Head Coach Mike Macdonald On The Dominant NFC Divisional Round Win vs. 49ers

Mike Macdonald (0:00)

All right, a little more than usual. First, just, what an atmosphere. Holy smokes. The 12s, just our organization putting on a great setting. And it's just, you do actually try to take some time and look around and just understand how incredibly blessed we are and with the best fans in the world. And it definitely made an impact, definitely to start the game. And so just want to appreciate this. That was awesome. It's freaking awesome. And in terms of our team, I mean, it's probably the most complimentary game we've played up to this point. And obviously starting the game out with the kickoff return for a touchdown was tremendous. Again, excited to see the blocks on that play, but a great return by Rashid and then just kept stacking plays, the takeaways on defense, kept playing. You know, quarterback is a hard guy to contain and he makes plays. And so you can't get frustrated, you got to keep playing. And then offensively, being able to control the ball, ball number being in jeopardy, being able to run it, scoring on the reds, and all those things we've been trying to do, finally coming to life. And you just keep stacking those things and it's a heck of a win, man. It's funny in the locker room, it's like, you know, really excited. We're very proud of the effort, but the guys understand that there's still a mission at hand and we got another week coming up here that we need to take care of business every day. So that's the focus. Proud of the group.

We'll celebrate today, guys will be off tomorrow and back on Monday.

SPEAKER_2 (1:26)

When did you know for sure that Sam was going to play?

SPEAKER_3 (1:28)

What was kind of the process there with him?

Mike Macdonald (1:30)

Well, I mean, from what we told you is how it was going down. It was just, you know, there's a...

Hey, he could come out here and throw it and feel terrible and then we would have to kind of pivot. But from what he was saying and what the guys were saying, you know, the medical team was saying, it seemed like he was going to be able to give it a go. So that's basically what happened. And, you know, you felt like he was... Based on his communication with us, it felt like he was confident. So that's where we're at.

SPEAKER_4 (1:59)

What did you think about the way he played?

Mike Macdonald (2:01)

Tremendous, tremendous. I mean, there's a couple of plays early that I think to get in the swing of things, but I say manage the game is like a very high-powered compliment, you know, just throwing it on time, taking care of the ball, making the plays when we need to. I think there's going to be some more, there's some explosives out there that maybe we could get to, but, shoot, I thought there's a lot of operation stuff that he did that was, that really helped us as well.

SPEAKER_5 (2:27)

You talked about field position and third downs in the last game, played 49ers on D-Day. What was it tonight that had you guys with the most?

Mike Macdonald (2:34)

Well, our kickoff team was tremendous. I mean, this is probably one of the best kickoff return teams in the league. I mean, Mike Morris had some tremendous plays. Tyrese Knight had some great plays. That really helped us, you know, start those drives. So that was awesome. And then, you know, we gave up some more third downs this game than we did last game. But the guys were able to really kind of regroup, go to the next play. And then I think some of those, we ended up in some takeaways. So that was awesome. The fourth down stops, obviously, flip field position. So that was huge.

SPEAKER_5 (3:07)

I was going to ask you, in the way this league goes, with people going on fourth downs so much more, for a defense, what kind of, almost more than a turnover of the ball, would that have to do? Did you get the field position and then put that over?

Mike Macdonald (3:19)

Right, yeah, I mean, they don't count on those takeaways, but that's really what they are.

And that's something, you know, we started the year kind of slow on fourth downs on defense. And so, our coaches' credit and our players' credits, and like, hey, we identified that there's something we want to improve on and, you know, kind of work the problem. And the guys just, they come to life on fourth down. It's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_5 (3:41)