Houston Texans Media Conference

Sunday, October 15, 2023

Houston, Texas, USA

Cameron Jordan

Visitors Postgame Press Conference


Houston - 20, New Orleans - 13

Q. How do you feel?

CAMERON JORDAN: About losing? There's only one way to feel, like we've got to get this shit together.

Q. What aspects do you feel the defense needs to work on?

CAMERON JORDAN: Second half was a good half. First half we gave them back momentum. You can't let a team that you feel like you're imposing your will upon, you can't let them get will back. Gave them confidence. You saw confidence then put 17 points on in the first half, then another 3 points in the second half, gave them 20 points all together, which was more points we put up on the board.

At the end of the day, self-inflicted wounds. Penalties, extended drives. We've got to be able to eliminate those. I've said it weeks before.

How do I feel? It sucks to lose. It's frustrating to lose when we have the talent to affect the quarterback. We knew he had up to this point the fastest release of a quarterback, so it's going to be frustrating to pass rush after him. But we collapsed the pocket, got him to escape. You saw the throws that we wanted to get out of him.

At the end of the day, we didn't do enough to get a win.

Q. (No microphone)?

CAMERON JORDAN: Nothing. It was all us. Again, we get an interception early in the game -- what was that, first drive, second drive of the game? Give it right back. It's not fortuitous for our defense. You feel like -- we had another penalty that extended their drive. It was a lot of, again, self-inflicting wounds.

We have to focus on us and how to get better rapidly. We've got a game in 96 hours or whatever that is.

Q. Do you have a message for your teammates?

CAMERON JORDAN: We've already talked about it in the locker room. Going into halftime, it was a challenge to -- we looked up, and it was 90 yards on the ground, and that's a direct reflection of the D-line -- interior, exterior, all of us put together. So it was a challenge to step the hell up.

You saw the energy in the second half. You want the tale of two tapes is first half didn't have the energy we needed because we gave back some momentum early in the game. That second half, now we're back to our defense. That being said, back to our standards of defense should be where our standards should be from the start of the game till the end.

Q. What does team leadership have to do to get this team back on course?

CAMERON JORDAN: Again, as a defense, you can only look at how we played in the second -- if we came out with that same energy in the first half, if we came off that interception, whether it be -- a pick six would have been great, but just give another chance to our team.

You look at everything, even beyond the two missed kicks, you feel like, if you were 19-20 going into the last drive, a quick chip for a 22-20 situation, you can't get that back.

Interception early in the game against a quarterback who really hadn't thrown any interceptions, you need those. I think there was tackles that hit our edge that you can't give those blatant runs up, especially against our edge. I think with our edges we've been quite stout, and that's not like us.

So we have to play our type of ball. If we do that for four quarters, then we'll talk about it. But right now, I'm just looking forward to breaking down this film and getting better.

Q. Is this team's confidence still intact?

CAMERON JORDAN: It better be. Again, we need to eliminate our mistakes. It's not like the team came out and beat us today. We beat ourselves and gave the ball back.

Defense did an okay job that first half, better job in the second half. If we eliminate our mistakes, if we stay tuned to what we know to play our brand of football, if we execute our plays on a high level each and every play, each and every series, the game will go our way more times than not.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
138129-1-1182 2023-10-15 21:19:00 GMT

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