Coach Joe Judge
Press Conference
Bears - 17, Giants - 13
JOE JUDGE: Guys, I appreciate you hanging on a couple of minutes. I want to talk to a few of my players. Listen, just to kind of sum up the game right now, as far as the feeling, obviously we played a good team today. We can't give a team like that extra opportunities. We can't give them short fields. Teams like that are going to make the most of it. They're well coached; they're very talented, they have explosive players, they have a good pass rush, and they have optimistic DBs that we allowed to make plays. That being said, I'm very proud of the way our team fought.
I'm very proud of the way they finished the game in the second half. Our defense going out there and not giving up any points, our offense going out there and moving the ball down the field and taking advantage of situations. I thought the two-minute drive at the end was very telling in the fight we had and at the end with the penalty, obviously that's something we gotta clean up and we can't shoot ourselves in the foot. So again you can church up that language right there in the quotes, Jordan. But at that point I'll open it up for questions.
Q. Joe, obviously the thing on everybody's mind is about Saquon going down and hurting his knee. Is there anything you could update us with that and how much of a blow is that, a guy like him who's obviously such an important part of your offense going down as early as he did like that?
JOE JUDGE: I'd say first off I thought the offense made really good adjustments to the game plan as we went for a number of reasons one of which obviously being injuries. In terms of Saquon individually I don't have a diagnosis on his knee. He's going to see some doctors tomorrow. We'll wait and see what that is. Obviously we're all praying for the best. I would just say this, regardless of whatever the outcome is going to be and what the doctors say tomorrow.
I wouldn't fall asleep on 26, it's going to be a hell of a story either way.
Q. How did you think Daniel managed the clock there
at the end? I know he had no timeouts but it seemed you guys were taking a lot of the underneath stuff and not any shots down field?
JOE JUDGE: I thought we had time to move the ball. Obviously had to use the timeouts in the four-minute aspect of it to make sure we had time when we got the ball back. That's a situation we practice regularly. I thought Daniel and the offense did a good job, put us in a position of the clock we had to stop it. We got the passes out. We did a good job overall as far as moving the ball systematically down the field, and look, you're standing on the 10 yard line with one play to go. That's really what you're working for in the two-minute drills, just give yourself an opportunity. I thought the way it was called was the right way. I thought the way our players executed we converted some third downs, a fourth down in there. We gave ourselves a chance. Obviously until we make the penalty on the last play but Daniel did a good job of extending the play moving out of the pocket give himself a chance to find the throw. Obviously not good enough because we didn't win the game. But it was something right there I thought we worked on. I think the zoom froze up in here, guys. You guys got me there? Okay. Kind of froze for a second on my end.
Q. Joe, two moments I'm wondering how you handled. One was when you had to carry Saquon over to the
sideline, just what the emotions were during that time. And then how did you handle halftime, because it did seem like your team really responded coming out of the half?
JOE JUDGE: Well, to be honest with you, halftime was a lot like the practice you guys wrote about us recently. We didn't come out here with the right kind of energy to start the game. We came out understanding there's 30 more minutes of football and we're going to give ourselves an opportunity to win. In terms of carrying Saquon off the field that was just simply he's a big dude and I wanted to make sure we get him over there with the least amount of stress on his leg as possible, and tried to just take the weight off.
Q. Do you have any update on Sterling Shepard?
JOE JUDGE: Nothing officially, no. Looked like the defensive back landed on his foot at the end of the first half. He caught that big ball across the middle and that two-minute sequence we had at the end of the first half. He tried to play through it. Obviously it was something he couldn't really run full speed on. So we'll see what the doctor says.
Q. How tough was it to stick with sort of passive, you rushing a lot of guys weren't blitzing, but it wasn't working early, but it seemed to come around?
JOE JUDGE: Yeah. This team presents you with a lot of things you have to deal with, whether you can rush four or five at times you had to put some extra guys in coverage the way they were playing. The extended plays got us early. The touchdown on the first drive really resulted in stand play by the quarterback and the same thing at the end of the half. We've gotta make sure we finish and that was part of the interest in keeping an interest guy in coverage to really watch the quarterback and try and eliminate those extended plays. But in terms of just going and rushing whether it's rushing with three, four or five at different times, I think we have the personnel that we're able to do some of that with in the scheme. These guys have to understand what the scheme calls for. It's not always a sack situation, just collapse in the pocket, put some pressure on guys. I thought they did a decent job overall. Obviously there's some plays we gotta clean up on right there. We gotta start a little better in the fourth quarter right there. That was something that kind of showed up early on. But the defense did a good job throughout the second half of kind of bend, don't break. That's not really a trademark we're looking for. The most important thing is points defensively and they stood up in the second half and they were good on all the drives.
Q. Coach, what happened in the first half with Barkley out, Shep goes down, the two turnovers by Jones, and then you find yourself in a position you come down to the last play of the game. What does that tell you about your team right now?
JOE JUDGE: You know what, we asked those guys today, we said we're going to find out a lot about ourselves. We came out at halftime and said we're going to find out a lot out about the team we are. You're down 17 nothing, what kind of team we're going to have. It's never about what happens to you. It's about how you respond to it. I liked the way our guys responded. We've got the right guys. We've got the right kind of guys. We've gotta clean some things up. We've gotta improve by not putting ourselves behind in games by making mistakes that we can control. Starts with turnovers, penalties and mental errors. Really the mental errors we were good on today. We played a smart brand of football. But the turnovers, that's hard to overcome, the penalties. We didn't have a ton but whether you have them they're always costly. So we've gotta start the things we can control and we have to play a good brand of football. In terms of the guys in the locker room look it's a tough resilient group. It really is. It's a young team that's learning a lot but they're learning a lot in these first two weeks about what we have to do as a team to capitalize on our opportunities and we have to make sure we stop spotting opponents opportunities to take advantage of our mistakes.
Q. Joe, what did you think of Dion's performance? Probably more carries than he's had in quite a while. And obviously you didn't foresee any of this happening, but what went into sitting Wayne today?
JOE JUDGE: We just made the best decision personnel wise is what the game plan called for. There's a lot of things that factor in. It's never just run game or pass game or offense. It's three sides of the ball so all the roles and factors as well what the defense does on the other side, they call play a role. Sometimes you may sit a guy on offense because defense may need something extra. So it's never directly related to just one guy. There's a lot of things that go into T. Now, in terms of Dion, I thought Dion was able to make some plays for us, caught the ball in space, able to extend a few plays, did a good job on the goal line punching that ball in on the fourth and goal right there. Look, Dion is a tough dude. I've been around him a long time. One thing you know about Dion is he's prepared and the guys really respond to him because he is a tough dude and he's got that look in his eye that he's going to do whatever it takes to work with the team and benefit the team so, I was proud for how he played out there today.
Q. You had Nate Ebner in there at safety early in the game. Just curious what went into that decision. Seems like he kind of got county out of position on that early Bears touchdown. What went into playing him there and your thoughts on what happened in that play?
JOE JUDGE: Yeah. We're going to use our roster in every game plan in how we see the benefit of us. There were some situational calls where we thought that he was a good fit with what we were looking to do both with his communication awareness on the defense. He's a very experienced player. Nate's a very, very smart player, very smart player. You put him on the field, he's a guy that players can play faster when he's around because he kind of calms everything down. That being said we had some specific roles for him within the game plan. He happened to be in it early in the game. But we won't hesitate to play Nate in any situation.
Q. Where does the team go without Saquon Barkley if he's out long-term which seems likely?
JOE JUDGE: We go back to work. That's where we go. We go back to work on Wednesday. We start plugging ahead. We got a tough opponent next week. They're going to be hanging on the East Coast waiting for us next Sunday. That's where we go. Our vision has to be forward. Whatever happened today win or loss, it's over. Today's game is over. What's important is our players learn from what happened; we clean up the mistakes and we push forward and we go to work with the right mentality, which I know our guys will.
Q. And also, like how do you make sense of Daniel? There's obviously a lot of good he's doing. The second half he was really good in that second half, but there's two more turnovers today. That's four in two games so far. There's been a lot of good but then you still have four turnovers in two games?
JOE JUDGE: We just gotta keep this guy playing aggressive. He's a tough dude. He's standing in the pocket. We'll watch the tape, talk and address some things with him specifically internally, but I like the way he's playing aggressive, gives us opportunities in some tough situations. As a team we have to stop shooting ourselves in the foot.
