What Frank Reich Said Following the Loss to the Giants

Carolina Panthers head coach Frank Reich met with the media after Friday's preseason game.

Opening Statement

"A couple injury notes, (cornerback) Donte Jackson had an ankle, (guard) Deonte Brown had a hamstring and (running back) Chubba Hubbard had an ankle. Okay, game two preseason in the books, (I) was happy with how we approached this for 60 minutes, the intensity, the energy that we played with from start to finish. Obviously, we will look at the tape, we will clean the things up that we need to clean up, but happy with how physical we played, with the consistency of that physical play for 60 minutes. We have got to clean up some penalties, but other than that we will get the execution cleaned up on the tape."

RE: Running game

"I thought it was a mixed bag, I thought it was a mixed bag. I looked down, and we are averaging 2.8 a carry like you are saying. Sometimes we are struggling running it, and at the same time we are gashing some runs. We will go back; we will get a play-by-play. I don’t want to overreact without looking at the tape. I thought there were some good things, I thought we ran hard. We will get further evaluation with the tape."

RE: Gauging the defense without Burns, Houston, etc.

"Obviously, those are three good players that we didn’t play, but there is still a lot of good things that we can look at. Obviously, they had a couple of nice drives. Obviously, it’s a good football team, right? That’s a good football team. We will learn from it. We still evaluate a lot of the individual play. Look forward to getting all of our guys out there, but we are responsible, right? That happens during the season, you lose guys for a series, a game, something like that so we have to figure out ways to play winning football even when our star players aren’t in there."

RE: What the Giants did on opening drive

"I just thought they executed on a very high level on that first drive. I mean it was good play calling, good execution. I thought Jones looked sharp, I thought they kept us on our heels a little bit, so it was a good first drive by them.

RE: Offensive play-calling

"I thought it was better, I thought. We did a little bit more. We still didn’t do a ton, but we did some more. We did some more stuff. We had some, a few plays, we had opportunity for a few more. I thought (Offensive Coordinator) Thomas (Brown) did a great job of calling the second half, happy with his development there. He’s a really sharp guy now. He’s super sharp, thought he did a great job in the second half when he had an opportunity.

RE: If the offense was vanilla again

"I wouldn’t say we were that. That didn’t feel like that to me. Like I said, did we do everything that we do? No. There is a lot more that we can do, but we did a couple things in this game that we didn’t do the first game."

RE: Thoughts on Bryce Young

"I thought Bryce looked sharp. Put together a nice drive, would have liked to have us finish it off. Obviously, unhappy with the number of penalties we had, I don’t know what the total number was. Yeah eight, too many penalties, but I thought Bryce looked sharp. I think he wanted to throw the ball more, came out wanted to throw a little bit more, but I thought he looked sharp."

RE: Thoughts on Chandler Zavala

"I am excited to go look at the tape. He had a good week of practice. Obviously, I wasn’t zoning in on him one-on-one during the game. I thought upfront, I thought out protection was better, besides the one that you were talking about. I thought our protection at times was pretty good."

RE: Thoughts on Raequan Williams and LaBryan Ray 

"I think we like them. They have kind of come in recently like you said and have made a good impression. We will look at the tape, grade this out, but made a good impression since they have been here. They have another, we all have another week to prove and have a chance to make this roster."

RE: Sam Franklin Jr. making more plays

"Sam’s been a pro. Really happy with the way he’s playing, approaching practice, just showing good leadership and then, when he gets out there and is playing on defense making plays. Making us feel his presence out there. So, very happy with Sam this whole training camp."

RE: If Bryce Young and starters will play vs. Lions

"I’m not going to say anything 100 percent sure, but right now the plan is for everybody to get ready to play, and the plan’s for everybody to get ready to play. We’ll see how they come out of this game injury wise, we’ll talk about it as a coaching staff, and see what do we need to accomplish. If I feel like we need to accomplish something, as a coaching staff if we feel like there’s things we need to accomplish in one more preseason game, then we’ll play the guys that need to be in there for that. If I feel like we’re ready, then we won’t play those guys."

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