Head Coach Mike Macdonald Recaps The Week 13 Win vs. Vikings

Mike Macdonald (0:03)

All right, once again, when is the Army Navy game? It's in Baltimore, right? Always see the water.

Are you ready?

SPEAKER_2 (0:20)

All right.

So, run games made a lot of progress the last four weeks now. I'm curious how much you think maybe that Olu has played a role at all in helping that?

Mike Macdonald (0:33)

Well, he's definitely been an asset for us. He's playing physical. He's playing decisive. He's getting us to the right targets.

He's playing, he's doing some good things. Yeah, he's doing a lot of good things. As you know, it has to be, it's a cohesive effort, the run game, everyone's got to be on the same page, and it starts with him, so he's definitely a driving force behind while we're playing.

SPEAKER_3 (0:56)

Mike, on your second half offensive adjustments, you can't say specifically, but what did you think of that? Because you had four sacks in the first half, and then what was that?

Mike Macdonald (1:06)

Talking about the second half adjustments for the staff.

SPEAKER_3 (1:07)

For the offense, I'm sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike Macdonald (1:10)

Yeah, yeah, I mean, we, look, they can get to a lot of different things, and it's a tribute to them and how they're built, but you can't do everything every game, so once you are, we did a good job of understanding of some of the matches that they're doing and some of the fronts that they're building out of some of those personnel groups, we could get to some better, some better answers, and so that's a tribute to our guys for being on top of it. Yeah, that's really that function of just understanding how they, what they were doing and what our counterbunch would have been, so that's what happened.

SPEAKER_2 (1:44)

Outside of playing the game, what parts of the week do you look forward to the most?

Mike Macdonald (1:50)

Oh man, as much as Stephanie probably doesn't feel it, but Tuesday family night is pretty great. We got a bunch of the staff's kids are here in town, are in the building, excuse me, and we set up the indoor here, so they're all running around, so Jack's walking now, so he's chasing something, I'm not sure what, but that's pretty cool to see him out here. That's a highlight.

It really is like, it's fun to see it come together. There's these benchmarks throughout the week that you want to see how the guys are taking in the game plan and what our mentality is. It varies from week to week, but I think you really do enjoy the process of seeing a plan come together and seeing how it's been working with everybody to kind of put our best foot forward going into the game.

SPEAKER_4 (2:47)

How good was DeMarcus Lawrence's game in those couple of plays when you looked at him?

Mike Macdonald (2:50)

Yeah, it was advertised, just a lot of great things, but make two plays like that that really probably won us the game. If we don't create that fourth down stop, we're looking at a 13-point swing. So it would have been a whole new different ball game if he hadn't done the things he'd done.

SPEAKER_4 (3:10)

Was there ever any, he obviously missed a lot of time last year. When you guys signed him, was there any kind of concern about that, or did you need to see him kind of get, before you really knew what you were going to get out of him this year at all?

Mike Macdonald (3:21)

I don't think so. I mean, I think our medical people did a great job of saying that he was ready to roll, and he did a great job of being in great shape and training and doing all the things. And I thought we've had a great plan for him to manage his workload throughout the season as well. So kind of all hands on deck on that front, but I haven't maybe I maybe I should have been thinking about it more.

SPEAKER_4 (3:43)

I don't know.

Mike Macdonald (3:44)

I really feel like it's come together pretty good.

SPEAKER_5 (3:47)

When you look back on some of the free rushers that you guys allowed yesterday, sometimes they bring more than you can block on a game play. But on the times where you did have enough blockers, what kind of did you see in those moments? Was it like a missed call? Was it missed assignments? What kind of happened in those circumstances to kind of have them kind of get you on those plays?

Mike Macdonald (4:04)

Well, tribute to them. Good design on the front end.