What Matt Rhule Said Following the Loss to Miami

Carolina Panthers head coach Matt Rhule met with the media following Sunday's loss.

Q. PJ coming in wouldn't be indicative of Cam's being a starter next time you play

Yeah, I'm not making any changes or anything like that right now. The other day we weren't protecting the quarterback worthwhile at all. Didn't seem fair to keep Cam in there getting hit. PJ, give him a chance to play and at the same time Cam just hasn't had a lot of experience in that part of the game that unfortunately we were in.

Q. You hit the nail on the head, you said you felt really confident coming in. That's been kind of the story this entire season. You talk about accountability, you talk about doing your job. It's just not resonating on Sundays on the field. What can you do?

Stay at it. It's resonated five times. Didn't resonate seven times. You just keep grinding at it, keep working at it. We finished 5-11 last year. We thought we'd be better this year. I think we have a chance to be better this year. We didn't have games like this last year, though. Really disappointing games. I think the one thing we have to recognize is last year we weren't taken real seriously. Now we're sitting there, we have McCaffrey back, we have Cam Newton playing, D.J. Moore, Donte Jackson, all these guys. We're getting people's best shots. We didn't make near enough plays to make a win. When you say I take about accountability -- I don't know that I speak about that as much as you guys talk to the players and they say we're going to be more accountable, we're going to do this. I say the same thing I've been saying since I got here because I know that at the end of the day great programs, great franchises, great teams are built on a core foundation that doesn't change. You don't react to the circumstances. Doing our jobs and all those things, I say all the time, I'll say again, it's really hard sometimes to do your job. Sometimes your job is to block a three-technique and he gets the best of you. All that being said, I like our team. I like our guys. We have five games left. We'll give them a break here this week a little bit, give them a chance to regroup, refresh and bring them back next Monday. They've done a lot of work. Bring them back next Monday and try to play one game at a time in a very humble fashion, do our jobs at a high level, prepare at a high level. 

Q. What is the message to them after a game like this?

I'll probably keep that between us. As I said to you, I need to process a lot of stuff in terms of what I said, but not too much other than just that, that I probably wouldn't share. I'm not sad, I'm not angry, I'm not -- at the end of the day when you have games like this, I think everyone has to look at themselves first. 

Q. The penalties and the drops, why weren't your guys ready? 

I wouldn't say that they weren't ready. I don't live in that world. That's other people's worlds. To me it's not like this big global thing, it's an aggregation. Michael Jordan is out there playing on a bad hamstring and gets called for hold. Pat Elflein gets called for a hold at the end. It's a play that happens every play. The plays I worry about are like the taunting. That's just unacceptable. I wouldn't say we weren't ready. I'd say we got outplayed today. That's harder for me to say, but we got outplayed, we got outcoached. Credit to them.

Q. In the passing game, you defended Joe Brady's play calling. Do you still stand by that after today? 

I don't even know if I've defended that. I said we had to run the ball more. I think I've always looked at it very even keel. I'm just not going to be super inflammatory like everybody wants me to be. Like it's this, it's this. It's like, was the play calling good? We'll go back and watch the tape and look. We went in with a plan. Every time if we run the ball on 1st down if you get a penalty -- I just want to say I put the penalties on the coaches, too. We as coaches, that's our responsibility, that's our job. It's also the men in that locker room's job. If everyone has a shared responsibility you have a chance. But Joe called the game, Phil called the game kind of the way we planned on doing it. Chase called the game. We faked a punt, we had a punt blocked. We have to be better in a lot of different areas. Just don't know now if sitting right here is the right time to be responding to all that. That's why I said I'd look at it talk to you guys tomorrow.

Q. What have you seen out of Cam that maybe disappointed you? 

It would be hard -- I'd have to see the protection. I'm only seeing like the end result. We knew we came out and they were going to blitz us. I said it to you guys. We burned them on the first one for the long play to DJ. I thought early in the game the first two passes he threw hit us in the hands. We had a chance to catch those. As it evolved or devolved I should say, I'd have to watch the tape. Just wasn't a good day, but it wasn't one of those days I could sit there and say it was just him. I purely believe that Miami outplayed us today, outcoached us today. They were better than us today. It's pretty simple to me.

Q. Without seeing the film, what did you think of the offensive line's play overall?

I mean, obviously it's not -- five sacks is not good enough. Penalties are not good enough. Brady had to go in and play a left guard and Dennis battled through it. But I think we all know it's not good enough, the result, in terms of why it happened or what happened and all that, I'd probably need a little more time to look at that, but just never got anything going.

Q. Did Haason tell you what led to the taunting penalty? 

Does it matter? He told me, yeah, guy grabbed me. Does it matter? I told him, does it matter? I mean that respectfully toward you. So the guy grabbed you, okay. We had them 3rd and 22, we needed those plays to win that game. We'll have to learn from it and keep growing. We haven't had a taunting penalty all year. Haven't even been warned on one. We've had other people hit us and turn and look at our sideline. Our guys have been great, then all of a sudden we get in this ballgame. I could psychoanalyze for hours; these guys really want to win. They're trying to hard to win and then they start not having success and they try even harder. It just gets gets away, they get emotional a little bit and guys are yelling at each other because they want to win. That's why I like -- to sit in this seat you have to stay a little bit more like this then you can be like this, right. There's no doubt in my mind that the guys were ready to play. It was going to be a tough game. We knew it was going to be a tough game. I don't think they weren't ready. I just think we got outplayed in some areas and started to panic a little bit. Did some things that are uncharacteristic, and when you can learn when things are not going well to settle down and take a breath and go back to your technique, then you have a chance. A lot of our players are not doing that at the level I need to get them to do it, so that's on me.

Q. What happened with Christian? 

He rolled his ankle so he was trying to go in the second half, but was never quite able to come back to the same level.

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