Mike Macdonald: "I Believe In The Foundation We're Building"

Mike Macdonald (0:01)

All right.

Don't have any updates medically because of the time yet. So, I just haven't heard anything all week or since yesterday, but just finished grading the tape on my own. I haven't met with the staff yet. But from what we said last night, it's just, again, it's like you're disappointed, you're frustrated in a game that we felt like we should have won to a certain extent. You got to give the Rams credit for taking advantage of the opportunities that were given to them. We did not. And we have to clean those things up. So, but we have an opportunity here this week to attack the heck out of this bye week. It's going to, you know, our players get some, some chance to really recover and take care of their bodies. And coaches wise, you know, we have, we got some work on our hands to go attack this thing and really continue to streamline what we're doing, how we're coaching it. We're trying to get done and have a great plan for next week. So we can really hit the ground running on Monday and ramp into the second half of the season, which is critical for us. Cause we have, we got to start producing better results. Everybody knows that and on where we go, but we got, we got a big, big week ahead of us.

SPEAKER_2 (1:16)

Big picture wise, your nine games in bye week coming up, kind of a midway point, just where do you feel like this team is halfway through?

Mike Macdonald (1:23)

We're on our way. We're on our way. We're, it's not where we want to be. It's not where we expected to be.

But I feel like we are, they're being, I think we're resilient as heck. I mean, our guys, we face, and you can just go week by week on the adversity that we faced. A lot of it is self-inflicted adversity. And great football teams don't do that. They eliminate drag. They go fast, you know, they go forward fast together. We're going together. We're just not going fast, you know, right now. So it's our job as coaches to really eliminate that drag and make it clear for the guys. And we might, you know, like I said last night, you got to have, you got to go into these things with mentality that everything's kind of on the table, you know, so that's, that's, you got to go with an open, open mind, open, open your lens up a little bit and, and go, and go back to work. So, but our guys, we'll talk to them here in a minute. We'll have, we'll meet today and then we'll move forward.

SPEAKER_3 (2:24)

Coach, simply what would you say has fallen most, below your expectation?

Mike Macdonald (2:28)

Well, I think it's the operation and the self-inflicted penalties is the most frustrating.

We should have that cleaned up by now. So, you know, we got to get that fixed. And the guys know that we're going to, we're going to look into it and see if what we can do operation wise, practice wise, things we're coaching, you know, just kind of look at the whole thing and go attack it. But felt like we should be further along in that regard.

SPEAKER_4 (2:52)

Coach, you guys score seven three in outs yesterday. That was only happened once in the previous 115 games for Sean McVay and the Rams. How did the defense go from such an extreme against the Bills to what you saw this week against the Rams?

Mike Macdonald (3:06)

Well, you know, it's a great opportunity to explain kind of where I feel like our football team is. You know, we've been taken, I was explaining to Brock and Salk, and rightfully so, we deserved a lot of the criticism that we've been getting defensively. I feel like we're kind of, but you kind of bang your head against the wall on some of these things that you're trying to get done schematically and you know, playing together, communication, all the things, the tackling.

But you keep stringing good weeks and good practices together, and all of a sudden, you know, the confidence builds and you start to see some results on Sundays. And that's where we're going as a football team. So offensively, it might be, you know, I don't know if the curve is slanted the same way, but I feel like the approach and the mentality is the same way. So hopefully we kind of break through all together here, all three phases, and it speaks to the guys' resiliency and kind of their mentality of kind of staying the course and believing in what we're doing. And it was good to see us take a step in the right direction last night because the guys deserved it.