Photo by Tony Gonzales
HEAD COACH TONY SPARANO
On the game: "Just to sum it up, obviously, for us again not the result that was desired. It's not why we came down here. We came here to win a football game. We didn't come here to come close. We didn't come here to do any of those things; we came here to win a football game and bottom line is, if you turn the ball over three times in the first half and you're playing catch up against a good team like this on the road in their environment, it makes it really hard to do that. That being said, again, I'm going to say this, I was really proud of their effort today. Kids came back out, were really focused at halftime, came back out in the second half of the football game and got themselves back in the game and gave themselves a chance there at the end again on the road against a good team. We're going to keep working hard at it. This thing is starting to turn. We're playing better and better here as we go on. We just have to get all three phases to play better so we can get the feeling of what it's like in their locker room right now."
On Derek Carr's day: "It didn't start out, obviously, the way that Derek wanted it or that we wanted it. I'm trying to remember the first interception – I think the ball got away from him on one of them. And then the second one, they came with a pressure, we saw the pressure, it was a little bit of I'll call it a miscommunication, blocked the pressure, but he threw the ball in an area where he thought they were going to be and it was a little bit of a miscommunication there against a good corner and he made a good play. And then we fumbled the ball on a special teams play as well and we put our defense in a tough position in the first half of the football game here against a good team. I thought the defense responded really well early in the game here, making some critical stops and holding them to some field goals and doing some of those type of things. But with Derek, everything is a learning experience right now and as he's going through this he'll learn from it. He came up to me as the game was winding down and said, 'I'll get better.' You know what? That kid will. He learns from these types of things and people here in Oakland should be proud – they have a good quarterback here."
On special teams playing a pivotal role in the game: "I mean we got back in the game on special teams which is something that we needed to be able to do. We needed something to be able to turn the tide a little bit and Denico Autry did a great job there; he got his hands on the football. I believe it was him that blocked the kick and Brice [Butler] recovered it and that was a wa3y to get us jumpstarted and, again, took us awhile to get going. Offensively, it took us a little while to get going. I thought the second half we started to get going a little bit and make some plays and get the ball down the field a little bit...make a few different plays. We took advantage of another short field on a return by TJ [Carrie] and knocked the score in there. And then that score at the end and gave us a chance on the onside kick. The ball was out, the ball was on the ground, and we didn't recover."
On if he's worried about Carr starting 0-8: "I don't really worry about him right now. Guys in that locker room believe 100 percent in Derek without question. He's a really strong-willed kid. He knows what he's got to get better at and we'll continue to coach him hard. We all have to do a better job that way and continue to do a better job and I think we're getting closer and closer. I know nobody wants to hear that, and I don't blame them, but at the end of this, that's the truth."
On Marshawn Lynch: "Listen, we've talked about it back at our place during the week, he's the kind of guy you have to get a lot of hats to the football. I thought we had a lot of hats to the ball on him in several situations. I've seen that run down on the goal line before. I've been part of it; I've been on the other end of it before where he can push the pile and he's a big, strong guy and he can find his way into the end zone. He's a heck of a player. I take nothing away from him that way. I felt our guys competed really hard on that side of the football. We had one drive in the game there maybe where we cut it to one score and then it was aided by a penalty in that situation and they went down the field and they scored. That seems to be, right now, what prevents us from getting over the hump a little bit is just that one drive occasionally, here or there. It's not on the defense right now. We can look back at the first half and we can point to plenty of things offensively that we need to do. I thought the kids played really hard today in this environment."
On trouble running the ball: "I think today, honestly, early in the game they just beat us to the punch. They were moving the front. They beat us to the punch a few times early in the game and the yards were hard to come by. We knew the yards would be hard to come by that way. It's not a mistake they're where they are defensively right now. You'd like to be able to stay the course obviously. As the game went on, possessions were valuable in that situation and we had to advance the football. We had to try to advance the football. We weren't able to do it sitting there handing the football off. They did a good job. They played a lot of base and not a lot of nickel and so we were in sub and they were in base. In this game, they must have felt they could play us that way and that keeps the linebacker on the field and in the box and the box is crowded even when you tried to spread them out today. You have to give them credit. They did a good job stopping the thing and we didn't do a good enough job blocking. We have to do a better job of that."
On DJ Hayden: "I have to watch the film. My first impression was that he was around the football a lot today. We had a chance there. He had one hit of him there that I think in that situation he might have had pretty clear sailing and then he had one at the end there that he was around and just couldn't finish the catch there. But, again, this is such a young player that hasn't played a lot of football and you want him to go into this situation and learn from this too. He needs to watch the film closely. We need to do a good job of coaching him and he needs to make the corrections. That's something we really don't know... in other words, sometimes you can make corrections with some guys and they don't quite honestly make them. I think DJ is the type of kid that's so eager to learn right now and so eager to play and compete that that's not going to be an issue. Out there I watched him today compete I thought at a pretty good level out there. Obviously he had a penalty there that was costly, but the kid is competing out there."
On Hayden's taunting foul: "I think the kid is just playing football and he's in a hard environment, he's competing in the game. It's not an excuse by any stretch of the imagination. As I told him on the sideline, we have to be smart. We can't do those type of things. But I applaud his competitiveness in the situation. You'd much rather have the competitor than the other side of that pancake. It was good to see him competing out there, but he has to do smart things because at the end of this all those things are…again, it goes back to that deal where I talk about Oakland beating Oakland a little bit. You look at those type of things and it's hard to take this team off of the field on third down, get them off the field on third down, and I think that was a third down play or it was a play that led to a big first down."
On if extra motivation was needed at halftime: "They were pretty responsive when they came in the locker room to a man. They knew why we came here and all I said to them was, 'this isn't the reason we came here. This is not what we came here to do.' They responded really well. I just talked to them about winning the half. Let's go out and win the half and see if we can put ourselves in position to win a football game. If we can get ourselves into that pool again, we can figure out how to win the football game. And they did that. They put themselves in position to do that. They kind of scratched and punched and got ourselves back in the game. Defense made a big stop coming out to force the punt. We get a block and we get a short field on TJ's return, score a touchdown there, get [Mychal] Rivera going. I thought those were all positive signs, but as I said to them, 'this game against teams like this you have to go 60 full minutes.' And in our situation today, it wasn't quite 60 minutes. Again, there's probably going to be a lot of positive things we can take from this with the exception of the outcome, which again, nobody wants to hear, and I don't blame them."
On if Rivera was a big part of the game plan: "Yeah, he was a big part of the game plan coming in. We felt like we can use Mychal a little bit that way and make some plays, particularly down in the red area. We thought, predicated on what they were doing, that we'd get him involved a little bit down there. He made a couple of really good catches. Derek made a really nice throw on the first one because it was a naked and we kind of came out there, had somebody in his face, bought some time and made a good throw there. We wanted to get Mychal in this game and we were able to do that."
QB DEREK CARR
On the CenturyLink Field environment: "It was definitely different, but it wasn't anything we didn't handle well. I thought we got in and out of the huddle quick, good. That was one of the points of emphasis that you have to do here. You have to get in and out of the huddle quick and I thought we did a great job of that all night, making the calls quick, that way when the noise comes in it can be a factor if you let it, but I thought we did a great job of handling it."
On his play: "The first half I think I was just doing too much. Any time that we're in a spot, I feel like what can I do to help us win. I'll do absolutely anything it takes to win a football game and to help our team win. So in the first half I was doing too much. In the second half I just came out…First half it was those couple of plays. The second half I came out and was like, 'I'm just going to do my job.' I have to trust that everyone's going to do there's and all these things. You saw how we battled in the second half. Again, no moral victories in this league, as I've quickly learned. All it is, we have to win. So the first half I was just doing too much. I tried putting too much on my shoulders, doing too much, I just have to do my job."
On the Bruce Irvin interception: "Great play by him. It was a great play by him. It was three-deep coverage. We had a four-vertical concept with shadow cross. I'm trying to hit James [Jones], number two, up the seam. It would have been a bang-bang play. Earl Thomas was coming. That guy covers ground anyway. I knew that when I threw it, but Bruce, he got his hand on it. He made a heck of an athletic play and they scored a touchdown. That's tough. That's a tough one but he made a great play. Coverage-wise, three deep, I was just trying to throw the seam there."
On the Richard Sherman interception: "Richard Sherman, that's another great play by him. We had a miscommunication up front that I'll do a better job of handling. I always put it on my shoulders, you guys know how I am. I'll do a better job of handling that and making sure we're in the right calls and all those things. I have to do better on that one. Again, that was another one where he made a great play. I mean, he caught it with one hand. The guy is an all-pro. I knew going into the game of course I'm going to compete and I'm going to go at him, but he made a great play on that one. You have to give him all the credit. He's a great player and he made a player there."
On if it was a back-shoulder pass: "No, no, from the start it wasn't very good. From the start, from the call standpoint, obviously without getting too detailed into that, it wasn't…"
On Carr pumping up his team near the end of the game: "There's no doubt in my mind that if we get the ball back we're going to win. I'm very confident. I praise God for the abilities that he's given me to play confidently. I was telling them, we're going to win this game. We get this ball back, we're winning this game. I'm just trying to be an encouragement, man, because I fight. That's all I know to do is fight. From when I was little and my two older brothers would pick on me, all I would do is fight, and it made me better. It made me who I am today. So when you see me going around doing that, I'm just trying to fight. I'm just trying to get the ball back in my hands to give us a chance to win it. Obviously we didn't get it back, but I just want those guys to know that anytime that we have a chance to win it, I want them to have the confidence to know that when we're out there, we're going to go score."
On handling an 0-8 start as a rookie quarterback: "I've answered that question before and if I didn't, first of all, have the foundation that I have in my faith, if I didn't know who I really was as a person, if football defined who I was, then obviously I could be pretty upset and sad and down. It's okay to be angry. It's okay to be upset at the losses, but you just have to keep fighting. That's the kind of person I am. My faith has kept me grounded. My family, my teammates, my coaches, all we do is fight; all we do. If I had a problem with my character or problem with who I am as a person, I could see, absolutely, it's hard. This game is hard. That's what I'm learning – it's hard. It's hard to win. It's hard to go to work every day and all those things, but just because of how I was raised and the kind of person I am and what I believe, it's not going to be a problem. I promise you it's not ruining me."
On if he gets angry: "Oh yeah, absolutely, I get upset. In the spur of the moment you get angry if something doesn't go right. I get mad at myself, but the thing is, don't act on it. I don't ever act on it, so of course it's hard to deal with, but I can promise you when I go home – and I've told you guys before – I'm the same hanging out with my wife and my son as I am talking to you. I've got the joy of the Lord in my heart."
On struggles running the ball: "Obviously we're going to do certain things better. I'll take a look at it and see if there's anything I can do to help. Obviously I'm trying to do anything to win. Those kind of questions of what do we do, how do we do it scheme-wise, I leave that to the coaches. I go out there and I just compete as hard as I can at whatever they want me to do."
On getting poked in the eye: "When it happened, I didn't open my eye obviously because it hurt. And then I didn't open it so I was just praying, 'Lord, I hope I can see when I open this eye.' But I'll be fine. It's just a little swollen."
On having trouble getting his jacket on: "I'm just sore, just normal soreness from the football game."
On passing game being disjointed in the first half: "Oh yeah, in the first half we just…I could think about all the plays right now. There's just little details and that's why it's frustrating that whether it's myself or someone else, whoever, it doesn't matter, there's just little details that we're missing as a whole because we can't do it, not one individual can do it. As a whole, we're just missing one little detail and we can have a couple big plays there. That's what's so frustrating to me. We have to go back and look at those things and just iron out those details because we can't do them in practice and then get to the game and then not do them. We have to be able to expect that we can do those things."
On learning from this game and the improvement from 1st to 2nd half: "I just think for me, it show me what kind of person I am. Am I going to come into halftime, go in the tank, go out in the second half and just, 'okay they got us.' Or am I going to, for a lack of a better term, man up and go out and fight and try to win the football game. And I'm always going to try to man up and fight. I learned a lot about myself. You find out a lot about people's character through hard times. I found out a lot about myself today."
On what changed in the 2nd half: "I just knew that I was trying to do too much. I'm trying to save everything and that's when you get in trouble in this league. Guys are too good. You saw Rich [Sherman] and we talked right after the game; he's a great player and he made a heck of a play. I'm just trying opt do too much. I just need to settle down. I came in at halftime, settled down, and I was like, 'I just need to play football.' I'm here for a reason and I just need to settle down and do my job and we went out in the second half and, thank God, we saved it from being disastrous."
On why he's trying to do too much: "I think my mentality was wrong and I go back to college and I had a game just like this where I tried to do too much and it hurt our team. I learned from it and got better and I know I just have to do my job. I don't know why…I just want to win so bad. I want to win so bad that I just tried to do too much and I can't do that because I hurt us in the end. But in the second half I just said, 'hey, I'm going to do my job and do exactly what the coaches have taught me to do.' Flip [QB Coach John DeFilippo] and Oly [Offensive Coordinator Greg Olson] have done a great job with me and just continue to grow."
S CHARLES WOODSON
On committing turnovers: "Well those were mistakes that we can eliminate. Turnovers, that's always an emphasis for every team, to not turn the ball over. Coming in on the road against the defending champs, and you know how they are as a team—they capitalize on those things and they were able to do that. You're not going to win very many games against a good team when you turn the ball over."
On the late comeback: "We just kept playing football and we didn't turn the ball over. The first was what it was—we turned the ball over and that's the way the first half went. But we came out [and] we played better. Defensively, we continued to keep them to field goals for the most part. Offensively, we didn't turn the ball over and they moved the ball a little bit. Made a big play on special teams, which we hadn't really had all year, so that was huge for us. And we just kept playing football. The guys didn't quit, and continued to do what we needed to do, and had a chance."
On Autry's punt block: "We will take it wherever we can get it from. When you got young guys coming in playing a role, and we expect you to play well. If you can give us a spark then we'll take it."
On if Carr made a rookie mistake on Sherman's interception: "No, Sherman has picked off a lot of people—that's not just a rookie mistake, that's a good corner making a great play. That's something Derek will have to learn from. You have to pick and choose when he goes at a player like Richard, maybe he should have went somewhere else or a throw a different type of ball. Those are things he will continue to get better at as he continues to grow as a player in this league."
On how to stay motivated in the second half of the season: "We're 0-8 and I understand it. For all purposes, we aren't going to the playoffs, but we still got eight games left. We are going to play this season out and see how the chips fall."
On Carr's performance: "For the most part he played well. He had the turnovers but I think every person on this team came out in the second half, regardless of how that first half went, and went out there and stayed the course. It was a close game. And in the end we had a chance, it looked like we were going to get that onside kick there at the end, but it didn't happen. We fought the whole game, but dug ourselves a whole early in the game against a good team."
On Marshawn Lynch: "It's tough. The guy is built low to the ground, he can get in and out of cuts. One tackler is not going to get him down, you've got to gang tackle him. So, he's one of the best in the league and they don't call him Beast Mode for nothin'."
On Lynch's goal-line touchdown: "You got to get more guys to the ball. There were a couple of guys on him early, had a chance to get him down, then he got help from his guys. We didn't have enough guys to the ball, so that's something, this week, the coaches will harp on that. You got to tuck back like that, you need people to the ball." On what it takes to improve:"Time. I think it's coming. This team is far better than we were. The record says what we are, but we are a far better team than we were previously. We are going out here; we are having fun. I think the defense is going out there and playing pretty good ball right now. We are getting off on the third downs a little better. The thing about this game is that you've got to have balance. If one side is playing well, you need the other side to play well. You need everybody." On improvement:"The way this team started this season, I don't think we were where we are now. I think we are getting better. Our record says what we are, but this team is getting better."
On Russell Wilson: "It's tough. The game now is so much geared towards college. It is able to take advantage of an athletic quarterback like Russell… We didn't let him out of the pocket very much some on those zone read plays, so we were pretty effective. But it's tough when you have him and Marshawn Lynch out there."
On playing as the defending champion: "You're the champ. You're on top of the mountain, and everyone is trying to get you off of it. That's basically what it is. Everybody wants to say they beat the champs. People say, 'It is just another game,' but when you play the champs, you're trying to knock them off the pedestal."
WR BRICE BUTLER
*On his view of the blocked punt: *"I was coming off the edge and the guy was blocking me pretty good, so I was just trying to get around. I heard the block, so I saw Denico (Autry) back there. After that, I was just trying to locate where the ball was. Everybody kept jumping on it, diving on it. I saw Jonathan Dowling and the tight end—82, I think—and I was like, they're not going to get it. And it was about to come right to me. That's what happened."
On the emotions of that moment: "Let's win. Let's start something. That was it, really. I was running hard back to the sideline but I was like, let's go. C'mon."
On the role of special teams in the game: "We were doing a lot of things on special teams. We just got to keep doing them. It's a team sport. We got three different phases. If one phase is struggling a little bit, another phase has got to pick it up. We were doing well on special teams."
On the third quarter and a possible momentum shift: "First half we came out kind of dull. We came in, said, let's pick this thing up. They scored quick. We can score quick, too. We went out there and got that punt block and the crowd got quiet and the momentum was kind of coming to our side. We were just trying to take it for what it was worth at that time."
CB TJ CARRIE
On being involved on so many plays today: "It's what you sign up to do. So I enjoyed it. I definitely had fun out there. That's the main objective of going out there on Sundays—just to have fun and execute your technique and play an prove to the world that you're meant to be out there. When you look at the snaps it's not really a factor that you play into when you're on the field."
On special teams being the spark that brought Oakland back: "Definitely. Special teams is a crucial aspect that we harp on each and every day. It's just as vital as offense or defense in a game. It can definitely give you a spark and a momentum change, which it did in the second half, which was very excellent for us. We just went out there and continued to compete."
