NYG Postgame (vs. Steelers) Transcripts: LB Blake Martinez
September 14, 2020
Q: Curious how you felt like you played tonight in your first game tonight. I know you had a few big plays and I’m just curious how you evaluate yourself tonight.
A: I want to look at the tape before I know exactly how to assess myself. I felt like going out there, first circumstance with not having fans, first game with a new team, new defense and everything. I felt consistent out there, felt I knew what I was doing, was able to play fast, play aggressive and just go back plays at the line of scrimmage.
Q: The defensive line it seemed like was wrecking a lot of havoc on Ben Roethlisberger, giving him a lot of trouble especially like Leonard Williams and Lorenzo Carter… what’d you see out of those guys?
A: Both are amazing players, they went out there and did their jobs, made big plays, that’s what we expect from them. It’s just awesome to see those guys, each and every one of us on defense have been working really hard together and it’s cool to see guys go out there and perform well.
Q: When you look along those lines, when you have Leonard Williams and Dexter Lawrence both really creating a lot of pressure up front, how much easier does that make your life as an inside backer, and how gratifying was it as a front seven to create the kind of pressure you guys did tonight?
A: It’s huge. The first day I came here and we were able to be in person and I got to see those guys in person stand in front of me, I told Pat (Graham) thank you and then moved on from there. Like I said earlier, they did a lot of great things tonight and it kind of trickled on back to help each and every one of us out there.
Q: Hey Blake, what do you think you guys did well as a collective defense today and what do you need to clean up? Seemed like you had a really strong first half, a lot of good energy, but obviously the final score doesn’t reflect that it was good enough.
A: Once again, just want to be able to check the tape and see completely what happened, to kind of assess it and have that answer. Overall, I think we had, like you said, great energy across the board. We’re just working to keep getting better and just like Coach Judge told us every single time we practiced this week was, the big jump from week 1 to week 2 is where good teams show up.
Q: What happened in the second half? It seemed like they were able to get their running game going.
A: I think it was just little things here and there. Once again, I don't know exactly the complete answer, because we obviously want to check the tape and see where things kind of went wrong in certain situations. At the end of the day, it’s going to end up being our fundamentals, our technique, our job, our assignment for that given play was lacking, and I think that was kind of a collective for us on defense. We kind of hurt ourselves in the grand scheme of things.
Q: You guys give up that score there right before the end of the half, was there something there that happened that went wrong?
A: Once again, just going to have to check the tape on that portion once we are able to see it tomorrow or the next day.
Q: Momentum-wise, what does that do? You played well, and then all of a sudden you’re down.
A: It’s definitely a tough moment to obviously have that happen. We always talk about how good teams are good in the red area, third down and two minute. Obviously, that was a two minute situation and we needed to stop them and we didn’t do that. Obviously we had to refocus and readjust to start the second half.
