Head Coach Mike Macdonald Recaps The Week 11 Loss, Provides Injury Updates

SPEAKER_1 (0:03)

All right, everybody, we're ready.

SPEAKER_2 (0:06)

Brian, why don't you get us going?

SPEAKER_3 (0:10)

Yeah, Coach, any update on the Gray's Able imaging from this morning?

Mike Macdonald (0:15)

Yeah, so really fortunate. There's, I guess we avoided a significant injury, which is really positive. I'd say the words I heard were day to day.

So, you know how that goes. It could be day to day. It could be a week. Could be more than that. So, but nothing significant, which is a huge positive.

SPEAKER_3 (0:41)

And then I'm curious, Coach, do you find that in these division games that it's more likely that your people save things for those games or that there's going to be surprises or that you just know these teams so well that you know what's coming?

Mike Macdonald (0:57)

I don't know, and many coaches that hold things, I think that's tough to do. I do think it's different because I do think you know each other really well. And it's, you know, we're two years into this thing on our defensive, defensive and special team scheme. It's our first year with our offensive scheme.

So I think it's the beginning of that learning phase too. I mean, we're a year into this thing. So it'll be definitely interesting for, you know, the games to come.

SPEAKER_3 (1:29)

Thanks.

SPEAKER_1 (1:30)

Jen?

SPEAKER_5 (1:32)

Defensively, coach, why did the team seem to be so effective in first down yesterday?

Mike Macdonald (1:39)

Well, we knew, I mean, the Rams have a great early down operation. They change cadences and they shift in motion a lot. And that was a big point of emphasis throughout the week is making sure our cleats are in the ground and we had 100% on our comms and I thought for the most part, we did that, especially on early downs. And then our guys can go play when that happened. So tribute to how they trained all week and how they practiced. I thought it showed up in the game.

SPEAKER_5 (2:08)

Of course, you wanted to win, but in what ways was this a confidence boost, especially for the defense?

Mike Macdonald (2:20)

I think you leave every game with things that you're excited about and things that you learn from your team about who we can become. Yesterday was no different and you're leaving every game saying, hey, what could be? You know, from if we can learn from these things and grow from our mistakes and grow from and understand some things on the preparation end that we can improve. That's also exciting to know that, hey, look where we can go if we handle all these other things, too.

So I think that's what you've taken from every game, yesterday included.

SPEAKER_2 (3:05)

Corbin. Coach, going back to the final couple of minutes, the first half yesterday, with you being a defensive minded coach, how do you handle balancing the act between wanting to be aggressive and keeping, well, and keep away there, especially with a team like the Rams, that's something that you actively make part of your game plan each week, depending on the opponent, or is it just kind of something that's fluid during the course of the game?

Mike Macdonald (3:30)

Well, we have our end of half strategy on going into games, and normally that's pretty consistent. It does change a little bit based off the opponent and some other things going in. And in general, yeah, we're not in the business of letting them score, and the easiest way for them to do that is to have the balls, or we're trying to really score at the end of the half. But you do want to give yourself enough time where you can have all plays available, and so you're not constricted there. And I actually thought we handled the end of the half really well. I mean, if something were to happen going in, I mean, really the only thing that could have happened that we could have gotten, put in a tough spot if there was a defensive penalty that put us down like the one yard line and we really only had one play left in terms of time where you could have maybe had one or two plays. So them not having any timeouts allowed us to operate like that.

SPEAKER_2 (4:30)

How did you feel about the way that the pass rush played out after the first few drives? It seemed like that first punt that you guys forced that after that, you guys were able to get Matthew Stafford, at least off of his normal rhythm in the pocket and not a lot of snaps. But how did you feel the way that the pass rush played there for the last three quarters of the game?