Safety Julian Love
Q: What can you take away from today's performance?
A: Really, the story of today is we didn't execute how we needed to. We had too many penalties. We didn't win the turnover battle. Field position on special teams wasn't the best. All around, it just wasn't our day.
Q: You guys were so good in the red zone this year and third down. Today they're four-of-five in the red zone and I think they were six-of-13 on third down. What was the difference today?
A: Honestly, it's just executing. I thought we had good calls. They're an offense who brings a lot at you and they're talented at what they do. I think we just have to be more resilient when we get in those situations, especially in the red zone.
Q: How much did it hurt losing (cornerback) Adoree' Jackson in the secondary?
A: Yeah, it's tough. That's our guy, he's been playing at a high level. To see him go down, that's very tough. For the game, we need young guys to step up and throw them in the fire, which is a tough thing for any team to do.
Q: You lose (Adoree') Jackson, (cornerback) Fabien (Moreau) goes down, (safety) Xavier McKinney is already out. At any point, do all these injuries piling up become hard to deal with emotionally for a team?
A: It's tough. It's tough for a defense, for our secondary in terms of our execution and playing the game. It's tough personally - those are your friends, those are your guys who you go to battle with each day and to see them banged around, it's tough. So yeah, we got to find a way right now. Some young guys have to step up, which I know they're going to do. Thankfully, it's a short week because we can get right back in action – that's my mindset for it.
Q: How disappointing is this given where you are in the standings? Particularly with last week Dallas and Philadelphia losing.
A: It's disappointing because you don't want to lose games. We're not getting too high, too low with anything. If we win, it's like okay we won, what can we correct? I think that's our mindset right now. We're going to go in tomorrow, probably do a quick recap, but it's on to Dallas. We can't dwell on this game. All the goals, all the pillars we try to hit – we just didn't hit them today. That's the story of our season – the games that we've won, we've hit those goals. We won those battles. The games we lost, we haven't. We're not taking it for anything bigger than it was. Inside the building, we have a pretty locked-in mindset and we're not focused on the standings, for sure.
Q: Can you take us through the pass that you deflected? You had a chance to get an interception on it. What did you see and did you get your arm pulled down on that one?
A: I think I had a good jump on the ball. I saw his back shoulder tilted up. I had a good bead on it, the ball was in the air. (Cornerback) Darnay (Holmes), I think, was in great coverage. Yeah, I just got to go up with my hands, I think. I tried to get in front of it to try to shield myself from the contact, but somebody knocked it loose. I just got to go up with my hands and make a play for us when we needed plays to be made today.
Q: This team's got four games against divisional opponents in a row. Are you interested to see what you're going to learn about this team during that stretch?
A: Yeah. I feel like throughout this first however many games we've learned a lot about who we are and now it's time to bunker down and really get after it. This is a crucial stretch, not only because we're playing division games, but this is when football is important in general. That playoff mindset comes into play now in terms of how we approach each game. We got to treat it really as such because, yeah, we have division opponents but that November, December football is where teams are really tested and made.
Q: They got the ball to start the second half. What did you see in that drive they went down and scored?
A: We wanted to come out after the half and give our offense a place to stand, give a quick three and out and let them score. We didn't do that. I think we didn't execute and we have to be ready coming out of half, coming out of the break. In a situation like that, we were down 11 at the point, that's what it takes. That's what it takes to get these comebacks. When we've been down before, you've seen a quick stop and a quick score by the offense. That's something we want to do, we strive to do, and we didn't execute today.
Q: In the games you've lost this year, you're always right there. Was this kind of a slap in the face?
A: In all the games before I think we had some stuff going for us. Today, I felt we were getting killed on penalties, turnovers, maybe explosive plays. I'm not sure what their third down numbers were. All those situational things that we've been doing so well at on both sides of the ball, we didn't have that today. It's easy to see what happened, why what happened happened because the keys that we focus on that (head coach Brian Daboll) Dabs harps on – that's the story of the game for us. We got to execute that, and it really comes down to fundamentals at the end of the day. We got to pick this stuff up right now.
