Opening Statement: "Alright, no injuries to report, nobody really left the game and didn't return, so there's nothing to report there. This is how you get beat by really good football team at their place. Turn the ball over four times, you don't take it away once, you give up an unbelievable amount of return yardage in the return game, both in kickoff and punt, put our defense in short fields, and they scored five touchdowns on all five possessions they were down in there. We allowed too many explosive plays, and we have too many penalties in the first half for sure. The positives of it are they only had one touchdown when they started in their own territory, but they started way too often in ours. Our defense played well enough, but again, the short field didn't come up with any stops, and found ways to let them score touchdowns. Other than the turnovers, I thought our offense moved the ball, especially in the first half, against good defense. We put – it was a 14-14 game at one point and thought we had a good rhythm going, and we had a chance to keep the game tight, and we are playing good football, and then that's how the game gets away from you against good football team. You give up a punt return for a touchdown, you give up a long kickoff to give the defense another short field, and then you ultimately turn the ball over four times, and at some point we're going to stop doing that, and we are going to play competitive football game, but until then, that's what they look like when you turn it over like that and don't get any turnovers in return. So, it's just not good enough anywhere, and again, you play a good team on the road that's built to capitalize on mistakes and make you pay for them, they did, and that's where we're at."
On what he says to the fans to give them hope after seeing a performance like the one today: "Look, I'm not really in the business of trying to provide all that right now, we're just trying to play better football. And that's my focus, putting guys out there that – we fight, our team plays hard, but we've got to do a lot of things a lot better, and right now, it's not a product that people are excited to watch, and that's the way it is. We've got to do something about that."
On what Titans Special Teams Coordinator Colt Anderson has done to suggest he is not in over his head: "Yeah, I'm not going to get into all that. Obviously, we haven't playing well enough on special teams, but that's a little bit too much for after a game. But look, I think (Titans Special Teams Coordinator) Colt (Anderson)'s a good football coach, we haven't played well enough, we haven't coached well enough, so there's really nothing else to say about that."
On what he is seeing with Tennessee's defensive struggles: "I mean, I see a lot of – we don't get down and cover, we missed tackles today, we're devoting resources to protect because that wasn't good enough early. We've protected and settled down, but then we haven't covered very well. There's blame to go around in all of it, both schematically and in performance, so we'll take a look at that when we get back on the film, but right now, none of it's good enough anywhere."
On if at some point he needs to consider major changes to not be 1-6 anymore: "I'll deal with that on my own when we get back to the building if that's something that we have to do, but at this point, I'm not in that mode."
On the defense leaving Lions players alone in the endzone on their touchdowns: "Well, I'm not saying it was good enough, trust me, I'm just saying that they got put in some really tough spots, and when they weren't in those tough spots, they did some really good things. They put us in position early in the game for it to be a ball game. Obviously, we had some lapses in coverage and assignments at those spots in the redzone. Again, when you go five-for-five in the redzone, that means we're not playing the brand of football that's going to win a game for us. So, at the end of the day, that's – we have to be better there too."
On if the play calls when they were at the goal line in the second quarter were because they had success in previous games with those calls: "No. All of the situations are independent, but they had their base defense and it reversed our sub-personnel, so I didn't want to get into a spot where we had to sub people in and get heavy and sub people. There's only so much time left and getting all of those things off with enough shots at the end zone, so that's ultimately what happened. You could have potentially run the ball there at some point, but they had a heavy personnel, their base defense against our sub, and I thought our advantage was the one-on-ones and we had opportunities."
On having one timeout in the second quarter when at the goal line and not using it: "We had one. Yeah, we had one. And so, again, you can look back on it and second-guess it all you want. At the end of the day, I thought our best chance to get the ball in the endzone was to play our one-on-one game outside with those guys. We had some pick routes, we had some things available to us that I felt good about."
On if there was a mandate from Titans Controlling Owner/Co-Chairman Amy Adams Strunk that special teams be a priority for him this season: "I mean yeah, I certainly don't want special teams to be an issue and I certainly wasn't anticipating any issues. We've had a lot of them though. So, yeah there's been no mandates or anything of that sort. We just have to play better on special teams for sure. There's a lot of things that aren't good enough right now."
On his overall expectation for the team's performance today: "The same thing. Look, we have not come anywhere close to playing the football that I think we're capable of, and when you turn the ball over the way we turn it over, four turnovers is, I mean you're going to get blown out by every team in the league [if] you turn the ball over four times. And then we don't capture any of the ball at all, and we just don't complement each other at all. I mean, right now our special teams gives up yards, defense doesn't get a stop, we don't do anything on offense, we turn it over. So, it's just everything needs to be better, and so, that's all there is to it. You've got to look at it and find a way to get those things corrected, and until we do it's going to be hard."
On what he saw that he believed frustrated his team about Lions Defensive Coordinator Aaron Glenn's scheme down the stretch: "I mean, we moved the ball pretty well, we just turned it over, you know. We turn a ball over on an interception in plus territory, fumble it two more times in plus territory. I wouldn't say anything that they did was outside of what was expected. They do a good job, it's a good defense, (Lions Defensive Coordinator) Aaron's (Glenn) a good coach, but I thought we hit spots, moved the ball well enough, and then again it got out of hand, and we didn't convert on third down on top of it. So, sort of the same list of issues."
On if it is surprising that a lot of the issues have not been corrected yet, especially the turnovers: "Yeah, I mean that's why we're one-and-six. It's not for lack of intention, it's not for lack of coaching it, we've just got to do a better job of doing it. That's kind of where we're at, and we'll keep hammering it, we'll keep coaching it, and we've got to find a way at some point to not do it. That's really what it comes down to."
On if he thinks the pieces exist on his roster for the team to play the kind of football he expects: "Yeah, I absolutely do. I've believed that from the get-go. We've got to stop losing games. We're losing ourselves games. We're not putting ourselves in position to win. We don't play clean enough brand right now to put us in spots to be in the competitive games, and look, we've had some games that we had chances to win, we were in, and so yeah, there's things that I believe about our roster. I believe in the way our guys play and they work, but we've got to do a better job playing football, and a better job coaching it, at the end of the day, because one-and-six is what we are. We've played some teams that I think are really good, and we haven't performed well against the really good teams that we've faced, and I think we're capable of playing much better than we are, and we've got to keep finding a way to get that done."
On whether players feel that they are held accountable for a unit underperforming instead of the coach: "Yeah, I mean, I think, they all, we all just start with ourselves first, and if we're not playing well enough, 'What can I do better as a player? Where are we able to make an improvement to do something better than we've done it?' Trust me, all these guys, we're all held accountable. There's nothing that's not being accounted for, so we have to do a good job of taking that accountability to the field and performing on game day – coaching and playing."
On how frustrating it was to be in the red zone multiple times and not convert: "Yeah, incredibly frustrating. It's, again, I thought we did some good things early in the game, we came out hot, we started fast, just like we hoped to, and ultimately don't have much to show for it. Yeah, that's really frustrating."
