Head Coach Mike Macdonald On The 27-19 Win On Monday Night Football

Mike Macdonald (0:00)

All right, great, great win.

We just talk about how we play. We pick each other up all the time. I thought our defense played outstanding. Their defense is a dang good defense. What are they averaging, like 12 points a game? I don't even know what the score was. So we outperformed that. We obviously gotta take care of the football. But the guys played hard. We responded to all the adversity. Affected the quarterback, took the run away. You know, all the things that we said we need to be able to do. There's a couple of plays there at the end that probably could have called some better plays to put us in better situations. But our guys fought and it's great to win at home. You know, definitely a point of emphasis. And I'll tell you what, the 12s are on fire. It has a great atmosphere and our guys are fired up. And our home crowd was just tremendous. So we're thankful for them to keep showing up, keep supporting us and told the team we come back after the buy that, you know, it's time to go. You know, we're going to go into the last half stretch of the season and play a lot of really good football teams. So yeah. So what do we got?

SPEAKER_2 (1:13)

You've talked about Ernest Jones a lot ever since he got here, but today you have the sack that you guys end up accepting the penalty, but interception, 11 tackles, what can you say about him?

Mike Macdonald (1:23)

I thought Ernest played a really great game. The plays, actually, I'm thinking of is like they're getting down there in the low red zone and he's just scratching and clawing and fighting, making great plays there, you know, to bleed all that clock. So, just an absolute, absolute warrior.

SPEAKER_2 (1:40)

I know there's a lot of guys involved, just all the short yardage run stuff, that so many stops for you guys.

Mike Macdonald (1:46)

Yeah, I thought we had a good plan coming in and then, look, the guys are the ones that do it. In short yards, it's not always going to be pretty. You know, you got to win your one-on-ones and then some, and our guys did that. I think there's some big time stops right there on third and one, and fourth and one.

SPEAKER_3 (2:03)

On the first potential safety, the sack by you two, what was the explanation you got on that?

Mike Macdonald (2:09)

Look, I don't know. I mean, I saw them signal safety, so I thought it was a safety. Then all of a sudden, it wasn't.

So I'd like more of an explanation. So that's what happened. I saw them signal safety. We thought it was a safety. All of a sudden, it wasn't.

SPEAKER_4 (2:28)

It's hard to win in the NFL. How important is resiliency to have convenience?

SPEAKER_5 (2:33)

The importance of being resilient and over...

Mike Macdonald (2:35)

Yeah. I mean, we talk about picking each other up for the whole 60 minutes. I mean, these games are absolute. I mean, these are hard games, you know?

And Houston's a really good football team. So we got to pick each other up, you know? Our offense picked our defense up against Tampa. We weren't able to close it out. We picked our offense up today on defense. So that's how it's going to roll. That's how you have to win, you know? And then once we start to get all three phases rolling into games, and that's when you have games where you're not coming down to the last possession. Sorry, Greg, go ahead.

Greg (3:09)

I'm sorry. This mentality of don't put them in the end zone, how do you drill that? How do you reinforce that game? How does that manifest?

Mike Macdonald (3:17)

It starts from the very beginning. It's the culture that AD helps create on defense. It's our veterans. It's how we practice. We take a lot of pride in how we practice.

We've intentionally, over the last couple of weeks, put our guys in some really, really difficult situations and have them respond to it, so we get used to playing in those situations, and our guys have done a good job. It's taken us a while to kind of get used to it, but these are the things that we're learning, you know, as an organ, as a program, how we build our guys and build our mentality, but it's the players, man. They take a lot of pride in what they do and the standard they want to uphold, and they do it. They just keep fighting.

Greg (3:57)