LB Jonathan Casillas
October 4, 2017
Q: Do you sense that the defense hasn’t been flying around as much as it did last year?
A: Yeah. To a certain extent. I feel like last year, early in the season, we weren’t that good defensively and we got better. So, I think we’re there now. We just don’t have any wins to stand up for that. Last year, I feel like we were kind of back and forth. We had some signs of being really good, but we weren’t really good yet. We had to get better throughout the season and I think that’s still in front of us. 0-4 just doesn’t look that good. We were 2-2 last year at this point. We lost two straight and we ended up losing three straight. So, hopefully we can correct it. I have the upmost confidence that we will and it’s a play here, play there, field goal here, field goal, missed field goal. We would be 2-2. But, you could say the same thing last year. I don’t talk about ‘what if’s’. I probably just did for the last two minutes. But, I mean, I think we have a great locker room. Offense has started to figure it out and now defense, we have to start figuring it out.
Q: How important is it for you as a leader to keep everyone together and not fractured?
A: It’s huge. 0-4, nobody wants to sit there without a win and if you go back, we haven’t had a win. We lost the last five games. We have to include that Green Bay game. Maybe it’s some carryover from there. Nobody has talked about that yet. I mean, maybe. We did get beat pretty good at the end of the season last year. Hopefully, it’s not beating us one, two, three, four, five times now. Hopefully it’s not. We have to correct it. I think the way we’re approaching practice today, we had a great practice, and I don’t know about the dumbing down of the calls because I still feel like we had some calls out there. But, we have to be able to handle it. Last year, the playbook was wide open and we had the guys to do it and besides a couple guys, we got everybody back. So, we have to be able to handle it. We have to be able to go out there and stop people, get up the field and not let people catch balls behind us and not leave people running on the field wide open. Can’t do stuff like that.
Q: Did you change something at practice today as a team?
A: I think it was just the attitude that we had. Everybody had that attitude that we were going to get better today. We weren’t going to make a mistake. We weren’t going to be on the ground. We’re all going to be on the same page. Everybody had the same attitude and demeanor and I think you saw that today at practice.
