Seahawks - 23, Patriots - 20
MM: Man, what a heck of a football game. We knew the game was going to come down to the fourth quarter. Didn't expect to come down to fifth quarter, but whatever it takes.
Just proud of the fight, the resiliency, just the confidence, the support, the togetherness of our football team. That's a really good football team we just played. Tough. Obviously they ran the ball really well. They stopped the run, but our guys came through in the end?
Then just proud of our guys. When we need to do make a play seems like on all three phases, the guys made plays without inventing techniques or whatever. Just kind of played through the scheme, played through the fundamentals, and we closed it out in the end. So just a great, great football game. Excited to get back home.
Q. Geno got it done. What did he show you today?
MM: I thought Geno played a dynamite game. I thought he was decisive. The ball was out fast. I thought we had a great plan. Yeah, we had a couple of drops, but we'll clean those up. I mean, I'm not sure what the numbers are, but they're probably pretty dang good.
Q. He had a bunch of game-winning drives last season, and the game-tying drive today. What does that say?
MM: Sounds like that is who he is. Let the tape speaks for himself. I'm glad he's on our side.
Q. Julian's blocked field goal, was that a designed play or something he was able to figure out there?
MM: No, they don't just invent -- that was the play. That's the field goal rush at that time without getting into the strategy involved, but he made a heck of a play. Just heck of a play, but it's something you practice all the time, and finally when you have the opportunity, it goes and executes it. That was big-time. That was part of the --
Q. Julian dropped one last week and this week caught one over his head. How big that was?
MM: He played a dynamite game. He did a great job. We had confidence in him. He has had such a great offseason, but we had a big return in the first half. Caught the ball there. I don't know who got blocked into him, but he's going to have to make those plays moving forward, but he's the man for the job.
Q. With all that happened, how dependable in clutch is Tyler Lockett?
MM: He looked good today, Greg.
Q. Tyler Lockett, he gets one or two targets for 60 minutes and the game is on the line.
MM: That's him. I mean, you knew it coming in. You knew his reputation. Learning who he is as a person, who we absolutely love, but there's something special about him where he comes alive in those clutch moments, man.
Again, we love him, but just a great job by Tyler.
Q. What did you see on that third down stop in overtime?
MM: I felt the rush. I didn't know who it was at that time. I think Derick Hall had a really good Rush. They did some good things on offense in the first half on third down, so we had to make a couple of adjustments. They were hitting the tight ends, so we had to adjust a little bit of our rush plan. This is what happened O what happens. It's the NFL. Teams are going to have good plans. You're going to have to understand how they're attacking you and then kind of move and shake from there.
The guys did a great job of kind of going to the next things and playing some of the plays that they are running against us. I thought our rush started to come alive in the second half.
Would have been great to get them on the ground more, but Jacoby, he's a really good player too. He understands -- I told you he was elusive, and he got rid of the ball in some of those critical situations.
Q. Why do you feel like you couldn't get much going in the ground game?
MM: On our end, I don't know. We would have to look at the tape and see what's happening on some of the blocks. If it's want there and you're able to throw the ball, whatever it takes to win the game, so I thought we did that. We'll go back to the tape and figure it out.
They have a really good front and do a good job in the run game. Numbers back it up.
Q. Was it tough before you kicked the field goal to tie it up when you had the fourth and one there about maybe going for it as you sent the offense out there?
MM: The one where we took the delay?
Q. Yeah.
MM: Yeah, we wanted to take a peek and see if there was an opportunity to go for it. Weren't confident enough in the situation at that point, so we felt like take the five and still a pretty good manageable field goal to go tie it up.
Q. Was getting Jaxon involved par for the running game to replace the run game almost?
MM: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
Q. In the second half, were you surprised how well they were able to pick up some big runs in the running game?
MM: I wouldn't say surprised. I was disappointed. I mean, look, we can't be giving up 108 yards rushing. There's plenty on tape. We had pictures on the first half, losing some leverages and not playing some runs the right way. We got our work to do on that front.
We have a good team coming to town that can run the ball, so we're going to have to be better moving forward in the run game. A lot of work to be done on that front. Guys know that.
But in the last two drives it felt like we saw some of the plays they had gone to over in the game and the guys knocked them out. That's what you are going to have to do to win. If you just keep banging your head against the wall, then it's going to be tough sledding out there.
Q. You told us that you really wanted Geno to be the voice of poise, I think was your wording, in chaotic-adverse situations. You've had a few of those so far. How have you seen him handle those?
MM: He's been the guy that he's been since we got here in February. There's some points where we communicate one way or another. He's right there in lock-step.
This is a great example, this game. Hey, when the offense needs to pick the definite up, they did it. When defense could help the offense by getting a critical stop because we weren't able to get the ball out of negative territory, we got the stop. I have to play complementary football, and you need your leaders to show up in those critical moments and he did that.
I thought defensively the guys did that as well.
Q. How did you feel about the rookies Byron Murphy and Tyrice Knight and Christian Haynes in this game?
MM: Christian, I know he got in there the third series. I don't know how much more he played after that, so we'll see. We ended up getting with A.B. the majority of the game.
It's good to get Christian in there, a guy we have a lot of confidence in. In order to develop guys, you need to get reps. So sometimes if it doesn't go your way, that's okay. He's a guy that has been working really hard and deserves an opportunity to go earn his reps. Expect that to keep going.
Byron, not sure. I felt our run game at times was really good. At times I felt we weren't so good, so I'm going to have to get back to you on the tape.
Tyrice Knight is a rookie and getting his first time in there. I'm not sure how many plays he made. There's a couple of that are on the top of my head that we want to play a little bit better, but again, a guy we have a lot of confidence in. He has a ton of reps under his belt, so I thought this was a solid start for him. I'm sure he'll go back and watch the tape. Easy fixes. The game will start to slow down for him as he gets more experience out there in the regular season.
Q. (Indiscernible)?
MM: I felt like the only issue was -- not that it was an issue, but the only true backup we went to was Tyrice with Bake not being able to finish the game.
Q. Is he okay, do you know?
MM: Yeah, I think he's going to be all right.
Q. How about Boye?
MM: Boye, same thing. He has like a knee contusion. I think he got banged in the knee. I think -- was it the last -- might have been the last drive before overtime or the overtime drive. Last drive before overtime. We'll see with all that stuff. We'll see how it shakes out.
Q. What do you think about how Jaxon played overall, career highs for him?
MM: I didn't realize it was career highs. That's pretty awesome.
He's a great player. He's got incredible hands. All the underneath stuff. I think he is an underrated deep threat. There's a play, I think it was in overtime, where he held on to that ball. The guy had a pretty good hand on the ball in transition to be able to secure that ball in a critical moment. That's the one that stuck out with me, so he's a guy that we're going to be relying on moving forward.
Yeah, he's a great player.
Q. Do you think the field goal at the end of the first half, that that looked efficient?
MM: I'm glad you brought that up. That's a lot of teamwork going into that drive, getting the stop on defense, coming back. Offense kind of understand, saving your time-outs operationally so you can use all of them and you can use the whole field.
Then the field goal operation is a point of emphasis this week, so I'm eager to watch the tape and see how we blocked them on field goal. The operation was great. J-My had a great ball. Probably a game-changing type series.
Q. Is there any thought on using the first time-out after that first stop that you get on defense?
MM: In those situations you kind of ask yourself, hey, which side would I want to be on? I felt like it was the right move to kind of make them go conservative and then whatever time remaining we could kind of do our thing on defense -- or on offense.
Q. DK had a couple drops but was a key part of the rest of the game, especially the tying drive. Can you talk about how he showed leadership?
MM: It's a great point. He started the game off with us on the D pass when they were in zero and kind of got us off and running on offense. I know he had a couple of drops, but coming back and making some critical plays. One where he leaped over the guy, that was incredible. Then having a couple of big-time catches in the fourth quarter and overtime. I'm not sure what his numbers were, but it felt like he had a great game.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports