Patriots - 36, Raiders - 20
Q. Derek, a frustrating loss given it was a tight game. Sure shot yourselves in the foot a few times. How frustrating was that part of it?
DC: Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean situationally the game was frustrating. I think obviously they won the turnover thing, and they won in the situations. Obviously on third down, all that good stuff. So it was frustrating, but at the same time we come in at halftime, you know, after -- man, we went two-minute, we spread them out, we went down the field, and at halftime we felt good about it. And then coming out, obviously it got away from us.
Q. Derek, a couple of the guys have talked about this. What about this specific team makes you confident next week you can put this aside and kind of face the adversity of this week by going onto next week?
DC: Oh, yeah. I mean we're always confident. What did you expect, for New England to roll over after what happened last week? They're going to come in here guns blazing. Coach said all week, they're going to play their best game, and we better bring ours. And we didn't play our best game. And we still made it a game. We still ran the ball efficiently. We still threw it when we could, when we wanted to, where we wanted to when they didn't take certain things away. I mean we loved the plan. So there's a lot of confidence there. We just didn't end up with the win.
Q. No excuses, obviously, but a lot of injured players. You're missing quite a few offensive linemen.
DC: You know me, no excuse, man. Blame me. I'm used to it.
Q. Derek, I mean, obviously what people are talking about is the fact that Darren Waller didn't get a lot of targets in this game. Was it something that the Patriots were doing, and if so, what was that?
DC: Yeah, I mean yes -- yes and no. I mean there was one play -- there was one play I missed him on, but they did a good job of making it look like a double when they weren't doubling him. You know what I'm saying? They do a good job, man. And you don't have three seconds to is he really doubling, you gotta play the game fast. You gotta make your decisions. And I owned up on that. I said hey, man, I missed you on that. That was my fault. But besides that, there was times when he was in certain spots they'd drop underneath him. When he was in other spots they'd double him, check to this, or check to that. There was -- that's what they try and do, and you saw Hunter have a big day. With this team you gotta figure out they're playing in situational football, third downs and red zone especially who they're going to try and double, who they're going to take away, and obviously you know where most of our targets usually go.
Q. You said Monday night something to the effect of Belichick has already got a day's head start on me. When you look at this game and you see the game you came off, the cross-country flight. From a distance you could say, man, looked like this was coming, but I assume you guys don't think that way.
DC: Yeah, you know I can't look at it that way. Again, our plan was great. I thought they had some plays, we had some plays, and it was close. It was fight, man. They'd take something away, I'd have to throw it away or run and try and scramble, but then we'd get what we wanted and we'd hit it. So the plan and all that stuff was good. It's the turnovers, man. The first turnover they make it look like man, they play zone. We get the exact -- coffee called a perfect play. Josh made a perfect read. I went to throw it to him, and I got hit from the other side, which happens. And then the other turnover, Josh down in the red zone, obviously he doesn't fumble the ball a lot, man. He wants that one back. And then the fumble down when we were backed up, I went to step up, again, they played the zone. I went to step up and go through my read, had a little pressure to my left -- or to my right, tried to step up. Then as I was getting hit, man, I just tried to get the ball out of the end zone so we didn't have a safety, but then I ended up fumbling because the second guy hit it out. So I sit there and say, yeah, I mean they won the game and they took it over in the second half, but I feel confident in what we came in with. It was never a moment where I was like, man, they just have our number, man, they just got us. They got us on a couple, but we threw it and ran it very efficiently and how we wanted to, and especially with the shots we were able to hit.
Q. Derek, I know hindsight is 20/20, but with that field goal you had in the fourth quarter, looking back do you wish maybe you guys went for it in that moment?
DC: I think with the way -- I think it was 11:50 something left, 12 something. I can't remember the number exactly. But the way our defense was playing, we felt great, to be honest. We're like, yeah, let's get the points. We should get some more possessions here, and then they were able to run off some pretty big runs. And that's football, and that's not -- has nothing to do with me or the decision to kick it or go for it, that's not even up to me, man.
Q. My colleagues have referenced the short week and all of that. But with so many injuries and so many guys down, I know you're not going to make excuses, but it is a realistic thing. You just can't make more of one loss than it is in a 16-game season. Correct?
DC: Oh, yeah. Gosh, no. Especially if we went out there, and you know, we weren't able to do one single thing right, then there's a problem, then we gotta go, what's going on. Everyone took a turn today. We lost the turnover battle, and we lost the situational battle. That's all it is. And it's one game. If we're going to blow up everything after the good things that we've done after one game, then this ain't for some of those people, you know what I'm saying? Like we are just fine. We're going to be fine, and we better have a good week of practice, because we gotta another playoff team coming to our stadium. They smell blood in the water. Well, we gotta be ready to fight for that.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports