PATRIOTS 50, JAGUARS 10
Q. Hey, Darrell, obviously not the kind of result you wanted today. Was there a point during the game where you considered setting Trevor down, and if not, is there sort of a criteria in your mind where you think about getting him out of the ball game?
DB: There was a conversation there in the fourth quarter just about if we wanted to pull him out and give C.J. an opportunity, but really some of these experiences that he is having are experiences that we think that he needs to go through just to continue to get better. We are able to put a drive there together, and we ended up scoring a touchdown. It ended up working out in our favor. It was important, obviously, that we protect him and do those things in that drive, but I thought it worked out okay.
Q. What are you saying to the guys when they're in the middle of this game and it's gotten out of control that quickly and you have dealt with all this stuff over COVID the past week?
DB: My biggest message to them was -- I mean, we had a lot of different guys playing, and guys were getting different opportunities, and a lot of these guys have fought really hard their careers to be able to get this moment that they had, and I wanted them to just continue to play, continue to work for one another. It's not an easy situation for anybody, but the thing that we are playing for is we're all playing for the Jacksonville Jaguars, but also the name on our back, and everything that we do is being evaluated, and you have an opportunity to go out. You need to be able to put forward your best showing, and you need to continue to play and give us everything you have.
Q. Is the game today a little bit of, I guess, a microcosm of this franchise is a bit in disarray at this point, and you have one of the more stable franchises in the league with the Patriots and how things can be so different for two rookie quarterbacks?
DB: Really, Mike, I'm not worried about all that. I'm just worried about this one team and this one game and really focused on a week-to-week basis and trying to do the best we can. I mean, there's a lot of circumstances and things these guys are fighting through, and I'm just asking for them to give me their best at all times. That's what we're hoping for. It didn't work out for us today. We didn't protect the ball on offense. We couldn't get a stop on defense, and that made it a tough day.
Q. Coach, just especially on defense, I mean, it was an almost choosing up sides in the playground. You looked around yesterday or today and saw what you had, and is it difficult to slap together a cohesive unit given everything you've been through?
DB: Like I said, it's been a rough week, but other teams have had these challenges. I don't know what it ended up; 20-something guys that we had on the COVID list. Some of the guys fought back hard to be able to get back. Some of them weren't at full health even as they're playing, but they wanted to be out there. They wanted to play. And Trent had a tough challenge as well to put guys on the field that gave us the best opportunity. So I thought these guys came out, they played hard. I didn't see them quit. Again, I want to look at the tape. They broke out a long run there in the fourth quarter, and they saw five Jaguars trying to run them down and giving us full speed. Josh Allen is one of them from the back side. That's what you want from these guys. You want them to continue to keep working.
Q. I know without looking at the tape and, again, it can be hard to judge an offensive performance, but how did you feel about what Walker Little did out there today considering it was his second career start?
DB: It's going to be hard for me to evaluate it right here. I thought there were some good things that we did. Trevor wasn't under a lot of pressure. There was a couple of early sacks that we had, but I want to go back and look at the tape before I talk too much about individual performances.
Q. Did you feel like today was something that -- a challenge the offensive line answered given how many people were out?
DB: It was a tough job. At the beginning of the week I thought we were only going to have one guy out there from our starting line-up, but we were able to -- like Andrew Norwell is one of those guys that fought back hard to be able to play for us, and he just barely got a small workout in yesterday, and he came out ready to play today.
It is what it is. It's a situation that we had. I thought the guys battled. I thought we did a really fair job of protecting him for the most part of the day. The problem was the turnovers. You could see that we had some continuity in our drives. We were moving the football, but when one ball goes through our hands and we throw them another one, it makes for a tough day.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports