Head Coach Tom Coughlin
Postgame vs. Jets, August 29, 2015
Not real complicated, we had six penalties in the first half. We kind of broke our play up, I thought. You know, we had an interception for a touchdown. We had a punt return for a touchdown. We were backed up and punted from the one after a sack. We couldn’t run the ball with any consistency. I thought they ran the ball well, not just in the second half, but they did basically with it what they happened to do there. So I mean, as I said, you give two scores away like that and it’s going to be most difficult to win in this league any time.
Q: Coach, what did you like on the 85-yard touchdown drive.
A: Oh, I liked the drive. I thought the drive was outstanding. I thought there were big plays made. There was consistency in terms of picking up first downs when we had to and we had a couple of penaltie, but that was a good drive, a good football drive and it really was encouraging for me. I thought we would come right back out, but this one was the two-minute drill. You know we had the ball twice in the two-minute. I thought for sure that this was a great opportunity for us, not only to work on the two-minute, but to be in a game situation while we’re doing it. So I was disappointed.
Q: On the interception, if [James] Jones had caught that, the clock probably would have run out. Was the play supposed to go in a different direction or was that just a bad throw?
A: It looked like (Eli) shuffled up in the pocket and because of that, the play might have taken a little longer, but James [Jones] certainly could have come back more and even if he knocks the ball down, you know it’s better than the result.
Q: You don’t want that to go into the middle of the field at that point, correct? I mean that’s something…
A: We’re trying to get the ball on the outside. We don’t have any timeouts.
Q: What’d you see with your defense in terms of the first two scores the Jets had?
A: Well, what did I see? They had a good mix, I thought, of run and pass. They moved the chains. It seemed to be that they gained yardage on first down and didn’t give us any great opportunities in terms of long yardage.
Q: Anything on that screen? On the second one that they scored? The screen?
A: Yeah, it was a mistake. There was nobody. Whoever was supposed to be responsible was not there. There was no coverage on the screen.
Q: Aside from the interception, did you see progress with your passing game?
A: The long drive was good. That was good.
Q: Can you assess what was going right in the 14-play drive that wasn’t happening in the other drives?
A: Other than the fact we converted some first downs. There weren’t a lot of long chunks. We converted some first downs and kept the play alive. We executed well. We came back in the two-minute and didn’t.
Q: You went no-huddle, was that…
A: We were going no-huddle most of the day.
Q: What happened with Ayers?
A: I really don’t know. He’s out there pregame and all of a sudden he’s on the ground and complaining about his ankle and his Achilles and whatever. That was two minutes before we came into the locker rooms prior to going out and starting the game.
Q: On the punt return was there more coverage, was it the position of the punt, or was it a combination of the two?
A: When you’re punting the ball out of the end zone and you’re rushed, a lot of times you’re not going to get that location that you’d like to have. He certainly drove it up in the air high enough, but our coverage wasn’t very good coming down the field. They did a nice job on the outside, cutting the gunners off the ball. And he had a chance to get started. The coverage was not great. He got himself going at a momentum, made a couple of plays and the cut back. Thought we had a chance to get him down. I thought Wade had a shot at him. I don’t know what happened there. He missed it.
Q: Back to Ayers, did he get checked out?
A: I’m not sure what they left with. I don’t know any more. He couldn’t play in the game. I’ll have to find out more information.
Q: Realizing that you might not know yet, do you anticipate playing your starters on Thursday?
A: I usually end up playing them a little bit. We’re more than a week away from the start of the season.
When does it end?
When they are consistent you see playoff or superbowl seasons, beyond that they just find a way to lose or miss the playoffs quite a bit. Team needs a positive change element at head coach and maybe GM to move forward, or it could be some bad years for us. They are likely hurting us more by paying Eli a fortune too given the lack of playoff appearances, you can go 5-12 and 6 and 10 with an average QB.