Bengals 37, Texans 31
Q. Would you describe your defensive performance to this game?
ROMEO CRENNEL: We didn't play well enough. We did not. You know, and there were spurts in there where we thought that we'd gained some momentum and we made a couple stops, but overall we didn't play well enough to give ourselves a chance.
Q. How do you feel about having your best running game of the season, Watson having three touchdowns, and you still lose this one because you couldn't stop Brandon Allen?
ROMEO CRENNEL: Well, I feel good about those guys on the offensive side of the ball, being able to gain yards in passing and running and able to put points on the board. That's a positive. And the negative is that we weren't able to stop those other guys.
Q. Deshaun went back in the game. Did he hurt his finger Orland on his elbow? What did you learn about Deshaun and how he is? Is it an injury or is it nothing?
ROMEO CRENNEL: Well, his arm got hit as he was delivering the ball, and you torque your arm quite a bit when you're throwing, and so he got it banged up but he was able to come back. He felt good about it. The doctors didn't think anything major was an issue. They will check him out, of course, and do scans and scopes and whatever they have to do, and then we'll know more about what the deal is tomorrow or the next day.
Q. Eric Murray, COVID-19; how chaotic was that this morning because he comes down with it and then other guys have to be cleared for contact tracing? You had a lot of the guys that didn't even get to do the warmup, some of your defensive player. How tough was that to manage and also not having him?
ROMEO CRENNEL: Well, any time you lose a starter at this point, at the point in the game where we lost him, that's difficult because you've got to figure out who goes to replace him and all of those kind of things, and so you have to move pieces around, and then the guys who have to wait on contact tracing, I think that that impacted their mentality to a degree.
But they still got there and lined up and tried to play the game.
Q. Similar to the loss against the Bears, it seemed like Cincinnati was able to have a lot of success, be really efficient with some throws behind the line of scrimmage or just past the line of scrimmage. What were you doing defensively that made them so successful in that regard today?
ROMEO CRENNEL: Well, I think our guys were trying to rush quite a bit, trying to rush hard off of that side, and they were able to get the back out past the rush, and then when he got out there and they got a couple linemen in front of him, they were able to gain more yards than we needed them to gain.
Q. How hard is it to digest that you've had three late fumbles in games in recent weeks that essentially cost you wins?
ROMEO CRENNEL: Well, it's always tough when that occurs. I mean, fumbles that occur at any point in the game, you don't like them, but when they occur in situations when you have a chance to win, I think that's a double whammy in that case. Like you say, we've had several of those this year, and if we were able to make the plays, then the outlook on the season would be different, but we didn't make the plays, and so it is what it is.
Q. What was your message to the team after another tough loss and what do you say to them as they try to finish out the season strong next week?
ROMEO CRENNEL: Tell them we didn't play well enough to win, to take a look at the film and evaluate themselves, and we've got a week of preparation coming up and we're going to prepare and play on Sunday.
Q. You're playing a lot of backups on defense, but they made an NFL roster. Is it too much to expect them to play better than they played today?
ROMEO CRENNEL: Well, I mean, I think that's a double edged sword there because some of these guys that are rookies that are playing, and I tell you guys all the time that it takes time with rookies to be able to understand how the game is played, how they need to fit in the scheme, how they need to play the game. And until they can gain that experience, they're going to make some mistakes.
If you have to play them, you live with their mistakes and try to do the best that you can. They try to do the best that they can and then hopefully you can make some plays. We didn't make enough today.
Q. Your thoughts on how David Johnson performed, also Keion Crossen?
ROMEO CRENNEL: Well, I thought David did an excellent job of running with the football. He does a good job of catching the football. He runs with effort and picks up extra yards. So we are impressed with that, and we like that. Keion Crossen who has been a guy who stepped in to play corner for us, and he is competitive. He'll line up against any guy that we put him on and he'll fight him, you know, and so he'll win some and he'll lose some, but he does compete, and that's what you've got to have, I think, down in and down out, guys that compete.
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