Head Coach Mike Macdonald On Loss To The Rams in Week 11

Mike Macdonald (0:04)

All right, it's a great football game. Two really good teams, two great teams going after it. Proud of our guys for fighting, man. I mean, we got a heck of a group, some tough dudes that fight to the very end, and we're about three yards short from putting ourselves in a great position to go win the game, given all the things that happened throughout the game. So we're gonna learn from this, and we're gonna move forward, and we're gonna get better from it, and really prep, you know, is what it is. But the Rams are a really good team. And we knew going into the game, we needed to be able to capitalize on scoring opportunities in the red zone. We knew we were gonna obviously have to take care of the football, and we didn't do that. We took it away once on defense, and we got to make the ball come to life a little bit more on defense as well, so. But we're gonna recoup, we're gonna go get back, and attack the heck out of this week, just like we would if the field goal went in, you know, so.

But encouraged by our group, very, you know, obviously very disappointed we lost, you know. You want to be able to win a game like that, given all the circumstances, but we didn't, but it's a long season, and we'll move forward.

SPEAKER_2 (1:14)

Do you have an update on Gray's label?

Mike Macdonald (1:16)

Yeah, it's his knee, no update, we'll get an image and see what's going on.

SPEAKER_2 (1:22)

Just the interception Sam threw, just how do you kind of assess those and have that open?

Mike Macdonald (1:27)

Yeah, I'm not sure, I'm not sure. It's probably a combination of multiple things, so we'll attack it and figure out what we can do to not put the ball in jeopardy, but that's what he told me, given everything that happened, you get pinned back at the one yard line, it's a heck of a punt by the guy. And we just kept battling, and Sam put us in a position to possibly win the game, so we'll look at it and learn from it. What did you think of the job your defense did overall today? Our guys fought incredibly hard. I thought we executed well. We're giving some tough spots, that's what we talk about, all the things we talk about. Death zone football, it would have been great to have another red zone stop.

But I'll tell you what, our guys stuck together and had a great attitude and played tough as nails. So we'll look at it, we'll see what happens. And we're going to be seeing a lot of these guys, we're going to see them twice a year, possibly three. And to me, it's like who evolves best from game to game, who learns from it, who grows the most, is going to get the advantage every time we play. But every time we play, it's been an absolute knockdown, track out fight.

SPEAKER_2 (2:41)

What was your message to the team?

Mike Macdonald (2:43)

Just what I'm telling you guys is, obviously we're disappointed, but it's very clear to me that we have a great team.

And we're going to learn to win games like that, and we're going to learn from weeks like this and all that. Again, we're young. You got a young head coach or whatever. I'm learning how to prepare our teams from week to week. So we're all learning. We're all learning, we're all growing. I actually think that's like a competitive advantage for us as we start to grow. We are willing to grow and evolve, given any circumstance. And we have to keep doing that. You got to keep attacking that type of process and keep learning. And that's the way we'll get better, so we can put ourselves in better position to win games like this.

SPEAKER_2 (3:26)

It looked, at least from Webb in the press box, like Ernest and some of the defensive guys were kind of trying to pick up the offense after the interceptions. It could be easy for defense to get down in that situation when they're putting them.

Mike Macdonald (3:36)

I didn't see that, but it doesn't surprise me to hear that. Our guys love each other. We're connected and we got each other's backs. We've had games where the offense has picked us up on defense and vice versa, so I'm not surprised to hear that.

SPEAKER_2 (3:49)

What do you tell your quarterback after a performance like today?

Mike Macdonald (3:51)

Keep ripping it, man. We love you. We got your back.