Head Coach Mike Macdonald On The Week 1 Loss To The 49ers

Mike Macdonald (0:00)

Well, it was a really hard fought physical football game. Obviously, very disappointed about the outcome, but you got to look at the process as well. I think our guys played incredibly hard, played for all 60 minutes, gave ourselves a chance to win there at the end.

You know, I just told the team, I think we have a really good football team, and we're not there yet. So let's go to work. Let's go figure out things that we can do better and move forward. So, which we will, we're a good team now, we're only going to get better. So the guys will respond and let's go have a great week, go to Pittsburgh.

SPEAKER_2 (0:39)

How would you assess the offense overall? It looked like the running game kind of got going there a little bit early, but maybe...

Mike Macdonald (0:44)

Yeah, we're hot and cold, we got to maintain the ball better. We need to be more efficient on early downs, convert more on third down. Good two-minute at the end, I mean, some good stuff, but we got to operate a little more efficiently and be better on first, second down to give us some third downs where we can convert and keep drives going.

SPEAKER_3 (1:04)

What's your view of their final drive on offense?

Mike Macdonald (1:08)

Yeah, got them to a second long, and the guy made a great play. It seems like Reek might have lost it there down the field, and we got them in... We played the first 9.9 of that 10-second play at the end, phenomenally, and the guy made a great play.

SPEAKER_3 (1:25)

Did you consider going for it on fourth and one on your second to last position offense?

Mike Macdonald (1:28)

We did, yeah. I just felt like, let's go take a lead and let's go play ball.

SPEAKER_2 (1:32)

Did this break down to the coverage? Ricky Pearsall seemed to get open, and he was going around a couple of times. Did you check as well in the game?

Mike Macdonald (1:39)

Is there something there? Juice, we can play that one better. The Pearsall one, that was a good play by them.

SPEAKER_2 (1:45)

Did the last play, the ball just slip out of Sam's hands, or did you just sense what happened on that play?

Mike Macdonald (1:51)

I didn't ask him. It looked like it just slipped out of his hand.

It didn't look like they made contact. I think that it just slipped as his hand was going backwards.

SPEAKER_2 (2:00)

Nick Emmanwori, what happened with him, and how did that kind of change the defensive game plan?

Mike Macdonald (2:05)

He hurt his ankle, so we'll see kind of moving forward. We don't think it's a high ankle, so that's positive. Everything's intact, we think. Yeah, guy goes down, you got to change person out. We played the game lighter than we would normally play against him, but Spoon went in and did a great job at nickel.

SPEAKER_2 (2:25)

Coach, what were your thoughts on the defense overall in this game?

Mike Macdonald (2:29)

I mean, our guys played really, really hard. There's plenty of things that we're getting clean up operationally, getting the calls in and out, substitution patterns.

We'll look at our rush. Third down, we weren't good enough. I think there were 50% on third down. Fourth down, we can clean up as well. There are two for two, we got to convert on those. But the guys played really hard, played physical. And we'll clean up, we'll kind of look at the rest.

SPEAKER_4 (2:55)

Mike, how hard is it to play offense the way you want to when you only have the ball 15 in the first 50 minutes of the game?

Mike Macdonald (3:02)

Well, I think, I don't know if that's like, given that we want to play that way, I think it's indicative that we need to play more complimentary football. And we need to be more efficient on first down. We can play that way. We just have to play better in those situations and then we'll maintain the ball better. And you know, it's a team stat defensively, you know, there's, I think the first touchdown drive I think we're like, oh, for a trillion on third down, whether it was a penalty or we'll look at the rough in the past for penalty, make sure we're coaching Leo the right way.

SPEAKER_5 (3:35)

Mike, can you kind of walk us through the block field goal too, what you guys were trying to do there?

Mike Macdonald (3:39)

Yeah, it just shows you our guys just to fight, you know, we're going to we're going to we're going to fight claw, tooth and nail to the to the final whistle, man. That's what that's what our guys did.