Head Coach Norv Turner
“I got in in the morning and I watched the tape in all three phases. There were so many different situations that were similar to what we’ve had throughout the year where we were able to make big plays and make plays at a critical time that went our way and changed close games. We had numerous opportunities in all three phases in this game to make those kinds of plays and we didn’t make as many as we have. I think when you put the whole thing together, we didn’t get it done the way we had the last 11 weeks. I think it’s a couple of things, and the first thing always is the team you’re playing. The Jets did a good job. They had a good scheme. They executed extremely well. In a game like this against a good team, you know there’s going to be give and take. I thought we made plays and we had big plays in the passing game throughout the game that gave us opportunities. We struggled on some critical third downs. Defensively, we played the run throughout most of the game at a real high level. Obviously we made the one run and the back is an outstanding runner.
“The biggest thing for me is when you step away from it, and it’s hard to do that after this short period of time, but we have got an outstanding football team and we have got good players and great character players and people that you want to be around on a daily basis and guys that will get this thing done. They will get this thing done. There’s no question in my mind. One of the things I look at, we played Indianapolis two years ago. We went to Indianapolis. They were 12-4, two seed. We beat them and ended their season. They came in here last year, eight game winning streak, hottest team in football. If they got past us they were the team to go to the Super Bowl, and we beat them and ended their season. They’re getting ready to play in the championship game. There are things that you have to overcome in this league. I think our team understands those things and like I said, we have the type of guys that will do that. I think the future for this football team is outstanding.”
How do you explain some of the uncharacteristic things?
“I wish I could explain it because as we all said, those things are things that are uncharacteristic of us and things we haven’t done. It’s disappointing to me and we know that, I don’t care who you are, those things are hard to overcome.”
This is the second year in a row Jackson has drawn an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty in the playoffs. Is that something that you talk to him about?
“Absolutely and it’s something that we talked about a year ago when it happened in the Pittsburgh game. The things that we talked about when we first met on Monday a week before the game were the things that have gotten us to this point were our poise and our discipline. As I said last night, when you’re in the top five in fewest penalties and top five in fewest penalty yards, those things matter. Those things helped us, and again, obviously when other teams were making those kind of mistakes, it’s twice as good.”
When you say, ‘We will get this done,’ do you mean win the Super Bowl?
“That’s our intention and that’s our goal. I believe this team is capable of coming back and putting ourselves in position to make a run at it over the next period of time.”
So in your mind the ‘window of opportunity’ is still wide open?
“This team in a lot of areas has gotten younger. I’m not going to talk about specifics in terms of our personnel today, but I do know this: we’ve had a lot of young guys make strong contributions to this team and a lot of guys stepped up that you wouldn’t have expected. Brandyn Dombrowski to start as many games as he did, you wouldn’t expect that to happen. The guys who played in our defensive line, (Ogemdi Nwagbuo) and some of those young guys that stepped up and made great contributions. We’ll add and they’ll be back on our team as we go.”
When you look at the video on Nate Keading’s misses, did he rush them?
“That’s certainly not my area of expertise and I was just talking to Steve Crosby who coaches our special teams. He felt (Kaeding) rushed the first one and pulled it left. If you relate it to golf, what happens is you overcompensate. He was going to make sure he didn’t pull it. Again, that’s a conversation I had with Cros and I haven’t seen Nate yet.”
What happened at the line of scrimmage on the 53-yard touchdown run?
“Ultimately, I thought Eric just made a bad decision trying to tackle him high. If he goes down and gets him at the knees, he had a chance. Cromartie could have squeezed it down better. We were in a zone dog and once the ball goes away, they try to get out of it and got cut off.”
Can you comment more on Cromartie’s effort on that play?
“I haven’t seen it on the game tape. I saw it in person. He’s got contain and he’s trying to squeeze it. He could have gone after it and got it.”
Did your team seem tight yesterday?
“That’s always so hard to determine. I don’t think it’s tight. I think we got into that deal where we pressed a little bit and we tried to do more than what we’ve been doing. The great example is the clip on Malcom Floyd on Vincent’s play. It’s a block that doesn’t need to be made. I don’t think the guy is going to make the tackle and one of the rules, and it’s mentioned every time it happens on the practice field, one of the basic rules for any receiver downfield is never turn and block back. Never turn and block back when a guy catches a short ball underneath because your chances of clipping go way up. Turn and go get a safety. Then if the receiver beats a linebacker or beats underneath coverage, you may get the block that springs him. Malcom ran the deep route over where Vincent was and when the ball was caught, instead of turning and getting the safety, obviously he turned back and blocked the linebacker in the back. I’m not going to go through ever play, but that ball is down on the 15 yard line. You can say the guy would have made the tackle or not. In my opinion, he wouldn’t have.”
You didn’t sense any tightness before the game?
“Absolutely not. I thought our practices Wednesday and Thursday were outstanding. I thought we had a very good practice and there was some looseness to our Friday practice, which there always is, but it was very precise. We went through a practice with relatively no mental errors and certainly nothing significant and I thought our guys were excited to go. They were. I would attribute it to starting to press a little bit and trying to do a little bit more than you normally do.”
Do you think some of that pressing has to do with the Jets trying to take you out of your comfort zone?
“I’ll go back to what I said. The Jets are an outstanding football team. They run the ball extremely well. They’ve got two outstanding backs, an outstanding offensive line. Defensively, they were first in most significant defensive categories. They’re first in third down defense, which was a factor in the game. They were first in pass defense, which I thought we made a number of big plays on them and made plays that people haven’t been able to make on them. We just had a tough time finishing drives.”
Did they take you out of your comfort zone?
“I don’t know about comfort zones. They do things that you have to handle. I said it last Wednesday: there’s going to be two or three times they get guys free or they make you throw a sight adjust. There are times we’re going to match them up and block them. That’s give and take during a game, but that’s part of the game. I thought there were three or four plays in the passing game that we have been making that would have been significant plays up the field and we just didn’t come up with the ball.”
Do you think there are major changes needed in the running game or run defense?
“If I alluded to stay the course, that’s not my intention. We did a lot of things this year during the offseason to improve our football team, whether it be personnel, whether it be coaching staff, whether it be things in our system. Those are things there’s no question that we’re going to do again and we’re going to get better. We’ve got players that can get better. There are two or three guys that I’m going to point to, if Antonio Gates can have his career best year at 29 then a guy that’s played two years at the age of 25 certainly has room to improve. The thing I like best about what Dean (Spanos) and A.J. (Smith) do and what we do as a group is we don’t rush into something right now. If we’ll let a little time pass and then look at our football team, there are going to be areas we look at and say we have to get better. We need to run the ball better.”
What was the biggest challenge Philip had reading their defense?
“There’s about four plays, there are two third downs where they just knocked the ball away. There are three or four plays we just missed and I do believe we made a bunch of plays that gave us chances. The biggest thing with what they do, they’re multiple on defense. They use multiple coverages, they’ve got very good players in the secondary and a guy who I believe is the best corner in the league. Then with their nickel fronts and their blitz schemes, they come from all over. So you have to communicate throughout and I think that’s why we had a couple false starts early. You have to communicate throughout the first part of the play. You have to set the protection. You have to move people around in terms of where they’re going. I though up front our guys were outstanding in handling that. If we make three or four of those plays, I think we’d look at it and say we got done what we wanted to get done in the passing game.”
What can you do differently next time you face a game of this magnitude?
“I can’t say enough about what our staff did this year in preparing for all of our games. I thought the coaching staff did a great job of getting our guys prepared for this game. We were matched up against a very good team and they played awfully well.”
Would you consider this season a success?
“We all want to go to the Super Bowl and we want to go win a Super Bowl. That’s what’s going to determine it as a success. From a standpoint of the ultimate goal, I’m disappointed like everyone else is. From a standpoint of what this group accomplished…I’m not going to do it but I could stand here and name 10 or 12 guys that had their best year ever. I could name 20 guys that weren’t expected to play that contributed to what we’re doing and allowed us to win 11 straight games and go 7-1 on the road and do all those things. For those guys, growing as football players, that’s a success. If you continue to grow, then the ultimate success of going and winning a Super Bowl, that’s what we want to do and that’s how I think we’ll determine our success.”
Any thoughts on the possibility of Sunday being LaDainian Tomlinson’s last game as a Charger?
“I’ve seen that and heard that and that’s to early for me to speculate or have a comment on it.”
There are reports that Vincent Jackson was pulled over for speeding before the game. Was that a concern for the team and what would it have meant if he hadn’t played?
“It wouldn’t have been good if he hadn’t played. He’s a big part of what we do. Vincent as I understand was pulled over. He did come to the game with Philip. Philip was here. At 9:30 in the morning, I was driving down Murphy Canyon Road. You know this hill, it’s easy if you’re not paying attention to go faster than you need to. There was a woman pulled over at 9:30, the radar and all that. I thought at that point, ‘That’s an interesting place to have a radar gun out on a Sunday morning at 9:30.’ Vincent was pulled over later and was at the stadium. I made a point Saturday night of telling our guys that there would be a lot of traffic and leave early. We had no problems. When I walked in the locker room after walking the field like I do, Vincent was dressed and getting ready and it was well over two hours before the game, which is normal. I didn’t find out about it until later.”
Is there an issue with Vincent Jackson you should be concerned about?
“I don’t have a concern about Vincent in general.”
Did the Jets benefit from how much man defense they played in the second half?
“They played a mix of man throughout the game. There were some plays where they jumped into man and they did a good job with it. There were some plays where they jumped into man and made a couple big plays against it. They’re an extremely multiple defense in the coverage game and when you have guys like they have in the secondary, the talented corners they have…Lito Shepherd, when they got him was a big deal and he was an outstanding player in Philadelphia. He’s not talked about a lot because of Revis, but they have outstanding cover guys. When you have that type of players, you have flexibility to mix it up and I think they made a couple plays, particularly on third downs where we came up a little short where normally we would convert that. Man coverage generally helps you in that.”
What it harder to get separation for your receivers than it had been?
“I don’t think so. I think our guys did a good job when they were manned up. I think in games where we’ve completed those balls and made plays, it’s not like they were running wide open with no one on them. We’ve made the same plays. In man coverage you usually have a guy pretty close to you or on your back.”
Is it easy for you to rationalize that 31 teams are disappointed, or do you take it as another year where you didn’t accomplish your goal?
“I don’t rationalize it that way. That’s kind of a cliché type thing. I think A.J. says it best, we want to get in the tournament and we want to get in it in a yearly basis. We want to get in it and get it done. The disappointing thing, we were one of eight and there are going to be six teams that are very disappointed and aren’t in the Super Bowl. When you get into that point where you’re one of eight, you know that you’re two games away from it. That’s a disappointing thing for me.”
Have Ron Rivera or Rob Chudzinski been approached regarding interviews for other jobs?
“All I can tell you is on both of those deals, we have not been contacted. I read the different reports that you do and I’ve seen both of them. Until we’re contacted and someone asks us for permission, there’s nothing to those reports.”
Was yesterday the most disappointing loss of your coaching career because of expectations?
“I’m not a guy that bases things on expectations because I know what the New York Jets are. I know what they’re capable of doing. I know what their defense is like. I know what their running game is, but I expected us to win the game and that makes it obviously disappointing.”
RB LaDainian Tomlinson
Did you find yourself reflecting on the game more?
“Absolutely I focused on the game. It’s kind of hard not to with the opportunities that we had in front of us.”
Did you think players tried too hard or tried to do more than they could?
“I think that was definitely in some cases they hurt us and obviously you can look at that because we did some of the things we didn’t do all year. I don’t know the last time we had that many penalties and so obviously that had something to do with it.”
What do you take away from this game?
“To be honest with you, I’m not sure. It’s heartbreaking to lose like this and I don’t think there really is anything you can take out of it to be honest with you. You just take the feeling with you of how you felt losing that game and take it to the offseason to fuel you to train and get ready for the next season and try to give it another shot.”
Was this game too big?
“No I don’t think it’s too big at all. Sometimes it takes a little longer and you go back to that Indy team that kind of went thru a similar thing that we went thru where they were getting to the playoffs and they were losing and would have a good record in the regular season but could never get to the big dance, and eventually they did. This is the type of team that can get there with the guys we have in the locker room and the leadership we have, it can be done.”
In your opinion what does this team need heading into the offseason?
“I don’t know. I can’t tell you. I’m sure the front office is going to evaluate everything and they’re going to do what this team needs to have done to get over the hump.”
How do you approach this offseason personally?
“Like any other: knowing that I’m going to play football next year. I’m going to get ready to train my butt off and get ready for another season.”
Why did you compare the Jets to the Chargers of 2006?
“The question was the difference between the ’06 team and this team and I simply said that this team was more explosive and had so many more weapons than the ’06 team. The ’06 team was comparable to the Jets team yesterday: pretty much one dimensional - not into throwing the ball a lot - and playing good defense. So that was my answer to the question.”
Did you ever allow yourself to think this was the year?
“I felt like that. At the bottom of my heart, I really felt like this was the year.”
Of the four teams left, who do you think is going to be in the Super Bowl?
“I think it’s going to be a heck of a game with the Saints and Minnesota. I think the Saints have a little bit of an advantage because they’re playing at home in the dome which can be tough and they feed off that crowd. Their offense can score on anybody, so I give the Saints the edge there. In the AFC game, I think the Colts will pull it out. I think they’re going to force (Mark) Sanchez to throw the ball a little bit more and force him to beat them. I don’t think the Jets will be able to run the ball as successfully as they have. I think they’ll (Indianapolis will) be able to move the thru the air. Philip (Rivers) had almost 300 yards passing so we moved the ball thru the air on them.”
Do you still follow the career of Drew Brees?
“No question. Absolutely. He’s my buddy so I’m not going against him.”
Have you gone to a Super Bowl?
“Yes, coming into my rookie year, I went to the Super Bowl in Tampa between Baltimore and the Giants. That was the first and only Super Bowl that I’ve gone to.”
Will you go if Drew and the Saints go?
“Only if he invites me to sit in the box (laughter).
Looking back on the season and last night, how do you assess the team’s struggles on the ground this year?
“I’ve talked about it all year long. A lot of times, the running game is about getting in a rhythm and doing it and coming off and hitting people and when we needed to run the ball, we did. When we had the opportunities to close out games like Dallas, we did run the football so obviously it was something that was secondary to our offense. But I thought we did a fairly good job when we needed to do it.”
How much more football do you feel like you have left in you?
“I feel like I’ve got a lot of football left. Physically I feel like I can hold up to the pounding still. Obviously I know I had the least carries in my career, but other than the ankle injury early in the year I was pretty healthy all year long.”
Are you looking most forward to the arrival of your first child this offseason?
“I am. I am really excited about that. Just all the preparation that goes into getting ready for the baby. It’s exciting and now I get to really be involved day-in and day-out so obviously I’m excited about that.”
Would you like to be here (in San Diego) next year?
“Well I’m under contract here so that tells me that I’m going to be here.”
Do you anticipate having to renegotiate your contract like you did in 2009?
“I don’t anticipate it.”
ILB Stephen Cooper
Do you feel any different the day after the game?
“It’s just a big letdown. After the game I was real disappointed but after sleeping on it and waking up today, the Jets were a real good team and you have to give them credit. When it’s playoff time, you’ve got to step up and show up to work and we didn’t do that.”
Does it hurt any less today?
“No, it’s going to hurt for a while because the opportunity was there for us to go win a Super Bowl. We had the guys intact, we had the coaching staff intact and we’re just disappointed to sit home and watch somebody else play for a Super Bowl when we thought it was going to be ours.”
Was this the team’s best shot to win a Super Bowl?
“No, we’ve still got 17 (Philip Rivers) at quarterback. We’ve still got a lot of guys coming back. We know a lot of contracts are up and some guys are going to be restricted (free agents) but I expect we’ll have a lot of the same faces back here next year and we’re going to keep pushing for the Super Bowl. That’s our goal and that’s my goal as an individual, to try to get that ring, because when you put on this uniform, at the end of the day you want to win a Super Bowl. It doesn’t matter about the money, it doesn’t matter about the individual accolades, it’s about going out there and winning a football game, and that’s the Super Bowl.”
What does this team need in the offseason to get better?
“I don’t really think any big moves need to be made. It’s just guys coming back and being healthy. Hopefully we get big number 76 (Jamal Williams) back at nose to tighten our ship and that’s just the biggest thing, to be healthy coming into next season.”
Do you see what Philip Rivers is going thru now as similar to what Peyton Manning went thru early in his career?
“No, Philip and Peyton are two different quarterbacks. They go about their business very differently. I’m not in the locker room with Peyton but I am in there with Philip and I know he’s the first one to get here and the last one to go home and he wants to win just as much as anybody wants to win. And it’s sad to see us lose in the fashion we did because as a team we really thought we were going to win this game. And to come up losing, it hurts, but what else can you do.”
Last night you were pretty pointed in your comments after the game, do you feel any less so today?
“No. We win or lose as a team. No individual wins or loses games. You can’t do that with 11 guys on the field. Philip didn’t play his best game; Nate (Kaeding) didn’t kick his best game, and as a defense we didn’t play our best game and we had opportunities too. We were winning 7-0 and we could’ve gone out there and not given up any points and won the game in that fashion, but we didn’t do that so you can’t point the finger at anybody.”
Every loss (stinks), but the way it went, does that make it (stink) more?
“No, because we were in the game the whole time. We always had opportunities but we played into the way the Jets wanted the game to go. That’s the whole thing. We tried to get momentum and we got momentum. We get a turnover and then we gave momentum back. It was just a push-and-shove grudge match the whole game and they pushed a lot harder than we did.”
Did the Jets want it more?
“Yeah. You could see they grinded out four quarters of football. They forced turnovers, They got after our quarterback. And they kept running the ball and they wore us out in the fourth quarter and it showed.”
How does that happen in the playoffs?
“I don’t think it comes down to who wants it more, but the way the game went and thru the four quarters, they played the way the Jets wanted the game to go. I know I wanted it just as much as anybody. I play until I see 0:00 on the board, no matter if I see if we’re up by 17 or down by 34 I’m going to play to the whistle and I know my teammates would also.”
Can you watch the AFC Championship game thinking that was the game you should’ve been in?
“Oh I’m definitely going to watch. I love football. I’m a fan of football and I love watching it, even when the offense is on the field, I’m always up on the sideline with Billy Volek trying to find out what play we’re running just to see what’s going to happen. You’ve got two good teams playing next week in the Jets and the Colts. You’ve got Peyton Manning versus a great Jets defense so it’s going to be a good matchup.”
Who are you rooting for now?
“It doesn’t really matter who wins. It isn’t us so whoever goes and gets it, they deserve it and more power to them.”
Do you like the Jets or the Colts?
“It’s going to be tough. With Peyton Manning back there at quarterback it’s hard to go against them, but Rex Ryan has his guys believing and they’re playing great team football so you really never know. It’s going to be a toss-up, more so a pick’em.”
Do you call this season a success or a failure?
“It’s definitely a success from where we came from and all the injuries we had early on. We bounced back with guys up and down all year. I know in the linebacker room we had a lot of guys starting this year that we different faces but everyone responded. It’s disappointing that we didn’t get thru this playoff run but we’ve got a lot to look forward to during the offseason and this upcoming season.”
This team went from 8-8 to 13-3, can this team repeat its success next year?
“We definitely can. The type of players we have on offense that can put up points, they’re going to always put up points. We played against a good defense yesterday and we had to respond as a defense ourselves, that’s why it’s a team game. As long as we have these guys back healthy and we keep pushing and have the same goals then we should be fine.”
TE Antonio Gates
Thoughts on the game:
“You know it’s over with. The Jets won. My hat goes off to the Jets. They came in and they played their kind of style of football and they were able to come away with the victory.”
Do you consider this a lost opportunity considering how many guys had great years?
“It’s devastating knowing guys, myself included, to me I had the best year so far in my career and guys just stepping into the zone. Vincent Jackson, Philip Rivers, I can go on and on and name guys…our offensive line with Marcus McNeil and Kris Dielman. But those are all individual accomplishments which we talked about earlier in the season. You set individual accomplishments and you set goals for a team. The team goal was to win a Super Bowl, but we just quite couldn’t get that done this year.”
Would you describe the uncharacteristic play is the same kind of problems that hit you when you played New England a few years ago…is this a maturity issue?
“Personally, I just think we went out and we just didn’t play our best game. It happens. That’s the nature of the business. You just are not immune to absolutely nothing as a human being. When you watch the film, you look at several things that are happening in the game and you just can’t believe they were actually happening. I remember there was a point in the game where it felt like it was a dream with some of the penalties we were committing. It felt like that in the New England game and the Jets game in ’06…it felt like it was happening to you kind of like a déjà vu feeling. It was just unfortunate that we weren’t able to take care of our business and move forward.”
Do you feel like the window of opportunity is closing on the big game?
“I feel like you learn from everything you go through. If you put yourself back in that position, what would you do over again? Would you make any changes? We’ve been talking about our ’06 season and we’ve been talking about our 14-2 season and now, we have something else to talk about. We got another situation to add to it. It’s hard for me to say. It’s hard for me to say at this point because I’m still devastated. It’s over, but I keep replaying things I could’ve done different in the game. It won’t change the outcome of the game. The game is over and done with. I must say I enjoyed playing with these guys. I enjoy playing for the San Diego Chargers; to let them down, to let our fans down that means the most to us.”
On whether he should talk to LT about coming back to get it done or is it a decision between LT & AJ?
“One thing I’ve learned in this business over the past seven years is that you can only control what you can control. I have no control over what happens, what the situation is, what the future holds for LaDainian Tomlinson. All I know is I can cherish these past seven years that I had a chance to play with him. He knows how I feel about him. I’m quite sure he feels the same way, but he understands the business side of it. I’m quite sure that whatever happens will be the best for the San Diego Chargers and will be the best for LaDainian Tomlinson. “
Do you think there is a factor other than him that explains the difficulty you’ve had with running the ball?
“It’s hard to say. When you got a guy like LaDainian Tomlinson, who draws so much attention, you can see teams respect it. I don’t know that we weren’t able to run the ball. I just think guys were able to make plays in the passing game which gave us a different element going into the game. We didn’t have to feature the run every single game because we have so many guys that can make plays in the passing game now which is different from the past. It’s different from what he had to do back in the day when he had to carry the ball 25 to 30 times a game and when he had to have 100 receptions in a season. It’s just different now because we have so many guys that can make plays. We’re not asking him to do as much. With that being said, he come in and he understood his role and he tried to do the best he can when the opportunity presented itself. “
Do you think the run blocking is adequate?
“I think collectively the offensive line put forth the effort. It’s difficult when you have guys coming in especially at the center position when you have guys changing at the position because to me that’s the most important position. He determines where the line goes. He determines the scheme. He determines who they pick up in the protection. Give or take they still are fairly young, but to me they played tremendously. They did all they could do and that’s all you can ask when you play in this game and understand this league.”
You had your best season this past year. What is your focus going to be this offseason?
“Just working to putting myself back in that position that I was in this year to be competing for a Super Bowl Championship. Obviously, this year hurts so much because you put so much into it. Coming back off the injury, coming back from trying to be 100% and now I have a different focus going into next year trying to get back into this position and dealing with success, dealing with getting into the postseason and when you win the AFC West Division what would you do differently? That will be my goal. That will be something I will set aside.”
How much thought have you put into how different this roster is going to look this coming year?
“It’s different every year. It’s always change. It’s not something we worry about. It’s always going to happen. I told the guys Kris Wilson and Brandon Manumaleuna that I appreciated playing with them this year. I’m aware that both of their contracts are up. It’s so much change that probably is going to happen, but it would be beautiful that everyone comes back and we still would have a chance to do it. If not, I understand the business side of it. What I can do is prepare myself to play as well as I can play to try to help this team win a championship.”
OLB Shawne Merriman
Guys are packing up stuff and cleaning out their lockers. What’s that like?
“It’s tough. You know and the end of every year you have to do it. You just don’t expect it has to be done so soon. It’s not the fact that we’re all doing it. We have to do it. The way we’re doing it and the feeling doing it is not so good. You get a chance to see a lot of the guys for the last time until we all have to start back up again.”
There are some guys who won’t be here next year. Is that the tough part of the NFL?
“Yes, because you realize it’s a business and that’s the way it goes. But at the same time, you kind of grow a certain bond, a relationship with a lot of the guys, and to know that relationship could be coming to an end, you know, it’s tough. It’s like you’re losing a family member and they’re not going to be around you anymore.”
Do you expect to be here next year?
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. Nothing has really been set in stone just yet. Like I said before, I love our fans and I love my teammates. I love being here, but it’s not up to me. I’m more disappointed about the way that our season has ended that I haven’t really paid too much thought about it.”
Were you able to give it your best coming off the knee injury?
“I just watched the film just now, right before I came out here and I thought we played as tough as you can possibly play. We gave up two or three big plays in the game. But outside of that, I felt that we played as tough as you can possibly play a football game. Especially a team like that, who comes in known as the tougher team or the more physical team. I thought we played them pretty well.”
When you first played this season, were you able to give it everything, as much as you wanted to?
“Outside of being a little banged up, you know, with the foot and the groin at one point. You have to think a year ago I was contemplating whether I was ever going to play football again. Whenever you have a fully reconstructed knee surgery, you wonder a lot of things, some things you never even think about. But playing a full season without having a problem with my knee not one time kind of got those thoughts gone out of my head. And the way that I finished the season, I couldn’t be happier. Of course if we would have kept winning, but personally, I couldn’t happier with where I’m at right now.”
Do you guys feel like you beat yourselves more with the penalties and the little mistakes that you haven’t made all season?
“Absolutely. It was some of the most uncharacteristic things you could possibly do. And at bad timing. We had bad timing all the way around. Some missed field goals, offside penalties, personal fouls, things we’re not accustomed to doing and it happened. Certain situations we have to learn to keep our composure. That’s when the maturity and experience has to kick in at some point.”
That’s basically the same thing people were saying after the New England game in 2006.
“In ’06, yeah.”
Is there still a maturity problem here?
“It’s tough to say because you have guys who haven’t had a penalty like that the whole entire year and it happens one time in a bad situation. And that’s the deciding factor? If it were a thing where a guy had personal fouls all through year or offside penalties or whatever it is, and it happened in this game, then you can say, ‘okay well, he has pattern of doing that.’ But when guys get personal fouls and do some things that are uncharacteristic, you really can’t call it a maturity problem. It’s more of a composure problem that we need to get better.”
Have you addressed that?
“In certain situations just watch when it happens. Pay attention to your surroundings and watch what other teams are going to try and do to you and inflict certain penalties. We have to be the better team with that.”
Does emotion and being caught up in the moment of the desperation of winning create those penalties?
“Yeah, I think so. Whenever you get in a situation like that, you kind of get desperate. You want to be the guy that makes the big play and turn the game around, and does something spectacular to win the game. Sometimes that’s not always good. You have to go out there and do just what those battle lines and those arrows say to do. It doesn’t always happen like that.”
Stephen Cooper said the Jets wanted it more. Do you agree with that?
“I can’t say that. After watching the film, at least from our side of the ball, I didn’t get a chance to watch the offense yet; I think we just really shot ourselves in the foot. We give them credit. They (the Jets) accomplished what they wanted to accomplish and that’s get a “W.” They played us hard. They played us tough. With one or two made field goals and a couple of penalties taken away, I don’t know if I could say the same thing about the end result of that game.”
How long will it take to stick with you?
“I don’t know. I have a bunch of things to think about. I feel like I’m in a good place right now, and whatever happens with our future, with my future, I couldn’t be happier…personally I bounced back from a lot of things and was able to still be disruptive and effective (on the field), and be a part of that locker room like no other. I’m really pleased about a bunch of things right now.”
When Philip Rivers went through the knee thing, he said it was about 18 months before it got to the point where he couldn’t feel it. Do you think there is maybe more upside there when you come back?
“Oh, yeah. Absolutely. There’s no way physically possible, and I argue with the doctors a lot because they told me that, and I told them they were wrong, and they went to school for all those years for nothing. But, with just the facts alone, it’s almost impossible to come back within 14 or 15 months and be 100 percent. Close to the end of the season, I started feeling everything was completely back and everything felt normal. I didn’t feel like just a cinder block out there running or anything like that. It was more that I felt like myself again, toward the end of the year. Like I said, I couldn’t be more happy about that.”
Do you expect major changes? Minor changes?
“I don’t know. I have no idea. It’s one of the, I guess more clueless situations I have ever in my whole entire life. It seems I always had an answer for things. Some way; somehow. In this case, I don’t. You don’t know who’s going to be here. I don’t know if I’m going to be here. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You can just be happy that guys came out healthy, and guys get a chance to still play football again, and the possibility of us all being on the field at the same time is still there. Outside of that, I’m just happy being in the situation we’re in.”
How do you deal with the fact that you’re future is, as you say, ‘out of your hands?’
“Well, it’s been like that. This is the NFL. It’s been like that for a while, especially the last few years regarding my situation. I’ve just been the person, the player I’ve always been. When I’m healthy, I go out there and lay it on the line. I thought that I played a pretty good game myself in this last game until I watched the film, and I thought collectively, as a whole, including myself that we played one of the hardest games you could possibly play. I know one day, somebody is going to tell me which helmet I’m putting on and how I can go out there and strap it up again, and I’ll be happy with that.”
As there ever been another team in the back of your mind…?
“Not really. I’ve always been happy with where I’ve been. And I’ll continue to be happy for now. Whatever situation is made, I’ll be happy with because I know it’s best for everybody. Like I said, I couldn’t be happier with how things ended up. Like I said, just twelve months ago I was really contemplating on whether I was going to be able to get on the field and be myself again, period. And now that I put that to rest mentally, I can move forward in whatever else is about to happen.”
When negotiating a new contract, is that strictly business or are you at a point in your career where you want be with a team that has a chance for a championship?
“I want to win. I want to win. And I always said it; I don’t think there’s an amount of money that can have me in a non-winning environment. It’s tough for me because I’ve won my whole entire life. I don’t know how to lose. And actually being around winners is what I base my life about. I’ve always been around guys that want to win. So that’s going to be a huge deciding factor in anything that goes forth. I just want to be in a situation to win games and put a ring on my finger. I watched all these guys that played 10 or 12 plus years in the National Football League, like Lorenzo Neal and some other guys who never got a chance to win. Never got a chance to be a champion. It’s horrible because that’s ultimately what you play this game for. And the money is going to come. No doubt about it. You go out there and you do what you’re supposed to do and you keep making plays and being disruptive and being dominant, those things are going to come. At the end of the day you’ll have that and won’t be a champion, and then somebody else out here will be able to call themselves a champion and you’ll never be able to call yourself a champion.”
QB Philip Rivers
Did the Jets do anything you didn’t expect them to?
“They really didn’t. They don’t, they just play good defense. From a scheme standpoint there’s really nothing that was surprising or had anybody confused out there. Just watching the game here twice already, we moved the football, it just didn’t show up on the scoreboard and that’s what’s ultimately matters. Some penalties hurt us and there were a couple third downs, a third-and-four early in the first quarter comes to mind, the third-and-four late, right before the field goal try in the fourth quarter. Some of those we just didn’t convert and in a large part it’s due to their defense making plays and ours not. It is a really good defense, you can’t take anything away from them. We moved the football and did some things to give ourselves a chance but we just didn’t do it and put enough points up on the board,”
What do the Jets do to teams?
“They cover you and there’s not a lot of separation for the most part. However many yards we threw for really doesn’t matter but we had some completions and guys running open, we just didn’t. There were two scoring opportunities we missed and then we turned the ball over backed up, we had 10 penalties, that’s why we didn’t have enough points on the board. We did some things uncharacteristic of ourselves that hurt us. The Jets certainly had something to do with that. They’re playing in the championship game. They earned it. We didn’t play our best. Had we played our best I think we would’ve won the game but we didn’t and we fell three points short.”
The next time, what would you do differently from a game-planning standpoint?
“Not a whole lot. We weren’t really able to get the run going like we thought we’d be able to. We thought we’d be able to get it going a little better than that but from a how we would attack standpoint, there were some things we had up. When you have different combination routes up, you don’t always pick the right side, there’s some things where you throw here and it’s just incomplete. You look at the other side, you may have had something. That’s every game, you over-analyze it but it ends up being the last game of the year because you don’t get to move on.”
What can you take from this game?
“Much like you would in any loss: you didn’t make enough plays to win. The thing about playing football and the thing that makes it tough when you do lose is it sticks with you a little longer and we won 11 in a row and that’s hard to do. Nobody in our locker room is excited or thrilled about that because the 12th one we didn’t win because of the way we came to play. It’ll be a long offseason and we’ll gear up to go at it again.”
How do you move forward off this defeat?
“You just try to play better. Stats, trying to compare different teams and years, it’s really meaningless. Did you play enough to win the game or not and we didn’t. You want to play better to win. You’d like to be at the top each and every year and do the things you want to do every game and never lose. It’s never happened and it’s not going to happen and it’s unrealistic to think that will happen, but as competitors, as players, you gear back up and go at it again next year. You try like crazy to fight and claw to be the last team standing but we haven’t done it in the six years I’ve been here and we’ll try it again in year seven.”
What will you be doing this offseason?
“Most of it will be spent in San Diego. We spend pretty much most of the year out here. We get back to Alabama for a little bit. One thing off the field that this will be the first year that I’m really involved in is starting the Rivers of Hope Foundation that we’re going to call “River of Hope.” The specific focus will be out soon but it’s geared toward foster-care and helping those children and parents that are looking to adopt. That’s one thing off the field. I’ll spend a lot of time with family and then it won’t be long before the football begins back up again. It’s tough. I hate losing as much as anybody. I know we all feel this loss and hurt in this locker room and in this building. As an organization and as I know the fans do. The only thing that helps, and it doesn’t get better over night. In fact it’ll probably get worse these next two weeks until nobody’s playing and you can feel better, but we’ll gear back up and be back at it.”
Do you expect significant changes this offseason?
“I don’t know. You’ve got to kind of really let the dust settle first and here in the next month or so the plan will be seen and where everything is headed and I would imagine one thing that’s been steady around here has been a core group of players and obviously people are added and you lose some each and every year, but there’s been a consistency and continuity here with a core group of players. Unfortunately it hasn’t been done and we haven’t gotten to the top in six years, but we do have a great group of guys and one that does have the makeup to do it. You don’t look for any sympathy but you look at past teams in other places. You don’t a lot of them or right in a row, and obviously it’s never been done here but you look at some of the teams and how long it took them to get there and that’s no consolation but you gear up and get ready to go again.”
