Falcons
Falcons QB Desmond Ridder spoke about some of the team’s offensive struggles in Week 3, as did HC Arthur Smith.
“We just weren’t able to get anything going,” Ridder told Mike Rothstein of ESPN. “That’s something we struggled with earlier, especially in the, we’ll say, in the first half of games throughout the season and that’s something that, obviously, we’ve got to work on to improve. We know what this team is supposed to look like,. What we’re supposed to be and through three weeks, we haven’t even skimmed the surface of what we’re supposed to be.”
“That’s pretty much the story of the game, was too many negative plays on early downs,” Smith added. “Which led to a lot of ugly offensive football. But, as ugly as that did feel, we had our chances even late to try to do something with it and we didn’t.”
- Smith said the team had consistency problems on offense but it can’t all be put on Ridder, who was frequently under pressure. (Tori McElhaney)
- Smith continued: “A lot of things we can do better, all of us. Thankfully, it’s only one. There were some tough lessons learned.” (Josh Kendall)
Panthers
Panthers HC Frank Reich said the team’s offensive penalties on Sunday were inexcusable and pathetic.
“I would just say this as a general statement,” Reich said, via the team website. “First of all, what we said in there was, and I mean, I have a very strong belief in our team and our players. I have a very strong belief in our coaches, and I know we can be a good football team if we don’t beat ourselves. That being said, what we did, the number of penalties that we had on offense was pathetic. And, you know, that starts with me, as an offensive coach, that starts with our offensive coaches, you know, getting our players ready, and that starts with our players, that’s unacceptable. I mean, it’s like we never played in the noise before. We knew it was coming. I mean, we have to be able to change plays. I mean on the road quarterback has to be able to change plays. That’s going to happen. So we talked about keeping our poise, and we didn’t do that.”
“I do know this, I do know in this locker room there’s two things that are going to happen,” Reich concluded. “One, there is belief, and number two, there will be no finger-pointing. That’s not going to happen. We’re each going to own our mistakes, man up to our mistakes. We understand that the mistakes are collective, coaches and players together, we’ve got to get better. But we each individually have to look at our specific area in a way that we can individually get better as well.”
Panthers LT Ikem Ekwonu grabbed the side of his helmet in frustration after committing several of the team’s penalties. Veteran C Bradley Bozeman weighed in on the penalties as well.
“You know, you never want to be the guy that’s doing that, and I was that guy way too many times today,” Ekwonu said. “So just frustrated with myself, just a slip-up with my body language there. It’s something I don’t want to do, but, you know, I’m just frustrated…My focus just, it wasn’t good enough at all,” he said. “Jumping offsides four or five times is ridiculous. You know, something like four or five times in a season. Four or five times in a game is ridiculous. Something I’ve got to get better at that. I felt like we prepared really well this week with the noise coming up and, you know, I just didn’t get it done. Basically, what it boils down to, I’m not sure I have the perfect answer for you, but yeah, I just didn’t get it done.”
“It’s not who we are, you know, we’re a pretty disciplined team, and we didn’t show that today,” Bozeman noted. “We had too many false starts, whoever it was on, you know, whether it was me, whether it was a tackle or the guards, whatever it was,, it’s not good enough. So we’ve got to fix that and move forward. We play crowd noise every single day at practice. We pump it in; we try to make it louder than it is out there. We didn’t execute today.”
Saints
- Saints QB Jameis Winston commented after replacing injured starting QB Derek Carr: “This team, we will be fine. We’re ready, we’re prepared and we have great leaders on this team.” (Katherine Terrell)
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