We Have to Find a Way to Win a Game | Press Conference

We Have to Find a Way to Win a Game | Press Conference

Not a whole lot different from how I felt yesterday from the game. Um, you know, again, just a opportunity to go to go toe-to-toe for three quarters and and got to find a way to to finish the game better in all three phases, I think, at the end of the day. Um, to put ourselves in position to win, but a lot of good things to to coach off of, to work off of. Um, got a got a really good Indianapolis team coming in here, a divisional game at home. So, got to get our attention focused on them real quick and and get the things fixed. we got to get fixed this week and keep pushing forward. So, I’ll let you guys go ahead. Brian, at at some point pressure building to get to break through and get a win, I know that this is a new season, but uh you know, there’s a skid now that’s going back to last season. You know, and with the this being the second home game, then you go on the road for three days or three games, excuse me. How much does that mean? You know, just get a win right now. Yeah, we we our urgency is high to get a win. Um that hasn’t changed. It’s been a high for two weeks now. I mean, it’s not it’s not for for lack of urgency or lack of intent. Um certainly would love to to get a win so that our players can feel that feeling and uh we can get ourselves on the right track. Those are things that we’re all working hard towards. I don’t um you know there it’s it’s just one of those things that when you’ve when you’ve lost the amount of games that we have over the time that we’ve done it, um you’re searching for that feeling and searching for that performance that allows you to go win a game. And and thus far through two games, a lot of good things, but ultimately not not enough to to win them. And um we got to find a way to go win a game at the end of the day and that’s always going to be our goal and our urgency is incredibly high to go do that. When you watch came back uh again today, would you what would you like? Maybe what are some things he still needs to keep improving at? Yeah, he he sees the field really really well. Uh that part has been has been really encouraging. Um you know, I think we had, you know, one or two missed opportunities that that you can’t miss in a game like that. uh that we had a a chance to to generate something explosive potentially. Um I thought that he was better uh with his footwork and with his progressions uh this week than he was the week before. I think he gets better every time he walks on the field. Uh and that’s that’s really good to see. Um the the biggest thing for him is is the the ball security portion. Uh it’s just trying to keep two hands on the ball moving through the pocket. That’s a thing that all young quarterbacks got to get used to. Uh there’s arms and arms and bodies and people all raking at that ball at a at a really high rate. And um we got to do a better job securing it in the pocket. But there was a lot of really great things from camp. Some of the throws, the location, um some of those balls to to Ell down the sideline. There was some really really good stuff from the game that I’m incredibly encouraged by. And again, you stack another week of practice and another game and and you like to see it continue to get better and I think I think we will. if he’s seeing the field that well, what’s the disconnect with the completion percentage, which is not Well, I think first and foremost, we’ve had some drops. I think we can all agree with that. Um, that affects it pretty good amount. Um, you know, and then we’ve had a we’ve had a couple of uh potential, you know, aggressive plays that he that he saw well and put the ball in the air and then we got to go make those plays. Um, and then, you know, he’s he’s it’s not perfection. I mean, he’s missed some throws, too, that that we’d like to have. So, uh, but I think in totality where he’s at and what he’s done is is something that I’m very encouraged by. I’m excited by and I think, um, you know, for a young player in his first two starts against two really good defenses, I think there’s some really good stuff to take away. Seemed like at least a few times he passed on Lockett, who was pretty open, shorter, to go more aggressively for something more complicated, more difficult, deeper. What’s the council there after the fact? uh just awareness of of the of the play and of the coverage structure of just understanding that um you know he’s he’s a bit of a a bit of a hunter. He likes to go looking for big plays and I think that’s pretty normal for some of these guys coming out of college these days. That’s how they play at that level. Um and it’s different because the rushes are different and the the caliber of coverage player is different. Um but but at this level you have to be a little bit more strategic in when and where and how and those are things that he’s learning. Um there’s some there’s answers baked into a lot of plays for the quicker throw for a man coverage beater. It doesn’t necessarily always have to be down the field. And those are things that uh Cam is learning every time he goes out there. But there was some opportunities that that are good teachable moments for him when it comes to understanding the the structure of the play and where his answers are versus particular coverages. Talk about the I’ll come back Terry. It was on the same subject. Go ahead, Terry. When you talk about the yards per attempt, it’s pretty low. You can you attribute that what’s the yards per attempt? Just I don’t know what it is, I think. Do you do you attribute that more to the incompletions or do you attribute that more to taking the shorter routes or or things like that? What do you think factors into that? I’m not sure to be honest. I I I don’t know enough about that number to to really dive into it, but um I think we’ve had plenty of opportunities to go down the field. He’s taken a few of them. uh he’s done a good job of managing some some shorter throws. Um that’s all a part of it. You know, you still have to be able to when you know you got playing with a backup tackle and you’re trying to manage that process as well. So, uh there’s some things that go that go hand inand there’s probably some run solution throws that we that we’ve kicked out that haven’t gotten, you know, they’re behind the line of scrimmage type throws, don’t get a ton of yards. So, I’m sure there’s a combination of a bunch of different things. I wouldn’t necessarily attribute it to anything that he’s doing or not doing at the moment through two games. Dating back to last year, you guys have been outscored in the fourth quarter to 80 90 points. Um, I know yesterday you said you you’re going to take a hard look at the adjustments and all of that, and if you found anything, feel free to share. But you’ve been in the league a long time. Just generally speaking when teams have a problem finishing, what’s the common thread there? You know, it’s all that’s a that’s a layered question. There’s a lot you can probably go a lot of directions you can take that. Um, I do think we’ve we’ve been in both the games, you know, with with time late in the third, early in the fourth. Um, like every good game in the NFL is, you know, there’s they’re all within a score as you approach the fourth quarter, most of them. Um, and there’s a there’s a a lot of things that go into it. It’s hard to necessarily pin it all down on one one particular thing, but but we haven’t played well enough in the fourth quarter and have to find a way to continue to play a little bit better, a little bit longer um than we have at the moment. And um that comes in there’s coaching involved in that. There’s execution involved in that. Uh those things all have to find a way to improve and um haven’t done it yet and we have to find a way to do it. Do you think the idea of in-game adjustments or the criticism of you guys’ inability to do that is fair or overblown? I mean, I I think I’ve kind of jumped down this road before with what that looks like. I mean, there’s those adjustments are ongoing. It’s constant. Very rarely. I mean, halftime feels like it’s about five minutes long by the time you get in there and make any any adjustments that you haven’t made yet. You know, really, we’re we’re adjusting in between every series. uh we’re going through the looks we got the series before, what the next calls are that are coming up, uh where we want to head, what direction, how they’re playing us, how do we counteract it. Those things are sort of ongoing conversations. Um, you know, I’ve always been a huge believer in the, you know, this halftime thing gets it’s very much overblown in terms of what you can accomplish in that short amount of time that you don’t already accomplish in the conversations uh in between series. I mean, that’s that’s really where the adjustments happen is in between series. They’re a lot more immediate than waiting for halftime to make an adjustment, I think. So, um, anytime you don’t perform in those moments though, you’re you’re going to you you’re open for criticism and and I understand that. So, um, but I would say that there’s it’s not necessarily a a halftime adjustment thing. It’s that things that’s constantly happening, um, throughout the course of the game with Ward and the gametoame improvements that you touched on, like what would you say is the next step of improvement for him and how much will that tie into things opening up a little bit more for him as far as attempts and things like that? Um, you know, I think some of the some of the commitment to to trying to run the ball is is the defenses we were playing. You know, that’s part of it. That’s, you know, how do you how do you keep the defense from teeing off? You try to stay in manageable spots. And, um, we’ve in put ourselves in some tough third downs, I think, over the course of these two games, um, on a on a first down sack or or a penalty or things of that nature. But really, how how do you play teams that can rush the passers? You got to be able to run the football and you got to put yourself in in more manageable spots on third down in particular. Um the old stay on schedule adage. You know, I think the Rams were a really good example of that yesterday. I mean, they they they put themselves in, I think, third and five or less quite a bit during that game. It doesn’t allow you to get your pressure packages up. It’s harder to rush the quarterback. The ball comes out faster. Uh all those things factor in um when you’re trying to to to maintain some rhythm and some balance. And you know, for the first two weeks, we’ve tried to do that. and and to you know to say Cam’s going to go out there and we’re going to throw the ball 45 times a game at the moment. You know, I don’t know that that’s uh accurate or or smart to do in that case. Um certainly if it was necessity and we had to then then so be it. Um but I just think you still want to have some semblance of balance. You want to run the football well, which I thought we did run the football well yesterday. I thought Tony Pard had a really nice game. Um and that’s how you help your line too is is you keep it balanced and you you work your actions off of it. I thought we got a ton of production out of our movement game yesterday. U you know, some of the play action and and keepers that were off of that stuff that we put on tape. So, uh it’s it’s still an evolving process and and he’s getting better and doing things from a footwork perspective and a timing perspective. Every time he’s been out, he’s gotten better at it. I think that’ll continue. 11 sacks in the first two games. How much of a concern is the pass pro right now? Yeah, I you know, again, we’ve been down this road, I think, before. Um, and I don’t mean to be dismissive of your question, but I think that, uh, as I’ve said a million times, that that sacks are are an offensive problem. They’re not an offensive line problem. Um, felt like a handful of our sacks were avoidable. You know, one of the sacks is Cam running out of the pocket and taking a two- yard loss, you know, outside the pocket, which isn’t a offensive line thing. Um, I think a lot gets made of sacks being an offensive line stat. Um, and while I will I’m not dismissing the fact that we got to play better up front. That’s certainly not the case. But, um, the sack thing is a is an entire equal parts problem. Um we’ve had two or three pressures and sacks come off of some running back protection things. Um it’s not it’s not just them. And so yeah, this the number in and of itself is concerning. Don’t like that number. Don’t want to have that. That’s not going to help us win any football games. Um but I do think there’s a an extra onus that gets put on our offensive line based on what’s happened here before and how it’s looked that uh the sacks are are all on them that that’s there’s 11 sacks and oh my god that’s looks terrible. Um, I think it’s a little more nuanced than that and I think there’s more more things that that can be done to to help from, you know, quarterback perspective, from receiver perspective, from running back perspective. So, it’s it’s an everybody issue that um we don’t just pin the blame on them. We got to be better everywhere on offense, I think, for for that number to improve. Would you like to see Cam maybe run a little bit more uh you know, when he has a chance to either take a check down or take off because might add an extra element to the game? Yeah, I I think Cam’s I think Cam’s a really good pocket mover. I think he’s got great feel. I think he’s learning more and more about how these NFL pockets feel um and the duress that you get put under. And he’s made some really good plays with his feet. That touchdown throw was was an example of it. Um the difference between him and some other quarterbacks is that when he escapes the pocket, you know, he’s looking for plays in the passing game and that’s what’s going to end up making a lot of plays over time, uh is his eyes are always downfield. And um there’s some spots where he could run and maybe pick up a couple more yards. And I think he will as the as the year goes on. He’ll understand where the where the four or five yards might actually help us more than than a deep attempt that goes incomplete. Um but that’s just things that he’s learning and working through as as we go. And uh I I I love his mentality when he does get out of the pocket because that’s where the big plays in this league happen. Uh is when you you break contain and your eyes are downfield and and you’re looking for potential explosive plays. To that point, I don’t know how many quarterbacks in the history of the league could make the play he made yesterday. Some people describe it as a no no yes throw. How do you coach I mean, does he have the green light to do anything like that ever? Yeah, it’s a it’s certainly a fine line. Um, but what those are the plays that make him special. That’s what makes him unique. That’s what made him uh a number one overall pick is is the ability to make those types of plays. Uh really it was smart on his part. It’s third and nine from the nine. Uh that’s like a major green light to to extend the play because even if you take a six, seven yard sack, the field goal is in your pocket. You know what I mean? It’s it’s a situational awareness thing and and that’s where the the good quarterbacks in this league buy time. Uh if they know it’s third down, they’re in inside the 10 yard line. It’s like it’s street ball, baby. Like that’s that’s when it happens. and and that was an unbelievable throw and catch and really the reaction by Ell was the one that was the most impressive part of the play other than the throw. But yeah, that’s like the old Mike Homer and Brett Favre clip where you know he’s you get they got the old clip on where he’s you know no no no no no no okay okay that’s that’s good that’s a good play like that’s what it feels like sometimes and um you don’t want to take that away from him because those are the plays that he’s capable of making. When you when you made your way through the offseason analysis on the sins and all that stuff what was the the conclusion you communicated to players about penalties. Is it as simple as penalties bad or is there more nuance? How how did you kind of explain what you were trying to get across to them about what needed to change with penalties? I the the end result is is the controlling the controllable ones. You know, you’re going to get called for holding. Um defensive players are going to get called for defensive pass interference. That’s just the way it’s some of it’s subjective. It depends on the crew. All that stuff. Those are those are the ones you don’t necessarily have control of, but the ones that you do, the the pre- snap and post snap um alignment, those types of things, you can you can you know, we jumped off size three times yesterday and those are five yard penalties and on first and 10, now it’s first and 15 and now it’s second and 10 and now it’s third and eight. You know, it’s those are the rhythms you’re trying to to break and ultimately are are penalties predictive of um wins and losses? is are they predictive for playoff teams? You know, it’s a little bit looser in the penalty thing than it is per se like the turnovers, right? Turnovers are incredibly predictive. That that’s good teams turn the ball over, they make the playoffs. If you if you don’t take care of it, you don’t win games. Like that’s tried and true NFL formula for every team in the league. The penalty part is a little bit more variant. There’s not as many concrete things that you say if you less penalties equals more wins. that’s not necessarily the case, but um there is a brand of football that you try to play where you’re not beating yourself. And um that’s happened for us a few times as we’re trying not to put ourselves in position uh to lose games. We’re trying to win them. And you have to start there by taking care of the things that don’t get you beat. And I think ultimately that’s where where the emphasis started and and where we what we landed on is that that’s how you you have to improve your football team is taking care of the things you can control because there’s a lot of things you can’t. Um but the things that we can we got to do a better job of controlling. Why aren’t the screens Why aren’t the screens working and what do you need to add on top of the screens to the shortly? Yeah. Uh I think the probably based on on what I what I assume um some of the some of the things that get labeled as screens are are what we call run solutions. Um those are some of the bubbles and the things in the perimeter uh that you have to have when you’re running the ball like 11 personnel. they have to have some things to uh manage pressure and and extra players and stuff like that. Um they’ve become they’ve become a lot harder now than they used to be because of the offensive pass interference rules. And what ends up happening with some of those bubbles is the receivers can’t go contact. They can’t go get on the the DB first. And it’s really sort of changed how those the production of those things. They have to wait to go put hands on and then those DBs go running right through their face and they’re on their heels. They’re plays that that, you know, I think we we got to do a little bit better job of in terms of when and where we throw them and and when and where we ask those guys to do that because they’re harder now than maybe they’ve ever been to to execute with an offensive advantage because of that OPI contact rule. Um, but a lot of those things when you’re talking about screens, I think that’s what gets brought up is is those plays. Um, our actual screen game is has been okay. It hasn’t been great, but um, those are also great tools to help your line and help your ability to slow down the pass rush. And so we like to get some more improvement from those things. Um and again for the average person a bubble and a run solution looks very similar to a screen and I understand that. But um I think we can get more out of that screen game certainly uh from an execution standpoint. Yesterday um what what have you seen from him just from the moment that you first met him when he got out here and his just his ability to do what he does? I mean the biggest thing I think is everything that you’ve seen whenever you know he was at Stanford you’re starting to see now. And so I think he’s being able to get a lot more opportunities. He’s taking advantage of his one-on-one matchups and he’s being able to win because the league is going to be all contested catches probably 85 90% of the time. And so if he’s able to make those big time catches, then eventually it’s going to start opening up a lot more guys because now the defense has to worry about the other person that we have sometimes if we put them on the back side. You see like a guy who’s got such quiet confidence about him. What do you notice about that? I mean, I think he goes away. He goes about his stuff like the way that he is. I mean, he kind of I mean, he he’s a cool kid, right? So, it’s kind of cool to see him and Chim just the way that their mindsets are about approaching the game of football. Um, not too many rookies have the type of mindset of like, “Hey, man, I’m here to work. I’m here to get better. I’m here to grind.” A lot of times you get rookies who come in and they were the man and then all of a sudden you go to NFL and you know you get money, you get the lifestyle, you get audit and it kind of takes them a year or two to get their head straight. But like these guys coming in and they’re doing exactly what it is that you want to be able to see a rookie do. So I think um it’s going to be very promising for them as well. For your whole career, you’ve been on teams in Seattle that were contenders and going to the playoffs, making deep runs, things like that. What’s the adjustment been like for you to come to a team that’s completely rebuilding and struggling to find his footing? I mean, well, even the times that I was in Seattle, I’ve been on teams, too, where in Seattle, like we were doubted, you know what I mean? So, and they said, “Hey, they’re going to probably be seven and nine or whatever the case is, but it’s really just the mindset and mentality of who you have as a team.” So here, I mean, yeah, we started off with two really, really great teams. And I think we have a really, really good schedule ahead of us in general, but I think for the most part is the belief that we can be able to win games, the belief that we can be able to trust one another. We have the players that we need to be able to win this game. And it’s just being able to play a full four quarters. We could we easily could look at this game yesterday and see like, hey man, we was up. We’re doing everything right. Then the fourth quarter comes and okay, they score. It’s 20 verse 16. That’s what it’s going to be like in the playoffs. Teams are going to go score. Teams are going to go back ahead. You got to be able to know how to respond. And so for us, we can’t just like live in hope, right? We got to just be able to go out there and continue to grind and continue to be detailed every single drive because we could see if we’re not detailed, the score can go 30 something to 14 or 17, whatever the score was, that fast. And so we just got to be able to stay connected and stay as one whenever we’re playing those great three quarters. It’s like, hey man, now it’s time to finish. When so much of the emphasis this offseason was on that connection and that being together, what is the disconnect you’re seeing between that emphasis and that thing that you guys said you really got stronger at over the off season and maybe not having that in the fourth quarter of these first couple of games? I mean, I wouldn’t say much disconnect. I would say there’s penalties that we could definitely clean up, but I mean, one of the things that I’m just thinking of is you just got to get over the hump. It’s one of those things where like when you get into the games, things are going to happen and things are going to make you say maybe like, “Ah, here we go again.” Like, you know, maybe we haven’t seen things work out in our favor a lot, you know, but at the end of the day, we got to just be able to choose to get over that hump. And I think honestly as soon as we figure out how to get over that hump, I think it’s going to be very very promising. You guys are diagnosing what’s going wrong at the end of these games. How much are you seeing your opponent adjust to take away some of the things you’re doing well and and is it is it more I guess is it more the other team adjusting and you guys not being able to adjust back or is it just the execution on your end starts to fall apart at the end? I mean, I think adjustments are basically another game plan, a game within the game, right? like you got your game plan going into a game and then you got your game plan at halftime. And I think that, you know, I think that even when you look at our game, like I still think that we did a great job being able to move the ball, still being able to do some of the stuff. The hard part is like we can’t get penalties on second and third down that’s going to put us from third and six, third and five to now we’re at third and nine or now we’re at third and 11. It’s very hard against a good defense to be able to get a third down and 10 plus and to continue on with the drive. And I think even in meetings, we found out in these last two games that we’ve played, we had 19 third and like 10 pluses. And so that’s what’s really hurting us and that’s what is causing us not to be able to get over the hump because if we can be able to get to the third and manageables, then we could be able to open up our playbook. But once you get to that third and 10 plus, now the the defensive ends are licking their chops. The dtackles are licking their chops because now they know, hey man, it ain’t going to be no run. Like the only thing we got to look for is maybe a screen. So we got to be able to do better on those third downs just to be able to put us in a better situation where, okay, it’s third and four, maybe we run the ball cuz they’re expecting some type of pass. But we can’t even get to that point yet because we’re doing pre- snap penalties and that’s what’s really shooting us in the foot. And you can’t do that against two playoff teams that we just played. To your point about that, you know, with uh Ryan Callahan kind of leaning more on the run given the teams that you face, you know, as you’re out there and and and you’re watching, can you kind of like feel the run slow down the pass rush if you know what I mean? Definitely. I mean, when you go against like great pass rushers, like going back to the first two games, being able to run the ball and like really when you run the ball, you really just want to get a minimum of four yards, right? Like you get four yards every play, it’s a first down. But the way TP was running the ball, the way the line was blocking, I mean, when we’re able to get eight yards, 10 yards just off of a run, now all of a sudden it starts to set up play actions. And that’s whenever you start to be able to see some of the explosives. like Rid was able to get play like it’s two explosives just off of play actions. And so if we can start being able to take advantage of the run now, it opens up more of the explosives. Now you don’t worry about so much like other things where the DNS and everybody starts to tee off and run. But those things definitely help us, but also not getting behind the sticks. Like you know, I think we had a penalty and then we went first and 15 on that drive where we were down four. Like we can’t do that. Like those are the things where what what would it really look like if we eliminate those penalties? Do we win that game? Do we still lose? If we lose, we’re not blaming ourselves from pre- penalty snaps. So, we got to be able to continue to tell the truth and continue to get better from things that we’re doing that’s removing us from being able to reach victory. You know, we watch your routine maybe before practice. You do work after practice. When did you start doing that? And who are the people you maybe watched that uh that you maybe learned from early in your career? I’ve done it my whole life. I mean, I’ve always done it my whole life. Like I mean, there’s different reasons why I’ve done it. Like, I’ve you know, I play for my face. So, I want to see how great that I could really be. And you know, being able to play this game and being a receiver is very hard to dictate what your stats are going to look like, how you’re going to play, what you’re going to do, cuz there’s so many different factors with the line blocking, the quarterback throwing you the ball, the play that’s being called, the defense running the right type of coverage. But like for me, I want to be able to see how great that I could be. How far can I take this game? And that’s all that I try to focus on is, hey man, did you win your rep? Amen, are you getting open? Amen. and are you catching the ball when the ball is coming to you? Okay, if you drop the ball like you did in the preseason, let’s go back and work on that. Like, let’s not get so caught up in the negatives. Like, let’s just continue to go and get better because at the end of the day, the game is going to end for all of us. And for me, like I want to be able

Titans HC Brian Callahan and WR Tyler Lockett address the media on Monday at Ascension Saint Thomas Sports Park.

00:00 – 17:00 HC Brian Callahan
17:01 – 25:35 WR Tyler Lockett

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