TITANS HEAD COACH KEN WHISENHUNT PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT - September 28, 2015
(on the two-point conversion attempt and if the Colts made a play or the Tennessee offense broke down)
They made a play. That's a fair thing to say. We felt comfortable with the play. We had a good play called the one before and they grabbed our guy because he was wide open, so we moved it to the one. That was a play that we had success with earlier in the game and we felt good about it, and they made a play.
(on if Jalston Fowler is OK from an injury standpoint)
Yeah, he seems to be. I think he's going to be all right.
(on if it matters that the one-yard play was used previously in the game)
I don't think so. We had a fourth-down in the game earlier and we had a play that they probably knew was coming and they made that, and we had a touchdown right before that. A lot of times, they know the plays, or at least they say they do, because they're trying to call them out. So it really comes down to execution. We didn't execute that well enough, but you have to give them credit, they made a play.
(on if the team is making progress in terms of establishing an identity)
Well we had a fourth-down in the third quarter, the fourth quarter; I don't remember which quarter it was, it was down there in a tight area and we went for it and we made it, so that does go a ways towards establishing what we want to do. We're a more physical football team. We're a better running football team than we were a year ago. There's a lot of good things that we're doing. It's just unfortunate that we didn't finish the game the way that we wanted to yesterday.
(on if he wanted Jalston Fowler to flip the ball to Marcus Mariota when he was pressured on the two-point conversion play)
Yeah, what do you have to lose at that point? I asked Jalston (Fowler) afterwards, I said, 'Did you think about that?' And he said yeah he saw (Marcus Mariota) but he thought there was somebody on him and he thought he could get it. I mean at that point, yeah, probably.
(on what he would have liked to see Zach Brown do on interception return)
Well, you'd like to see him doing anything other than run into Derrick (Morgan)'s back. He was doing actually a good job blocking. But you know, who knows if he'd gone outside or inside if he would have scored. To me, that really doesn't matter. One of the things that we've been very good at is scoring touchdowns off of turnovers. I think I've said that a couple times through the preseason, even early in the season. So when we get it there, our expectation is to score a touchdown. Unfortunately, we didn't do that. We've been very productive in the red zone this year, but in that case, we didn't. **
(on if they purposely changed the pass rush in the fourth quarter into a different mode against Andrew Luck)
I think obviously, we were having some success getting to him. We were close at times in the series. But obviously, I think it was around 12 minutes left in the fourth quarter and up two scores there at the two-yard line, the one thing you want to make them do is use a lot of clock to move down the field. We felt like we were able to accomplish that. We had them at third-and-20 at the 40-yard line, or wherever that was exactly, and there were seven minutes (left) at that point. We had done what we needed to do as a defense, we just didn't execute on the third-down play. The situation as it was, if you can put yourself in some man coverage, then you can expose yourself potentially to a big play or a big score. Obviously, that third-and-20 wasn't good enough because they did score, but up until that point, we had accomplished that. Had we done what we had done and gotten off the field for them to punt, maybe that ends the game right there.
(on if Marqueston Huff had help on that third-and-20 play)
He does have help, he does have help on that play deep. But I mean he's got to play it better too. It was a combination, a multiple fail there, which obviously, hurts.
(on guys leaving the game with cramps)
We hydrate, we work on that. We hadn't had that issue in camp. We were down numbers a little bit and some guys were having to do extra jobs. Maybe that contributed to it.
(on corners not getting beat deep on third-and-20 plays)
The thing is, we had guys there in both instances, we just didn't knock the ball away. Marqueston (Huff) turns around, he knocks it away, and Blidi (Wreh-Wilson) puts his hand up, he knocks it away. (T.Y.) Hilton made a good play on the first one, on Blidi, but you obviously don't want those to happen.
(on corners' awareness when tracking the ball)
Well actually I think there are three plays that you're talking about. On the first one in Cleveland, we were there, he just missed the ball. That happens in the league. On the second one, that was a broken play and the guy went across field. You see that happen quite a lot in the league. If you want to put the Pittsburgh Steelers tape on, you see that happen multiple times in a game. So that happens. The one yesterday, a little bit of the same thing, just didn't locate the ball, didn't make a play on it, and the receiver jumped back and did make a play. I think, if you watched the game last night between Denver and Detroit, there were two or three plays where the guy was right there and the receivers made the catch. So it does happen in the league, you don't want it to happen and you work to try to keep that from happening, but it did.
(on if he can see promising signs from the offensive numbers)
Yeah, well I mean, let's be real, let's not even compare it to last year offensively. We're doing a lot of things better. It's hard right now. I mean, it's tough. That was a game where we had done a lot of good things. We'd come from 14 down, controlled the game and taken a 13-point lead against a good football team, and to lose it, it hurts. But yeah, I think that there are a lot of positive signs on our offense of things that we're doing, and we have to build off of that. I mean, listen, we can't turn the ball over. We've got to correct some mistakes. We've got to do a better job of protecting the quarterback. But we had a lot of plays yesterday that were big jumps, a lot more than you see from a normal NFL game. There are a lot of good signs. We're running the ball better than we've run it before. We're a good red zone team. We're scoring more points. We've probably got more points now than we had maybe the whole year last year. There were a lot of positive things. I wish we would have won the game yesterday so you could talk about those. But right now, I just want to continue to get better and win a game.
(on if he looking for a guy to take over at running back and work more than others and if Antonio Andrews earned himself more time with his play yesterday)
What's wrong with what we've been doing in the first three weeks running the football? We've been effective. Every week we have different packages and I can't tell you which package is going to have success. It depends. Just like yesterday, Bishop Sankey had a number of plays. In fact, he was very effective on a couple screen passes for us. But his plays, we didn't have a good matchup we felt in the packages that he was in there for, especially running the football. But it was a little bit more that way with Antonio (Andrews) in there, so he took advantage of it. I don't know what it's going to be next week or the next week that we play. That's going to go from week to week.
