Zac Taylor Press Conference – November 17

Zac Taylor Press Conference – November 17

Zach, any injury updates on Cam Taylor Brit? Yeah, I I say surgery is likely right now, Liz Frank injury. Um, so obviously that’ll take him out. Uh, Cam sample we’re still working through. That could be a week toe thing for him with his oblique. Um, any other you can ask me about any other guys that aren’t hitting my head right now. I’m trying to think the Shamar, what kind of led to him getting placed on IR timing did given the nature of like when the injury occurred. Well, you you had all that time to gather all the information to decide if we thought it was going to be a four-week injury or not, which it is. So, we had through the by-week, if I’m not mistaken, right, and then all the way up to Saturday before. And so, there was really no reason to do it before then, even though we knew that’s where it was trending. Is Joe Flacco okay? I know he was yesterday. Just healthwise. Yes. Uh Trey, uh where’s he at this week? He’s doubtful right now. Okay. You have a timet on Trey? No, we’ll just keep taking it week to week. Zach, have you had conversations with Jamar about what happened yesterday in Pittsburgh? I have. Yeah, I’ll just keep that to myself. Do you are you concerned about the image of the organization being really uh under a lot of criticism nationally? And I’m just curious what the conversations are like internally that you have all the time with uh Mike and Katie and Troy on on matters like that. Well, f first of all, um I’ve always been impressed with how Jamar’s handled himself because he he is in a lot of these situations where he’s got a target as a as a top player. Um he gets a lot of respect that way. And so guys try to do a lot of things to to get his attention and get him off his game. And I’ve always thought it was unbelievable how he’s handled himself in some really high pressure emotional decisions. Obviously, what happened is crossing the line. We can’t have that and I know he’ll own up to that. Um, but beyond that, I’ve I’ve always sat up here and praised Jamar because he’s he’s one of the best leaders we’ve got. The way he goes about everything, he plays with a ton of emotion. He plays with a ton of leadership. Our guys respond to that and and I’ve always appreciated how he’s handled himself. I guess the reason I ask you is because you’re really the only one we have to talk to in the organization that can reflect how the organization feels after a really unfortunate ugly moment like yesterday. Yeah. And how do you feel? How do they feel? Well, again, I I just Jamar is one of my favorite. I love how this guy handles everything that he’s been a part of. So, making one mistake doesn’t doesn’t disregard everything this guy’s done that’s been positive for us. And so, I I think that’s what you’re asking. I I really don’t know what you’re asking me, but um again, I I I can’t say enough positive things about Jamar and think about the amount of situations people have tried to put him in um and the way that he’s always responded. And we’re not all perfect. we’re gonna make a mistake here and there, but um I stand by Jamar and I know it’s an emotional situation. I know there’s a lot of things going on there that lead to things like that and and again, we’ll just continue to move forward. Have you heard from the league? No, I haven’t. I haven’t heard anything this weekend. Do do you anticipate having Jamar I’m not going to make any I I have no idea. Is it somewhat disappointing given how much he had he man to be a captain this year? made a lot of strides in how he kind of handled himself, especially with us maybe on the field and for him to kind of have this as this somewhat of a setback. No, no. Again, people are allowed to make a mistake. Um, so that’s all I’ll say about it. With Cam out, does Josh step in as a starter or do you look at your options there? Yeah, we’ll keep working through what’s our best fit as we go through the week. Hard to say on Monday. Um, but we’ll get through practice and see where that lands. Yes, this is a two-part question, but how did Joe’s week go in terms of comfort? How how did he tell you guys he felt? And will your record play into your decision on if you’re going to let him play the rest of the season? The starting point is he did seven on seven last week, came out of the week feeling good. Um, and so then this week the plan will be let’s get to Wednesday and see if we can work in some 11 on 111 and go from there. So, I think before we ever do that, there’s no reason to have a discussion on what the timeline is beyond that because there’s just steps we got to follow. 7 on seven, great, did individual. Um, and now we continue with the rehab phase next week. And that’s 11 on 111. That’s getting bodies around him, seeing how he feels, seeing how he moves. And so, until we’ve done any of that, there’s no reason for me to to speculate on where he’s going to be. King record impacted at all or is that No, I I think right now he’s of the mindset that he wants to play football for us. And so again, it’s we’ll just continue to get through his rehab progression and see where that ends up before we make any decision on how we want to proceed. If he does get through that and since he wants to play, is it is it I’ll just wait to see I’ll wait to see how we get through the rehab progression first before I answer those questions. I appreciate the effort though. Is is it the same with Trey as well injury-wise? Is it is it just health or is it based on record to a certain degree as well? Yeah, it’s health. It’s in feeling healthy. when you reflected on kind of what didn’t go right for y’all enough yesterday, what’s the biggest thing that jumps out? Well, that that was always going to be a a really grimy game. That’s when you when you go on the road in the division uh versus a difficult opponent with the conditions um it shouldn’t surprise anybody when the score is 13 to nine, you know, late in the third quarter uh with us having a chance to drive. And so then the two the two turnovers that led to points changes the whole narrative of the game. So, um, probably realistically that game if we if we possess the ball and don’t have any turnovers and the turn about 0, it’s probably very similar to the week 18 game last year when we were up there 18 to 16 or whatever it is with with the team with the ball with a chance to win at the end. Um, but when you lose the turnover battle two to nothing and that leads directly to 14 points, then that’s the way that the game ends like that and and we didn’t give ourselves a great chance to to finish out the way we wanted to. Circle back on Cam, it’s probably going to be it for him. If he has surgery, he’s done for the year, right? I I I don’t have that information yet. I don’t know. But if he did, that would probably be I don’t know. I I shouldn’t speculate. I have very limited information. I’ve wrapped up all this with the team, briefly met with the trainers. All the information I had is um there there’s a very likely chance of surgery. That’s all I know. How do you feel like he obviously had some ups and downs this year? How do you feel like he How would you sum up his year to date? Um I’ll sum up what it was most recently. I thought he came out and competed for us recently, you know, after after going through a lot of adversity. Um I thought his response was the right one. He went out there and competed and played physical and did everything we asked and had a great attitude and brought energy to the group and um so it’s unfortunate that you know we had the injury we dealt with yesterday because uh as you guys know Cam’s Cam’s a likable guy. He’s energetic. You want to pull for him. So I was happy to see him rebound off some adversity and struggles that he had early in the year to come back and play the way that we expected him to play. That was good to see and um it’s unfortunate where it stands now. Zach, we talked a lot about tackling in here this year. How concerned are you when you watch yesterday’s tape at some of the effort in some of the tackles and some of the that aspect of it beyond anything else? Yeah, I I do I understand some of it looks looks bad. Um you can’t run from that. And the hard part was there were some situations we were great on first and second down. We got him into the situations we wanted. You know, second long, third and long. Um and then you just got to get a guy down in space and we didn’t do a good enough job of that. So, um I can’t say a lot more about it. We’ve we’ve talked about it. We we talk about it in industry. We work on it. We do every technique we can possibly do in the game. We just gota we got to let it happen and it has to happen on a consistent basis. There were some examples yesterday that were really good. You know, some that um maybe hadn’t shown up as much, but I thought there were some really good ones. One from JB stands up on the perimeter, Jordan Battle, Dax Hill, um Cam Taylor Britt fitting up, you know, pinning the hips. So, there there were some that I thought were really good. Um and then some obviously where we’ve got to be better to get us off the field on some critical moments. I know you said, you know, you don’t anticipate any personnel changes because of tackling. Why? Why is that not an answer? Well, it’s not tackling is not the only thing we have to factor in. We have to factor in knowledge of the defense and ability to to get lined up and play coverages and respond to the run game. And so, there’s more than just tackling. It’s frustrating when tackling is an issue, but there’s a lot more that goes into whether a player players or not. We factor in everything and we we talk about these things every week on whether we want to make a personnel decision or not. Um, but there’s just more that’s got to factor into it than than one element of his game. And there are times, I’m sure there’s been times where there’s been one element that’s been a deciding factor on whether guys plays or not. But, um, I think in some of these cases that you’re probably bringing up, um, there’s more to it that plays into it and we have to make a sound decision. We’re not afraid to make a decision. If we think that there’s a better way to approach it, um, if we don’t know that there’s a better way to necessarily approach something, then then we’ll keep trying to fix the ones with the guys we got. when it comes to you anticipate the the starting defense to be the same. Yeah, I’m not going to make any proclamations here on Monday because we’re still in the raw review phase, but um we’ll get to Wednesday and see where it ends up. About six weeks ago, you guys went with the rookie linebackers. I’m curious kind of look and they they’ve handled a little well. They’ve had their ups and downs. Yeah. Has the process gone about how you expected it would go or what have you learned from this process? Uh well, I think there’s there’s been some some serious pros to it. I thought operationally these two guys did a great job running the show yesterday and put us in a really good position and led let helped the defense do some some really good things that we can continue to build off of and they’re still going to go through their their growing pains a little bit and I know you’re at the halfway point in the season and you want to work through that. Um there’s certainly a lot on their plate, two of them playing together, two rookies together. Warren certainly goes in there and does a good job as well spelling them. Um so again I I continue to see progress being made and that’s that’s what we’re asking those guys. Keep making progress. eliminate the same mistakes over and over. Um, they’ve got tremendous attitudes. They they they are hellbent on playing at a very high level this season and helping this defense help us win games. When it comes to tackling, if it’s a matter of just going out there and doing it, is that a question of effort then? No. No. Then what what is it a question of then? Like I understand it’s just going out there and doing it, but like what does it take to go out there and then just Yeah, technique is a big part of it too. See, when you I have questions about leadership and culture and I wonder when you see someone like Jamar have an incident yesterday which is probably an outlier you would say throughout his career. Um do you worry that the trend the overall trend line wins and losses results is eroding culture in this locker room and maybe causing guys to depart from the professionalism that you know them to have? I think it’s a great question because it’s something when you’re losing um you have to be extremely mindful of it’s much easier to navigate when you’re winning and everyone’s happy and things are easy that way. It’s incredibly difficult to lead when there’s adversity. When you’ve lost um seven of your last eight games, that’s that’s when the real work has to come in. That’s where you see true leaders emerge. And um it’s not easy. You have to fight for it every day. I probably had uh 12 conversations in my office this morning because it’s the foundation of everything we got to build this thing on. Um is our relationships and sticking together because there’s a lot of adversity here. Um I think Jamar Chase is will go down as one of my favorite all-time players and favorite all-time leaders and everything he’s about. So I keep hearing this. It’s like we’re trying to make something out of this situation that it’s the only thing that’s kind of upset me as I’m sitting in here because for a guy that um has done everything we can to build our organization around, he’s been aw, trust me, I made plenty of mistakes yesterday. People don’t see on camera. Um unfortunately his was and so he’s going to have to own up for that and that’ll be part of his journey. He’s still in some ways he’s he’s a veteran. still I think he’s going to play a long time and so when you look at the overall part of his career this will be the beginning of his career in a lot of words a lot of ways. Um so again I just uh we’re going to move past that and and he’s a guy that we’re going to continue to depend on. He’s a guy I’ll put at the forefront of any leadership group I ever have for the rest of my life. When I retire, I’ll bring Jamar Chase in as a as a board member of whatever leadership group I create uh to talk to to people I want him to talk to. So, um, I I I hope you understand my position on this because, uh, he’s he’s a guy who’s done everything he could possibly could to help us win and do things the right way. I’m sorry, I almost cut you off midstream there, but as you’ve had some of these conversations, uh, with guys, have you seen individuals beyond maybe the guys with the C on their jersey? Have you seen strong leaders emerge? Yeah, I think everyone has to do it in their own way. They they can’t The biggest mistake you can make is asking too much out of somebody when that’s just not in their DNA. That’s not how they operate. That’s not how they they lead. Um plenty of great leadership is just guys leading by example and doing it the right way. And so guys feed off of that and they they know that when they do finally speak the once a year they speak. Um it’s a guy that they’ve earned a lot of respect for. And we got a lot of guys in the locker room like that. guys that I would never put in a position to stand in front of the team and hey, give a speech on Saturday night because that’s just not putting them in the best position. Um, you can lead a lot of different ways. You can lead just by encouraging another guy your position that’s maybe going through some struggles. You can lead by um just just practicing hard and letting other guys see that you’re doing it that way. So, there’s a lot of different forms of leadership. Um, I hate the record we have. I hate the position we’re in. The silver lining is you learn so much about people right now that when we’re going to be back up here, you found out a lot about who handles adversity and who who can be in the thick of this cuz we’re in the NFL. There’s a lot of these moments. I’ve been in a lot of them. Um, and I know what can be on the other side and I know how to get there and I know that we’re going to get there. And so again, the only silver lining to losing is I get to know who needs to be a part of the journey going forward and and I see a lot of guys in the locker room. I see the coach. I mean, it’s just there’s a lot of guys that I depend on that I know I can depend on and they’ll have my back and I have theirs. What would your message be? What would your message be to the NFL as they evaluate Jamar and and everything his status? Um, I think the proof is in the pudding with how he’s representing himself. That over and over and over. Sorry. That being said, about the silver linings, at what point do you all need to kind of make sure that you have more returns and kind of finding a glimmer of hope? Oh, that’s we we have to win. you have to, you know, that that’s our whole business. Um, it eats us, every loss eats us alive, you know, and and sometimes we have to remove the emotion of it because we have to turn around on Monday and get ready for New England. Like, we can’t spend too much time on the emotional part of it. So, um, even though it affects us more than than you can ever imagine, part of what I’ve had to learn as a coach and a head coach is I I got to take the emotion out of it and I got to get back to work and I got to find ways to get the best out of people and put together a great scheme and and go out there Sunday and have a chance to win and let the emotion for the people that can’t control it, the people that don’t get to put together a game plan and don’t get to go practice. I would be emotional too if I didn’t have any control, you know, and I I see the team. I support losing games and not putting the product on the field that um we know we’re capable of. And so I understand that whole part of it and we’re just going to keep working and and do everything we can. I I know that there’s um wins in this football team and we have to show that. That that’s our whole job. And so we can’t run from that. We can’t make excuses for that. We have to win. We got to find a way to do it. And we’re hellbent on find that way. Sometimes the hardest thing is sack and you know this as a coach is forgetting about what happened in the past. You can’t worry about it moving forward. Is that also part of your message that going forward we just have to be the best we can. It is it’s got to hurt you. You you got it has to hurt you. You can’t you can’t get to that point where you’re numb to losing. That’s a bad place to be. Um and unfortunately that’s that’s we’ve done a lot of that. But but we can’t numb ourselves to that. You still got to feel the pain when you walk off the field and the mistakes that you make and the opportunities that you missed. Um, it’s still got to feed you moving forward. Um, but we also can’t forget what winning does for us. Just just one win can change the whole trajectory of your season. And why not this week? We’re going to put everything we got into it. Um, again, I I believe in everybody we got and we’re going to fight to find this win this week. That being said, do you feel do you feel that enough guys feel that same way? The lock I do. Yeah, I do. I really do. I I see it. You know the DNA of a team when you watch them practice after the losses we’ve had and you see them go out there and just continue to compete. You would see guys, you would see the lack of days left effort showing up. You’d see the mistakes. You’d see the finger pointing. There’s none of that that shows up on the tape. And maybe sometimes you wish it was because you could explain, you know, the losses a little bit better. Um but but I haven’t seen that. And that’s that’s a positive that um these guys are still fighting like crazy because it’s important to them and they want to get it done. And again, we just we had our opportunities in the game yesterday, late third quarter, that thing turned on us. Um and we got to do a better job finishing the game. What kind of relationship do you have with Mike Vrael and what can you say about what he’s done in half a season? He’s done a tremendous job. Number one, um I haven’t gotten into their team yet. You know, we’re still early here on Monday. Uh I’ve always really liked Mike. Mike has always treated me really well. We we don’t have much of a personal relationship. I I don’t know. I’ve never worked with them. I’ve never really been around him. But um I have always appreciated the respect he’s shown me as as a younger guy um coming up in the profession when he’s got all the the accolades that he’s got and all the skins on the wall and all that. I’ve always I’ve always appreciated the interactions we’ve had and and um you know I don’t wish him well this week obviously but um always a guy that I’ve appreciated how much he respects the game. I think that’s what you see is is a great respect for the game and um I certainly appreciate people that approach it like that. Throughout the year a lot of the defensive players have you know talked about with their struggles like you know if you saw how how well we’re practicing during the week you know you it wouldn’t really it doesn’t look the same as it is in a game when when we’re missing tackles. What is it that it just isn’t translating from the from the practice field? That’s hard. I mean, I think that’s part of it. Obviously, you’re not tackling in practice, but no, no team is. That’s just make that clear. Um, so again, I haven’t done this for seven years now. I I’ve seen I’ve seen tough practices where it’s not great and you have a bad feeling. I’ve seen good teams practice and and unfortunately, we haven’t capitalized on it fully in the game to be able to close out some games the way we want. We’ve been close, but we haven’t gotten it done. Um, but I know that the the the DNA is in there and we’re capable of doing it and it’s going to take one win to propel us and we got to find a way to get that first win. When you guys signed Burks, it was kind of kind of an afterthought almost. How is he seems to have, you know, I think he split the snaps yesterday with Knight. Is he has he taken on a larger role leadership wise? Well, we’re certainly not he’s earned opportunity and so I think he’s done a great job. He’s got a great understanding of what we’re trying to achieve um on special teams and on defense and so we’re not afraid to put him in there. Not really an afterthought for us when we signed him. You know, there was I I understand the comment. I No, I understand. But for us it wasn’t. For us, it was a very deliberate. Um he’s he’s did a good job in Philly last year, especially as a starter there in the playoffs. And you just look at his track record in San Fran and Green Bay and Philly and obviously knows what it takes to win. He’s been a part of multiple multiple NFC championship games and Super Bowls. So, um, happy to have him and he’ll continue to play the role for us. I mean, what have you seen from him maybe in the last month? There’s been a lot of Well, it’s just I think just stability, maturity. Um, he’s a professional man. He’s he’s been a great example for a lot of progress. Zack, do you get a sense of the frustration around the city from fans kind of as the season kind of goes the way it does in the last couple of years, how they’ve went, do you get a sense of kind of the frustration that that kind of simmer? I’m not oblivious. I I have to isolate myself. I have to. That’s the only way I can function. Um, and I think that’s understandable, but um, you also, again, it’s no one puts more pressure on us than than I do on myself to get it right. And so, um, I’m not oblivious to frustration, and I I know what our record is, and so that would lead to that. And I don’t blame anybody for feeling that way. It’s it’s our job as a as a NFL team to go find wins and create energy and joy in this fan base, in our organization, in our locker room, coaching staff. Winning Winning helps everybody do their job. the next day, the next week. And I want nothing more than that. And I know if if we can string together some wins, we’ll start to build build some some um optimism. But but first, we’ve got to show a step in the right direction of doing that. So, um until we do that, I understand how difficult it is. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Zach.

Zac Taylor speaks to the media following Week 11 against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

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