I would've liked to have gotten them off the spot a little more [and] a little quicker. We did blitz, and they were getting the ball out fast most of the time when we did. But there's also times on play action, especially on first down, where [Jameis Winston] held it, and that's because you're stopping the run first, and we weren't stopping the run as well as we have. We're playing run defense, and then you have to transition, and you have the bigger guys on the field. That's when the time really kind of stacked up in terms of him being able to throw the ball in some of those deep windows – some of those chunk throws. Maybe that's somewhere where we have to do more blitzing – on first and second down. We did some. [Defensive coordinator] Zach [Orr] called a couple edge blitzes that got there. We'll be looking real hard at that."
Given the decision on S Marcus Williams, what are your takeaways ... S Ar'Darius Washington was asked to do a lot, and what's your assessment of him and S Eddie Jackson? (Bo Smolka) "I thought [Ar'Darius Washington and Eddie Jackson] played solid football. They were in the right spot [and] doing the right things the vast majority of time. I thought they played hard, made some good tackles and were in solid position [most] times. For all of us, we all want to just make a few more plays, get a few more pressures, get a few more sacks, get a few more batted balls, get a few more PBUs – that'd be good; catch the ball on the interceptions – that's the big one from this game. Everybody wants to make plays. I just think we have to keep chasing that."
How was S Kyle Hamilton doing after the game? Did you get a chance to talk to him? I know he was obviously frustrated not being able to make the play before the touchdown? (Jerry Coleman) "[Kyle Hamilton] was really disappointed about the loss – really disappointed – we all were. We were not real happy about it as you can imagine, and no team would be. No team is, and this is a tough league. You put so much into these games. You fight so hard out there. You stand on that sideline. You go to a game, [and] you watch in person [and] see what gets put into trying to win these games, so it's tough. It's disappointing, and then what you have to do is you can't live in it. You have to bounce back, and you have to get going for the next week.
Do you think your defense has been in the right spots a majority of the time and just failed to execute on plays? They've been credited with 8 dropped interceptions, so they had opportunities, but do you feel like they are in the right spots? (Kyle Phoenix) "I do. We're contesting. We have one of the highest tight-coverage rates in the league right now. We're in the right place a vast majority of the time when you compare it to the league. There are a lot of tough things ... There are a lot of good passing games in this league, and they give you a lot of tough stuff. I think we're the fourth-ranked team, in that sense, in the league right now coverage-wise. Yet, completion-wise, they're completing ... I think we might be around 19 or 20 in terms of contested completions against us, so that's where it's happening, and we're getting thrown on a lot, because the run defense has been good, and people have been behind. You get a lot of two-minute passes and all those kinds of things, so all that kind of stuff adds up to the ranking overall. We're there, and I think we can make more plays. I know we can, and I believe our guys are going to do it."
Along those lines, third downs haven't been probably as successful as you would have liked. Yesterday, Cleveland was pretty successful there. To that point, about coverage and so forth, what do you guys need to do better to close teams out on third downs? (Brian Wacker) "On defense, one thing we need to do better [at] is keeping them in longer situations, because it's a little tougher to really bring the heat when it's third-and-3, third-and-4 [or] third-and-5, because you overload, and then you leave run gaps and scramble gaps available. Screens become more evident, so we just have to start off with, 'Let's keep them from running it down to third-and-1, third-and-2, third-and-3 [or] even third-and-4. Let's get them in third-and-8, third-and-9 [or] third-and-10-plus more often.' That would probably be the first thing, and then we can get after people a little more with the pass rush, and I think that will help our third down [percentage] quite a bit."
During the second quarter, I think you wanted to use the challenge flag for a first down. Were you hearing from your guys that the Cleveland Browns did make a first down? It looked like it was pretty close, or from television, it looked like he was short. (Kevin Richardson) "Yes, I went back and watched the tape today; it was about 6 inches short, and we talked about it, but I'll tell you that they're looking at those upstairs now. They look at that replay pretty close, and I walked down there, and I said, 'Are you looking at it? Are you looking at it?' And they said they were looking at it, so when they don't weigh in, that's a sign, to me, that they're not going to overturn it, so I don't want to throw that challenge flag and waste that timeout when I have a pretty good indication – because I know the replay official is looking at it upstairs already – that they're probably not going to overturn it, especially for like 6 inches on a fourth down in plus territory when they're probably going to sneak it – and that's a real tough stop – so it seemed to me the prudent move was not to challenge it right there."
Does the team have an apprehension to use QB Lamar Jackson in sneak situations? We've seen that you've used TE Charlie Kolar over the last couple of years, and there have been different variations of using quarterback sneaks with Jackson, when he was doing so, yet running in certain gaps and situations. What's behind that? (Kyle Phoenix) "Yes, that's probably it. Nobody gives up more than Lamar [Jackson], in terms of doing everything he can to win the game. We feel like if we're going to run a sneak, we can do it with somebody else. You have a bigger body in there doing it a little bit, and we'll take that off of Lamar; that's really our thinking on it. We can still turn around and hand off a jet sweep; those are things that we work on [and] that our opponents know that we work on those situations, and we might be using them coming up here really soon – which is probably a pretty good indication that we won't, if I'm saying it – but yes. That's basically our thinking on it."
Does that limit your abilities on third down to not have QB Lamar Jackson in there? (Kyle Phoenix) "Not on third-and-6 inches or a foot. If we want to sneak it – if that's what we've decided we want to do – look at the Eagles and the sneak teams; they're not really doing too much on those plays. When you sneak it, you're basically telegraphing what you're going to do anyway. Now, if we wanted to tap sneak in some of those, where we're coming to the line and like some teams do – you see the Bengals and teams do that – we can do that with Lamar. Lamar has that ability to do that; [it] hadn't come up this year, but he can tap sneak an open gap if he wants."
I think you're still near the top of the league in disguising your coverage before the snap. Has there been a learning curve at all, with the players or with the coaches, in getting all that executed well? Has any of that led to some of the coverage busts and some other plays that we've seen? (Jonas Shaffer) "Yes. I mean, sure. Absolutely. It's part of it. When you do more to ... And we've played ... How many top quarterbacks have we played and top passing games have we played? So, I think we've played a lot of the better quarterbacks so far, so you really want to have the ability to change the picture. You can't just really line up against these guys too often and just show them what you're in. [When] you do that with the [Joe] Burrows and those guys, it's tough, so that's always been what we've done. We've been a big disguise team; we've been a big [simulated pressure] team; we've blitzed from both sides; we've shown blitzes one way and blitzed the other way and run out of it; we've shown one way and come that way; we've shown edge and come to the middle. We try to keep it moving, [and] we try to keep people guessing. It's a big part of our defense, and the execution part of it, for the most part, has been good, but there have been plenty of times where it hasn't been good. [Do] I think it's part of the learning curve? Yes, I do think it's part of the learning curve, and I do believe the curve is going to keep getting better as we go forward."
You seemed frustrated by the kickoff return penalties yesterday. They set you back in long situations. Do those returners have a green light to bring the ball out of the end zone, and do you get the sense that they sometimes lose track of where they are on the field? (Bo Smolka) "No [and] yes. I think that's right. You nailed it. They do not have a ... Not that we can't have a green light, but we haven't had a green light yet this year. [It] doesn't make sense to us if they're going to give us the ball at the 30-yard line, and the way the angles work, it's really tough to block that – this new style – when the ball is kicked into the end zone. And I do think they lose a sense of where they're at sometimes, especially a young guy; it's part of it, for sure. I also think that we didn't ... We made some bad blocking decisions on that, and I was really unhappy with that, too. So, those penalties were not OK. And even, Tylan [Wallace] ... Tylan plays great, [and] I love Tylan, but he lost track of where he was [when] going back and catching that punt, too; he'll tell you that. And he'll be back out there, and he'll learn from that, too. That hurt our offense, for sure. Field position was a problem in the game."
What did you see on K Justin Tucker's 50-yard field goal miss? I know that Cleveland is not an easy place to kick. (Luke Jones) "[Justin Tucker] could explain it better than I could. It just didn't look like a great hit on the ball, from what I could tell. I watched it, [and] I saw the technique; I know what I think about it, as a former special teams coach, but 'Tuck' can tell you way better than I can."
Was the wind tough yesterday, too? It was hard to tell from TV. (Childs Walker) "We were limited. We didn't think we could kick anything, [and] we didn't want to kick much from outside [of] getting it to the 35[-yard line]. That was kind of our target line, there, [and] I think that was probably [the Browns'] target – just about – too, because there is always a crosswind going sideways there, and it's hard to sometimes keep it between the uprights from ... When you get out past 50 [yards], it's tough to make kicks there."
I know this is an injury question, but was it an illness or the shoulder that kept CB Nate Wiggins from being able to travel with you guys to Cleveland? (Jonas Shaffer) "There was an illness issue. There was an illness issue, and I don't think I'm allowed to really disclose it, but [Nate Wiggins] is doing OK. I hope to see him at practice this week."
