What Matt Rhule Said Following the Loss to Indianapolis
Matt, we saw PJ (Walker) running around making some plays. Are those the things you want to see him do more of or less in terms of outside of the pocket and that kind of thing?
“Um, you know, they were playing a lot of like two-man, had a lot of guys in cover, so we said to him early, ‘Hey, you can hurt them and affect them with your feet,’ so, I just think it was kind of the way they were playing us. I was upset with him before the red zone where we kicked the field goal. He probably could have run it in or at least got the first down and then I made that point to him then. So then I think after that, he was a little more cognizant. The one right before the two-minute, at the end of the half, that was just a communication thing, you know, we were calling one thing and he heard another through the headset, so he had a call on that play. He called the wrong play and ran around and found a way to make a play.”
It seemed like Will (Grier) was handing it off more than PJ (Walker). Was that the plan going in?
“Well, I think part of it was that we had the lead and were trying to win the game, we were trying to put the game away. We were up by five and we were up by eight, so it was just a function of that. Then we lost some o-linemen in the middle of the game. Two things that I’ll mention that I want to say: Sam Tecklenburg, you know, played the whole game for us at center and Aaron Monteiro just went over and played guard for the first time, hasn't played guard before, literally went in the middle of the game, so I think a full function of guys being down and then, you know, us really wanting to, at the end of the day, really wanting to work on the run game."
Did you like what you saw from Will (Grier)?
“Yeah, I thought Will played well. I thought Will, as you said, didn't quite have as many opportunities, but we know there’s three preseason games, so we’ll figure out as we go moving forward. I thought he was clean. At the end of the day, we didn't turn the ball over ’til that last play, but, you know, we laid two balls on the ground, two guys caught balls and got the ball punched out, and we had a ton of penalties. Things that are not winning football have to get corrected."
Coach, talk a little about those three back-to-back-to-back false starts and what your message was to the guys when they came to the sideline?
“Not much message right then, it’s just them having to deal with the crowd noise. At the end of the day, you know, yelling at the guys in the middle of the game is not really going to help them, right? It’s more getting to the locker room after the game heading into this week. We were upset at halftime about the amount of false starts in the first half and the amount of penalties, we had seven penalties in the first half. So, you can make excuses, I don't like to make excuses and I won’t let others make them for me, so we jumped offsides. So, that was really the message of the day for us, was, ‘Hey, we beat ourselves,’ you know. On defense, in the second half we had a lot of mistakes. Guys got a chance to go in the game — some guys got into the game in different positions. It was a struggle to, you know, really, really keep Sam from running around the way that he did really well.”
How encouraging was the pressure that you were able to get in the first half from your reserves?
“Yeah, I thought with them being our defensive line for them to get that much pressure on the quarterback was obviously — you know, we look at Marquis Haynes. We knew what Marquis could do, so I thought early on, those guys for the first 20 snaps really played well so, those are good things. But, today was about making sure that everyone had a chance to play. I think everyone that was up, got in the game, so we wanted to make sure we had really good evaluation on them.”
Matt, your next game, would Will (Grier) work more with the second team and PJ (Walker) third or are you kind of working through that?
“Yeah, we’ll come out of this game and then figure a bunch of stuff out. First thing is the injury report and find out where we are with everybody and the quarterbacks. You know, we’ll watch this tape. At the end of the day, if you threw the ball five times, you threw the ball 20 times, what’d you do on those plays? We’ll go back and watch that tape and go into next week.”
What did you think of that first group of receivers: (Terrace) Marshall Jr. and also (David) Moore and Shi Smith?
“I thought David Moore did some nice things. You know, Shi had that one catch, which was a really nice play. Terrace, obviously, you know, we needed him to put that ball away on the one long one that he made on that PJ (Walker) scramble. It’s hard to say until I watch the tape, but it looked like we did some good things at times."
Any update on the injuries with Troy Pride Jr. or anything like that?
“Nothing, I don't have anything yet. I literally walked into the locker room and then came right here, so we’ll see, but hope is that Troy is OK.”
Did you get everything that you wanted out of this weekend?
“I mean, I guess. We came out here and evaluated, we just didn't win. I don't care if it’s a preseason game, I don't care if it’s a scrimmage, we want to win everything that we do. For us to have a lead late in the game and not put the game away is not what we want. As I said to our team, the twos and threes aren't playing today, the Carolina Panthers are playing today. We had a chance to hopefully learn from this and grow and become a better team. I got that, we got a lesson from it, but we didn't get the win, which we came for.”
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