Pittsburgh Steelers Media Conference

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Doug Pederson

Visitors Postgame Press Conference


Jaguars 20, Steelers 10

Q. 6-2, how you feeling?

DOUG PEDERSON: Great, really good. It's something that I told the team, the first half of the season, these first eight games, I think with all the travel, Thursday games, in and out of hotels, different things like that, the guys have really handled it extremely well. Proud of the guys for doing that. Really proud to be 6-2 at the bye.

Q. Your secondary seemed like they held up today. What did you think of the defense?

DOUG PEDERSON: I thought defensively just really, again, another solid game defensively. Kept the offense in the football game. We knew going in how opportunistic Pittsburgh's defense is. Then they capitalize, they created some takeaways. Then our defense in the second half created some takeaways.

For Montaric to come in and play now like he's done the last couple weeks, Andrew Wingard to come in and play that safety spot. Antonio gets in there. The guys just hang together. Really proud of the way they performed today.

Q. (No microphone.)

DOUG PEDERSON: It was a great read by Trevor. That was his route. I mean, it's just an outside release go route. Trevor did a great job. He saw the corner collapse on the little stick route. Just found Travis behind the defense. It was just a great play by both guys.

It's something we needed. We needed to kind of get something positive on offense. We'd been down in the red zone a couple of times, and the turnovers kept us from scoring points.

Q. What does it say about your team that you can make nine penetrations in the Steelers' territory, get 20 points out of it, come out with a win?

DOUG PEDERSON: It's not the recipe, obviously. But it's just a credit to the guys. I mean, they never quit. They keep battling. They keep playing hard, the way the defense has been playing, to keep opponents out of the end zone, too.

It's a mindset where we're just going to continue to play hard, and something positive is eventually going to happen. It did there with the Trevor to Travis touchdown.

Q. Could you talk a little bit about what the defense is doing for this team. Except for one game, they have been consistently playing at a very high level.

DOUG PEDERSON: Credit Mike Caldwell. Great game plans. The defensive coaches preparing their players. There's a mindset over there now. There's confidence over there.

When you keep things really simple and you got the same calls and the guys understand the defense, the way they work during the week, everything translates to what you see on game day.

It's a credit to them because the defense is, in my opinion, they've really kept the offense in these football games until the offense can kind of break out and score a touchdown.

Q. You had a few fourth and short in their territory. You decided to go for field goals. Was weather a part of that consideration?

DOUG PEDERSON: Weather. Yeah, weather was most of it. Felt like we were well inside Brandon's kick line at the time. Try to get there early, the early lead with some points. Weather like this, I mean, there were some guys slipping and different things. It's just hard to overcome.

Again, just decision to kick the field goals.

Thank you.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports
138639-1-1004 2023-10-29 20:53:00 GMT

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