Here’s what Falcons coach Raheem Morris had to say after the 18-10 loss to the Steelers:
Opening Statement: “Obviously, disappointing results. You can’t expect anything else when you turn the ball over three times, and they won a turnover battle like that. Basically, that’s the story of the game. You’ve got to go out there and capitalize when you have a chance, and we were not able to do that.”
On the motion fumble play: “Basically, timing. We’ve got to get that right. Got the play call in a little bit late. We tried to rush a couple of things. It was a timing thing. That can’t happen. Those things can’t happen in the National Football League. We did that. They got that ball. They fumbled the snap twice. We were not able to get either one of those, and that’s the big difference. It just goes back to the turnovers. We’ve got to get that right, and that can’t happen.”
On the approach in the preseason not translating to Week 1: “You know, I’m not really concerned with that. I think that is especially about mitigating injuries. So we wouldn’t have played nothing but ten snaps anyway if we did play, and we did not. I don’t even value that as much as you do. I know you may have an opportunity to think that way, but you’ve got to go out there and execute when you get your opportunities to play in this league, and that’s what’s got to happen.”
On whether the offensive performance today was more of a team issue versus not being able to block the Steelers: “You never want to take credit away from your opponent, and they did a great job in doing what they can do. We’ve got to go out and we’ve got to have the ability to execute against anybody. We’ve got to be able to execute the plays that we want to execute. When you play a team like this, the Pittsburgh Steelers, with the defense they have, you know it’s going to be a dirty game, but we had our opportunities. We got the ball back with a chance to go score. We made a couple of big stops in the red zone. We had a couple of opportunities to go down there and take the lead. We came out end of the half with a 10-9 lead. We’ve got to maintain that thing and find a way to get down the field, have some drives, putting it together like we did the first time out when we took the possession of the game to be able to do some of those things. We were not able to do it the second half.”
On not being able to stop Pittsburgh’s defense: “Those guys made plays. We turned the ball over in the second half, hitting people in the face and some of the things of that nature. We can’t do that. We’ve got to play better all across the board – some of the blocking, some of the protection, being comfortable. All those things come into play. So we’ll go back and look at it and find out and get to the root of it, practice and go through our process.”
On whether the pocket closing in really fast limited what the team wanted to do on offense: “They limit that when you line up against these guys. That’s kind of the team they are. T.J. Watt is that kind of guy. He’s always going to go out there and cause those kind of problems. You’ve got to give him credit just being who he is. He had two sacks today. He jumped offsides early and got one that looked a little scary, but he was way off sides. He jumped off pretty clear. But you’ve got to go there and maintain them and can’t let him wreck the game. He was able to wreck it by getting that fumble recovery and also getting a couple of key sacks there too, to get those things going.”
On the defensive performance today: “You can’t just necessarily go off of what happened with the results. We’ve got to stop those guys in earlier downs in the run game. They had some success running the football on it us, but I was really proud of those guys and what they were able to do with their resiliency in the red zone and after those turnovers. You’ve got to give those guys that type of credit. With it being one game, we have to find ways to get the ball back ourselves. We’ve got to find ways to force turnovers to give our guys a short field to be able to go out and score, and we were not able to do that today. But I was very proud of how they stood up and showed mental toughness and real grit down the stretch.”
On the messaging this week going into Monday Night Football: “All these things are the same. They’re all learning episodes. They’re all learning the opportunities. Whether you win, whether you lose, they’re all the same for us coaches, right? You’ve got to learn from wins, you’ve got to learn from losses, and we will certainly learn from this loss.”
On whether he sensed frustration from WR Drake London and TE Kyle Pitts in the game: “Of course you’re going to sense frustration from really competitive people wanting to get the ball in their hands to make a difference. I don’t look at that as a negative, I look at that as competitors wanting to go out there and help their football team win any way they can. Kyle was able to get the touchdown. We didn’t get the ball to Drake enough. But hey, you want to get the ball to Bijan [Robinson] more. You want to be able to run the football a lot. You’ve got to maintain possessions. You’ve got to keep some possessions. You can’t turn the football over. When you do that, you limit the chance to get your playmakers the ball, and all those things hurt you. That’s always going to hurt your production [with] the turnovers.”
On how he feels QB Kirk Cousins played today and what he feels he needs to do to get ready for the next few weeks: “You better look at them one at a time. We’ve got the Eagles. We’ve got to worry about that on Monday Night Football. We’ve got the extra time to go out there and prepare. We’ve got the extra time to go look at it. For Kirk, we know he has to play better, there’s no doubt about that. I look forward to him doing that. He’s played in the league for a long time. I look forward to him bouncing back from a rough game and a rough outing. I’m not overly concerned with that.”
On when the team realized they were going against Steelers QB Justin Fields instead of QB Russell Wilson: “We figured it out when you figured it out. When they let us know and they announced it at the time they have to announce it. For us, it’s preparation for both of them. I think our defensive guys did a nice job of preparing for them. When you are talking about Fields, you’re just talking about incorporating more of the quarterback running scheme. He was able to punch it out on that last one and really continued that full-minute drive going at the end with a nice quarterback run drive with his legs. Other than that, I thought we did a nice job. I believe he hit one sneak. We stopped one sneak. I think we did a nice job on some of the zone read things, keeping him out of the pocket. He did a nice job of getting to the edge in the perimeter and the keeper game, which they both do really well. It’s football, man. You’ve got to be ready for everybody every single week, and that will never change.”
On QB Kirk Cousins not looking comfortable in the pocket: “You know, it’s the Pittsburgh Steelers. They’re a good defense. You got T.J. Watt out there, you’ve got [Alex] Highsmith out there. You’ve got a bunch of good cover guys. You’ve got a bunch of good guys across the board. Maybe he didn’t get comfortable. Those are things you have to evaluate when look at the tape. We’ve got to get comfortable, and we’ve got do it with an urgent manner.”
On whether he was surprised by the offensive performance today: “Surprised? You can’t be surprised in the National Football League. I’ve seen so much and been around so much where you don’t have good days, but you better take them all as learning experiences and be able to go out and learn from them. We’ve got to go out there and figure out a way to fix that quickly and urgently.”
On the positives of the performance on offense today: “That first drive was exactly what you wanted. It was efficient. We were executing. We went out there and we were able to run the ball effectively. We got a couple of passes off effectively. We got there and weren’t able to finish it off with the touchdown. We got three. We got it right at the end there and got the seven points to Kyle [Pitts], got some effective passions, moved the ball down the field, threw a touchdown. When we came out the second half, I was expecting and hoping to build on that. We lost a little bit of our edge and our things of that nature to get it done. A couple of penalties hurt us with the holding on one from the backed-up situation. Bijan [Robinson] had a couple of really good runs. He was able to execute on some screens. He’s a guy that I was really pleased with the way he played the game, just with the mental toughness and the ability to go out there and continue to try to make us win and putting us in a winning position, although we were not able to come out with it.”
On whether he feels RB Bijan Robinson should have more balanced playing time or stay with getting the ball often in-game: “I like winning, and that wasn’t the result we got today. So we’ve to go back to the lab and figure out a way to win. And whatever that is, we’ll do.”
On how he feels OLB Matthew Judon and S Justin Simmons played today: “Very hard to judge those guys. I did see the big plays that we all clearly saw. Justin Simmons making a big knock-down pass I believe in the third down. I believe Matthew Judon was a part of the sack, if not having the whole sack. Later in that second half and how he was able to play, I watched him set a couple of edges, play really well and do a couple of really good things. There’s a bunch of positive aspects. Obviously as a coach, that’s what we see. Obviously as the media, what we see is the negative portion of whatever we’re going to look at. We’ll go back and correct those things, but you can’t ride the emotional roller coaster, whether you want to be positive about Judon or positive about Justin. We’ve got to have reality checks for ourselves to be able to go out there and correct it.”
On getting DL Grady Jarrett back on the field: “Watching him bounce back with excellence, which you expect, is something that you always really enjoy. Probably some of the few times today you were able to see emotion when a guy like that is, who is bigger than the game of football for us in our community, makes a play coming off the injury, the significance of his injury that he came back from last year. Being able to see his mother and his family out there today really support him is always something that you’re always going to look back and smile at no matter what the outcome is because of that guy, that human.”
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