It's kind of been the theme, you know, giving up plays that we know we shouldn't, penalties, takeaways or turnovers, and then a lack of takeaways. UM, you know, those things we feel like we're doing to ourselves. We hadn't played a game yet where we felt like the team just flat out beat us. So that's I think the
most frustrating part. UM. But you know it's up to us to correct those and obviously with a short week, you know, it's something that we're going to have to trust each individual to look at themselves critically, UM really without practice, UM and and try to be more discipline team next week. Does that make it more frustrating than just getting out played, like you said, yeah, I think so. I think if if if it was an issue of talent or scheme, you know, we can live with that.
But when you're losing games because you know you're committing penalties or your your missing assignment or giving a ball away not taking the ball away, that's frustrating, UM, you know, to to each of us. But uh, you know, we'll continue to trust in the process. I think, if anything, will will dive harder into the smaller details. UM. Put pressure on everybody to individually just get a little bit better, um, and and you know, continue to compete the drip of
you on. Yeah, I don't know what he's supposed to do if a quarterback has the ball, um, Um. You know, I know, I know they don't want low hits on the quarterback, but if you're falling down, I guess you're supposed to just let the quarterback go. Um. You know, the explanation from the front the official was, you know, he has to avoid that hit, which means that he can't do his job. He can't tackle a quarterback while
quarterback has the ball. So obviously that was a big play. Um. Now, I was frustrating, but I don't know what to tell Mike to do on that play. Had a long conversation with the official. What was what was your argument to him? And then yeah, it was it was what do you
want me to tell him? You know, what do I tell my teammate to do in that situation where he's already you know, falling to the ground, He's trying to the quarterback has the ball in his hands, and he's just like he has to avoid the play, which you know, literally means he has to fall and allow the quarterback to continue the down, which is the antithesis of his job. So you know, it was a tough call, but uh, you know, we got to find a way to overcome it.
These rules becoming too slaying it against the defense, well, I think they just sometimes lack common sense. Um, So you know, I get it. We want to protect quarterbacks and I completely you know understand that, Um that a life led to our game. But you know, it's it's really hard to do the job and it's having an effect on some games, but we have plenty of other
opportunities to win the game. That was just one play that was a little frustrated, Malcolm said to the team when he kind of addressed them after Doug spoke again, I mean, we got short week. You know what's at the end of the day, if we want to get get better, there's no you know, magic play or drink
that we can make to be a better team. And just every individual has to find out what they need to get better at and do it in a hurry, because at the end of the day, I think we can all look at a player two here there, a mistake or two here there that are that's you know, well, I would say out of character, but it's been a theme. Um. And if you take those away, then there's really not much us that we can do. It's just those self inflicted wounds. So each individual's got to find a way
to get just a little bit better. Um. And we have to trust um the guy next to us, you know, to the left and to the right, that they're doing that. And you know, we'll continue to compete and let the cars follow what they may. You have to have a short memory, obviously in this sport doesn't help with a short week after a loss that you kind of can just get back. Depends on an individual. If you want to let it carry over, it will if you if you you know, attack to take take care of your body,
get some rest, um and move on. Um. And and and and deliberately um corrected the mistakes that you made then, you know, to make you better. And so we'll see how we handle it. You guys were so good at limited spoiled plays last year. They got a lot more tonight. Yeah. You see like a theme here through the first to part of the season with those I mean, if you if most of those plays, if you look at it, we're real close to the quarterback and you know, the
ball gets off. If we can get one more step in our rush, H hit our angles just a little bit better, I think we get the quarterback down or get them to hold it. We made some adjustments that helped us later in the game, but we got to do a bit a better job of that making sure that we keep the ball in front of us. But I think that's, you know, a collective effort. That's the rush,
that's the blitzers is you know guys on the back end. Um. But we're an aggressive defense, you know, so we'll we'll continue as long as they're not going for touchdowns, we'll live to play another down. Guys here maybe been that guys haven't been focused fight enough or fighting hard enough at this point. I don't think fight. I don't think the fight is the is the is the issue. I think guys are playing hard in every single game. I think, um, you know, focus. I guess you could say I wouldn't
say that we're an unfocused group. I just I think discipline is really the word you look at, you know, just doing your job, snapping and snap out for where there's seventy plays or fifty plays just doing your job every single time, not you know, committing um bad penalties if you're we live a penalties, if you're playing aggressive, if you're you're going after a play cool, but just you know, dumb penalties we can't have protecting the football. We need a better job of that. UM and defensively,
we got to find ways to get the ball. I think that's one thing that we did in the past that build us out of a lot of bad situations. We hadn't quite come up with those um this year until we got to find opportunities, whether that's from the quarterback ball areas um, um, you know, getting guys in some throwing lanes. So we got to search for those opportunities um. And then eliminating a big play making teams earn it uh and then you know, getting some better
field position for an offense. So I think it's a collective effort um, and it's gonna come down to each individual trying to find a way to get this a little bit better, include myself. You guys haven't lost two rows its December of twenty and sixteen. I mean, you can make it. You know, you can make it whatever you want it to be. If you want it. If you want to feel sorry for yourself, you want to go on the tank, It's there for you to do it. You know, I'm sure there's plenty on social media. It's
gonna be plenty of media to tell you. You know that you aren't any good. You can believe it if you want to um. But if you want to get it back in the winning column, then you watch the tape, you digest it, you get better as an individual, and you show up next week and play hard. Where right now, Uh, my concern is, I mean, it's not that high, to be honest, you know, this game is one of those that if you don't get better, it will show up.
If you do, you'll win. And right now we have been playing good enough to win the majority of our games. We have another opportunity next week. At the end of the day, you know, we can only control what we can control, and this game is at this point behind us. What we can control is how we deal with it, how we as individuals evaluate ourselves as coaches, how we evaluate the team and put ourselves in positions to win. And then you know, we're looking forward to competing on Thursday night,