Head Coach Mike Macdonald Recaps Sunday's Loss, Looks Ahead To Week 4

John Boyle (0:00)

Hi everybody, John Boyle.

Mike Macdonald (0:03)

You want to get us going?

SPEAKER_3 (0:04)

Sure, I'd love to get us started. Mike, just when you go back and look at it, I know that the turnovers, I'm sure, stand out. But what are some of the things that maybe you didn't notice live that jumped out of you on tape?

Mike Macdonald (0:20)

I think our guys played hard. I think some of the, I think, hopefully the message you got to cross in our team meeting of like how important, like the play-to-play mindset is of, we talk about stacking plays, but just how to interconnect that is between phases. I think there's some things that are really good, really in all three phases that showed up, they didn't feel coming off the field. There's some things that we fell short on. So it's mixed emotions. It's an excitement about the type of team that we can have and that we aspire to be, that it's there and it's also a sense of urgency and a little bit of a kick in the gut on that we're not there yet, and that we have room to grow. But the exciting thing is it's early in the season and we have an opportunity to go make it right.

Brian?

SPEAKER_4 (1:16)

Yeah, coach, two quick ones.

So the simple thing that a lot of folks have come to when there's struggles at the goal line is why not just run the barnyard three times in a row and get it in there? So just curious, like, why is it not that simple?

Mike Macdonald (1:32)

Well, we do have a reason for it. Oh, I haven't seen it yet. Not saying that we won't be able to do it.

Probably don't want to say the reason publicly, honestly. But it's still, it's an option. It's a viable option. It's something that we might do. So, probably leave it at that. But definitely understand the sentiment. And it's definitely something that we'll keep considering moving forward.

SPEAKER_4 (2:04)

And then one more. People talk about sequencing a lot on offense for play callers to set up, you know, plays down the road. I'm just curious, as a defensive play caller, are you ever thinking about sequencing and setting up offenses? Or are you mostly in reaction mode?

Mike Macdonald (2:18)

No, we think through that lens for sure. You're a little bit more reactive, you know, a little bit more subject to the things that they're doing and how they present their personnel's and how they deploy their people. But we looked at that for that lens. Really by game plan area, you know, you think about early downs, you think about third down, it's more through like each one of those buckets, if that makes sense.

Andrew.

SPEAKER_4 (2:55)

Hey, Mike, I just want to ask, when you rewatch the tape, what did you see from your two safeties in this game? And do you anticipate that either Julian Love or Tai Okada will be able to practice this week? Thank you.

Mike Macdonald (3:06)

Guys played good football. They communicated. There's some opportunities out there that I think both would say that we'd like to be able to take advantage next time. As far as Julian goes, it's a day-to-day thing right now. So we'll see how that shakes out. I know he did some extensive work this morning and it went well, so we'll see how that translates to Wednesday and moving forward.

Bob?

SPEAKER_5 (3:35)

Yeah, Mike, just with your offensive running game yesterday, how much of it, I guess, do you look at, with Washington's a really good defense versus things you guys could have done better? And then just with Jadarian as well, when you looked at his fumble, just kind of what you saw there and what's the teaching point there?

Mike Macdonald (3:51)

It's both. Credit to Washington, did a great job. And also we feel like there's plenty of room to grow.

So I think it's a function of in real time execution and also finding solutions as the game goes, also the way the game was going of some things we wanted to be able to do offensively in the pass game and in the screen game.

So I think it's a process thing. I think we stick to our process. And really, with our whole team right now, the message after the game was like, I think we'd feel the same way after the game whether or not we closed it out and found a way to win or the way it shook out. So really, kind of in every tentacle from coming out of the game of, where can we grow? How can we make our process better? That's been the mentality every day, or today at least. And so with JD, I mean, he understands what's going on. He needs to take care of the ball. I think there's some things fundamentally where we can focus on and we're going to continue to give him the ball. We trust him. And we know he's going to work really hard to do his part as well.