Mike Macdonald: "We Have To Get Better In A Hurry"

Mike Macdonald (0:02)

All right, yeah, look, it stings. It stings to have lost three in a row. Just to lose against your division rival at home, prime time, such a great environment. Guys fought their tails off down to the last minute, but we're not playing well enough to beat the team we need to be. So the message to the team is, we have the people in the building, our players, our coaches, to become a really good football team. Right now, we're coming up short.

That's obvious based off the tape, it's obvious based off of what's going on. We got to start faster. We have to win the takeaway differential, which that's a team stat. We're just not doing the things that good football teams do to win football games. So we're going to attack it. We're going to take a breather here and really go back and dissect the heck out of this thing. And I just told like one or two options, you can give up or you can just keep fighting like heck to make it right, and that's what we're going to do. So we're six games into the season and there's a lot of football to be played, but just like the Messers does last week, we got to get better in a hurry, finding new ways to lose games and it's not good. But we got the right guys for the job. Guys are in it, we're going to do this thing together, and we're going to fight forward and go to Atlanta next week.

SPEAKER_2 (1:30)

How's the discipline on the record?

Mike Macdonald (1:34)

Yeah, guys aren't inventing things, they're trying to do it the right way. We're either stopping them right now at the line of scrimmage, or the ball's spitting and it's explosive. So when that happens, it's either on the front line, guys getting out of their gaps, second level not fitting it correctly and not getting in on the ground on the third level. So that's what's going on.

SPEAKER_2 (1:56)

Mike, there seemed to be a renewed commitment to the run during the week. Do you feel like that played out today?

Mike Macdonald (2:05)

Well, we certainly tried. I think we ended up with like 20 rushes or something. It's really a team stat, because if you're behind multiple scores deep into the second half, you're not going to be able to run the ball. It's just the way it goes. So we're going to keep working on it. We're going to keep finding our identity. And I mean, that's just that's one on the list of things that we're going to be attacking over the next week.

SPEAKER_3 (2:27)

What did you think of Geno's night? He obviously had a couple of interceptions there.

Mike Macdonald (2:32)

Look, at the end of the day, we had we put ourselves in position after being in a massive hole. If we got to stop to go go down and score and Geno's playing really good football for us. I know he threw the two picks.

But we got we got faith in Geno. I mean, he's going to he's going to bounce back. I played a good football game.

SPEAKER_4 (2:53)

Any updates on the trade round and already first?

Mike Macdonald (2:57)

Already already re aggravated his toe. So like severity, I'm not sure Trey had an ankle. Pretty sure everybody else is OK.

SPEAKER_2 (3:08)

How much thought did you give him going to for the touchdown at the end of the first half?

Mike Macdonald (3:13)

If it was as big as a matter of where it was on the field. But wasn't much wasn't wasn't much thought from from that yard line.

SPEAKER_5 (3:24)

I guess what do you think with this whole break? What do you think players need to kind of get back on track here?

Mike Macdonald (3:30)

Yeah, look, you can't fix everything over like overnight. So you gotta you gotta pick one thing at a time. Okay, you got to be really surgical in our approach. You got to be positive.

There is good things on tape. The effort was there. The guys are trying to play physical. They're trying to play the right way. And we got to look at what we're asking and how we're coaching it and how teams are attacking us and and then go from there. I mean, that's really just that's going to be the thought. It's kind of like it's got to the committee by week. So we're going to be looking at ourselves a lot over the next few days and then go back to work on Monday.

SPEAKER_3 (4:03)

What is the explanation you got on where they called the personal foul on Leonard, but they had called motion on San Francisco?