Postgame Transcripts: Week 14 vs. Atlanta

Obviously, credit to Atlanta. They played well enough to win the game. Disappointed in having the loss again, like many other games, just kind of self-inflicted wounds. Not going to win many games, in fact the odds are in the 80s against you when you have three turnovers. Three turnovers that we really didn’t need to have. Obviously, the fumbles are extremely difficult and then defensively even after all of that to still have a chance at the end. A false start on the two-point play which is fine, we kicked it, well not fine but didn’t hurt us. Then the kickoff return out to the 50 or 45 and then, obviously, had them third and 15, those guys have him in man and just our base coverage, day one, and we don’t execute it. Credit to them. Obviously, we have to be better. Specifically, I would say with the turnovers and the turnover battle.

RE: Who is your quarterback?

Cam [Newton]. I think that was kind of the way we planned to go on. We are going to play with Cam and PJ [Walker] both. We got in the rally and PJ obviously knows that two-minute stuff better. I thought Cam did some good things today. Can’t have those two turnovers though. We are just looking for things to not be catastrophic. Put a snap on the ground, ok, fall on the ball and be second and one. That’s what really bothers you about that. 2nd and 1 was fixing to be a really big run I think. On the back side, we cut off the three-technique and it was going to be a good play. I think one of the things that was disappointing was where the turnovers happened. The pick six happened at the 40 going in to score. That one happened at the 40 going in to score so you guys know me, I’m not going to make huge statements after it. I don’t have any strong feelings one way or another, other than I know we have to play better at that position. We can’t have multiple turnover games from the quarterback position.

RE: Did Cam Newton get caught up in Pat Elflein’s foot on the fumble?

I just saw what you saw on the replay. I don’t know that. But even still, we just want to go to the ground (and it) be third-and-three. I had told the guys we were going to go for it on 4th down across the 50 yard-line most of the day. Bad things happen in games. You just can’t let them be catastrophic. That was that play.

RE: How did defense lose track of Kyle Pitts on a critical third down?

They can’t lose Kyle Pitts. It happened but it can’t. It’s our base, day one coverage. We had them. He should be caught and tackled. It should be 4th down. We should have the ball back, going down to score. They got jet motion. Someone just has bad eyes and doesn’t put their eyes where they are supposed to be. At the end of the day, they made the plays to win the game. That play should never happen.

RE: Decision to play PJ Walker in the second half

We went into the game saying, hey, we are going play PJ in the third or fourth series of the game, depending on how the game went. Cam went right down the field and scored on the first one. I think we went 3 and out on the second when we dropped the snap. On the third one, we were driving the ball and had the pick six. I didn’t want to pull him right after the pick six. Put him out there again and then let PJ kind of a 3:50 left, let him throw a play action which he threw, completed the ball to Robby [Anderson] and unfortunately was just not able to get anything going.

RE: Will you continue to split quarterback duties or is this until Cam Newton is more familiar with offense?

No, we wanted to play PJ. We thought PJ was going to do some good things for us in the game. But he went back in the second, obviously in the 4th quarter under kind of a duress situation and moved the ball for us as he typically does but we got down inside the 40 and weren’t able to score and then obviously the defense got that fumble and we were able to capitalize. That was just something we planned on doing was playing PJ in a role in this game.

It was man coverage. They mugged up like they were going to blitz. Ran the option route. Tailback beat him clean. Anytime he breaks inside the only thing you have to be careful of is a rat dropping out. We run a shallow on that play to eliminate the rat. The guy played through it. I think he was mugged up, he dropped out and made a nice play. It’s a tough one for the quarterback, but at the end of the day, you’re responsible for what is out in front of you when you throw the football. That would be one that we would love to just, again, be incomplete, go for a 4th down, be incomplete, punt it. Those catastrophic plays unfortunately overshadow a lot of really good plays that happened today. I thought Jeff [Nixon] did a nice job. I thought the tempo was good. I thought we moved the ball. I thought they completed more balls to more guys than we have. I thought we were more diverse. Guys played with energy. A pick-six is one thing, but three turnovers obviously is a whole other thing.

RE: Did you see conceptually what you wanted to see from Jeff Nixon’s play calling?

Yeah, I thought we were at 26 runs, which when you are behind, obviously that would have been in the 30s had that happened. We ran the quarterback. We had more completions than we had. I’m not sure what the completions were but I think we were in the high teens. I think a lot of people think some of the decisions I’ve made was because of the run game. It’s really, we haven’t thrown the ball really well in previous games. This game I thought, at times, we threw the ball better. Obviously, we had the two interceptions, yet again. We had a lot of other plays that I thought were close. Robby [Anderson] caught the slant that was behind him a little bit. I thought we could have hit a couple more of those plays. I think Jeff did a nice job. Our offensive staff did a nice job. We can’t have turnovers. Those guys put them in positions to make some plays. We made some plays. We just didn’t make enough.

RE: Thoughts on PJ Walker’s interception before the half

Just like anything else, throw the ball away and let’s punt it. Enough of the catastrophic mistakes. Just to you guys, that’s what I said in the locker room. Its just such an old school lesson but it’s so true. When we don’t beat ourselves. There wasn’t a matchup out there today that we coudldn’t handle. They are a good team but there wasn’t a matchup we couldn’t handle. There was catastrophic self-inflicted errors. In the last scoring drive, 3rd-12, in the second to last drive, quarterback escaped the pocket, hit the in-cut, boom, got the ball down there. The kickoff return. The bad punt. We didn’t field a punt and (allowed) the ball down to the five so just a lot of things that we can control here and there, some guys aren’t doing, but is the difference in winning and losing. So, I think that is what has to improve. PJ’s play being one of them, obviously. Just throw the ball away. Punt the ball and don’t give them the chance to go down and score right before the half.

RE: Offensive line performance

That’s always a little bit harder to see. I think you have to watch the tape. Obviously, they got beat on the one sack there on 4th down. Got edged on that play. For the most part, like in the Miami game we were kind of under duress. I didn’t feel that. The 1-0 blitz, they grabbed Elflein and pulled him. We were kind of prepared for that blitz. It’s kind of one of those deals they grabbed him. Those are the two plays that I saw that weren’t good enough. But I thought we ran the ball good at times. I thought we had some consistency in pass pro. Obviously, Cam[Erving] went down and some of the guys went in. Without seeing the tape, I didn’t see anything that was highly alarming. Going into the game, that was the matchup I was concerned about because we were playing the new guys. I didn’t feel during the game, hey, we can’t handle this. Really during the game, I was saying protect the football. Stop throwing it up and we will be okay. Do what we are trained to do. When we did that, I thought we moved the ball fine.

RE: Not getting any turnovers, but almost getting several interceptions

At halftime we said to the guys, hey, we’ve had three chances at interceptions. Obviously, we forced the fumble at the end of the game to get us to go score. We expected our defense to go out and play dominant defense today. We knew we were going to need that with some young guys playing on the offensive line, we needed to create some turnovers. I thought because of the turnovers on offense, they started with the ball and because of the one great punt and the one bad punt, they started with the ball at the minus 45 and 50 most of the day. Two first downs and they are in scoring range. Those are the things that if we want to win games like this we have to create turnovers. We created two turnovers in the last game. We only created one today.

RE: Turf conditions – slipping

I didn’t hear anyone say that no.

The effort? I have no issues with the effort. I thought guys played hard. Guys played physical. Being prepared? I think we are prepared. I don’t see us making mistakes. There are some areas where we don’t match up quite as well where there is not a lot of margin of error and we have to be perfect. We have to play better in terms of giving the ball away. It’s real simple. You look at the games when we win the turnover battle or tie it, we usually win. When we don’t win the turnover battle, we lose. That’s where we are. That’s where most teams are to be quite honest, but that is where we are. That wasn’t unprepared when Cam slipped and fell. Cam is trying to make a play. That’s not what we do here and we are trying to get that out of us. The pick-6 was a nice play by them. We have to see that and protect it. There are some times when one bad play leads to two and you can kind of see the guys press a little bit. I thought we came out of the half, you know I challenged them to have a good third quarter and we came out the half and went right down the field and scored. The things we are working on, when we do them, they show up. Guys are in here at 6 o’clock in the morning. They are here until late at night. They work hard. Like I said there are some places where the margin of error is not so overwhelming where we have to kind of be perfect. Then there are other areas where we just have to protect the football. Protect the football, we have a chance to win. That’s where we are. Didn’t do it enough to today but I would not say they aren’t playing hard. You have DJ Moore in the tent, coming back out of the tent, they are checking his knee, he is like, ‘no, I’m going.’ Brian Burns is in the tent. I just respectfully say, being a guy in that room, that wouldn’t be my narrative. I would just say that we have to play better and we have to get better in some areas. They prepare and they play hard.

We didn’t get enough pressure on Matt [Ryan]. We went man coverage. One of the things early on was we just weren’t quite winning in man the way we sometimes do. I don’t know how many sacks we had on him, but it wasn’t enough. We needed to have him under a little bit more duress. That being said on third down, the numbers were not good. They were 50% on third down. In the first half they were in the 30s and the second half they were able to convert the 3rd- 12, the 3rd- 15. For what it is worth, I’ll make sure I say it again, because Ellis [Williams] asked me last week, David [Newton] asked me this week – this is not a case of guys not being bought in or not trying. This is sometimes you get beat on a slant inside. Again, we keep trying to get better as a team. They keep trying to get better. But it just is where we are right now. We have to grind our way through it. But they are certainly trying. They play through pain. They practice. They work hard. I have no issues with this team in those regards.