Los Angeles Charges 28 - Minnesota Vikings 24
KEVIN O'CONNELL: Very tough ending to a football game that, quite frankly, we felt like was in our grasp again and didn't execute at the end. Overall, the way we needed to on either of our final two possessions to get one of those football in the end zone. You know, the last play sequence there, have a chance at K.J. early on, just one of those -- we don't miss a lot of those. Then roll into a sequence of downs, hit T.J. on the fourth down, and then first and goal. Wanted to get -- we have elements in our offense to go fast at the same rate of time hopefully that a clocked play would be. There was a little bit of -- with the crowd and the situation with the headsets, there was a little bit of confusion early on. By the time he was able to cleanly hear me and get everybody aligned, too much time had come off the clock. Probably looking back on it, just should have clocked it and taken the three snaps from there to try to punch the ball in the end zone, but wanted to try -- the way we were defended down there, if we can get a call, that essentially gives us a chance to score before they can set their defensive plan, bring extra DBs and things in the game to defend some of our personnel. I wanted to try to get one off. At the very least you're thinking it's an incomplete and you've got enough time under our normal operation to get a few more, exhaust the rest of the downs if you need them. That's not what took place, and then we had the unfortunate tipped ball pick there that eliminated our opportunity to win the football game.
Thought we ran the ball well, which was encouraging. Clearly we're very explosive in the pass game. We just need to be a little bit better on third down and give Kirk a little bit more time to operate and try to find some people because there's some throws to be had if we can keep him safe and clean, which is tough to do against a front with Khalil Mack and some of those guys, but that is the expectation.
And then defensively, we knew that's a very good offense, very good quarterback over there. A lot of yards, but they did get us the stop that we needed. It gave us a premier opportunity there to try to win the game, and we did not capitalize.
Q. Do you think the confusion you referenced played a role in just the execution of that --
A. I think he was having trouble hearing me at first. I don't think the headset was initially -- whether it was the crowd or what, he wasn't hearing me clean at first, and then by the time he pieced it together enough clock had gone off that I think probably we should have just clocked it at that point. But we have, like I said, Kevin, we have elements of our offense no matter where we are on the field to try to go fast and capitalize on situations. It didn't go that way.
Q. After the snap he throws and it's intercepted. I mean the execution, the outcome --
A. No. He got a play called. You know, we had J.J. isolated on the back side, a chance to try to get levels over the defense and then potentially throw it out the back of the end zone if it's not there. I don't think -- although the time was incredibly critical, I don't think that contributed. If we would have clocked it on first down and then run that play, I think that attempt probably still gets made. I do think that.
Q. Kevin, three losses in a row, two at home. It's a pretty big hole to dig out of.
A. It is.
Q. Do you think the guys in that locker room are the ones that can do that?
A. I do. I do. And I think what we are going to continue to do is continue to find a way to amend, coaches included, starting with myself, to do a little bit more, find a way to do a little bit more and find a way to complete four quarters of football the way we need to win games. And that's complementary. When you're playing against a really good offense on the other side, 475 yards of offense is great, but we still finished with 24 points, and they finished with 28. So it wasn't good enough to win.
I will say I've been a part of a team before that's lost three in a row -- it wasn't the start of the season, but we lost three in a row and found a way to win a world championship. I believe in this team. I believe in the makeup of this team. I believe in our leadership. I believe in our coaches, and we are going to continue to work. That is not one concern of mine with the type of guys we have in there. We can be disappointed, and we can be very upset about the outcome today, which everybody in that locker room, coaches and players included, we are. We're right there with our fans and feel it. But hopefully -- our backs are against the wall now. We've gotta find a way to get our first win this week and go on the road to do it and just see if we can start stacking them from there and working our way out. Got a lot of football left.
Q. With all those yards in the run game, how are you so unsuccessful on third down?
A. You know, they got a couple kind of one hits kind of timing type pressures on Kirk. Wasn't really all-out pressure. They were able to get to him a little bit on some of those downs. We had Alex Mattison on kind of a design play against man coverage. He's pretty much by himself at that point, and I think Bosa off the right side hit Kirk's arm as he goes to throw it. Those are the things. Those are the little things here and there that, you know, we make those plays -- had a chance to intercept the football late in the game, got our hands on it and really got our hands on pretty close to getting the hands on the one at the end of the half as well. Both of those are touchdowns for the Chargers. So we make one or both those plays and find a way to just give Kirk enough of a click to really throw a plant throw to Alex on that touchdown. And then some of the other third downs we've been pretty good so far this year on third down and just gotta find a way to continue to protect, and what that looks like, we'll continue to find the best five guys we can put out there and work, mix our eligibles, work our different receivers, T.J., J.J., Jordan and K.J. all showed up and made plays at times. And then we just gotta find a way to just be a little bit more consistent as we're coming off the field after taking it over the goal line.
Q. Was this a game where your opponent was on the spread the entire game?
A. You know, with our style of defense, they clearly came in with a plan to just kind of see if they could get pressure looks and had some answers just to put the ball in play on bubbles and block them up receiver screens and one-step throws. They were not going to try to drop back in those scenarios, and that's where we gotta just keep the feet in blocks, getting off blocks. Hopefully those blocks aren't happening illegally before the ball is caught so we can try to rally and get people to the football and force them into situations where they can't just continue to call those plays. Danielle made a play getting the ball out on a critical third down. Just need to continue to get our ops, and when we get our ops, too, to potentially turn the football over, you know we'll start making some of those.
Q. Kirk, when you had the ball on the one-yard line and a chance of score and you handed it off to Alex. Was a quarterback sneak not an option for you guys at that point?
A. It was probably a little bit -- we could have. In that scenario when you're just inside the one, you know, you potentially could save that QB sneak for maybe fourth down when you can reach the ball out and try to just take it over that way. I was confident in that call. We put goal line on the field. I have to go back and watch it and see exactly where the breakdown was on the play. We were confident we could get a little bit less than a full yard right there on that run. We didn't get it. And then ultimately it didn't work out. So that's kind of what I'm talking about. Whether it's been turnovers at the pylon or late in the half, an interception being tipped and caught at the one in the opener or being down there trying to punch it in. I thought we were physical. I thought we were -- versus a lot of their plan of playing Shell and having a plan for Justin. We got some clean looks to run the football and took advantage of it and then generated some explosives in different variations of our offense. Just gotta find a way to get one or two more scores there and, I think, you know, would have been different.
Q. The double pass to Williams, have they done anything like that before?
A. Yeah. Anytime you're going to throw 10 or 15 bubble screens in the game as the zero answer, we gotta be ready for that play because the second you see one, two, three, four times and them flipping the ball out there, I think everybody knows, potentially a double move of some kind is going to come off of that. And we were trying to coach those guys up to be aggressive, fly up there and confirm, once that ball has been thrown, to go up there and make those tackles. We just got a little giddy there and jumped it before we had seen the ball actually thrown to the bubble, and then he kind of tucked it for a second. That's a trick play that scores with how we were having to defend them. And we'll coach it up, continue to try to coach it up. And give them credit for executing that one, but yeah, Ben, that's -- I'm sure over the course of some of the looks that we've seen over the years, when you're in those pressure looks and they only have so many answers complementary play to be able to get the ball out of the quarterback's hands at somebody else and double pass was a great execution by them for a big play.
Q. When Kirk can't hear you in that situation, do you want him to make that decision to clock it?
A. Yeah. I think there's some scenarios -- the headset just goes completely out would probably be a better scenario than if he's just -- it's choppy and he's trying to piece together what I'm saying. He called the play we were trying to get to. We were lining up in the exact same formation we were just in on the conversion to T.J. He ran a great route over the middle, had a chance to maybe catch and score. I gotta go look at that one. But then just trying to line up the exact same way and get the ball snapped to see if we could get that thing in the end zone on first down without allowing subs and rush and all those things to come on.
Q. Brandon was throwing almost every kind of formation, every kind of blitz at opposing offenses. Do you worry that the personnel is just allowing you guys to do what you need to do?
A. Yeah, we'll have to definitely take a look at it. It does seem like there's some times where we're close, but really, when we're trying to force some those all-out looks and the ball is coming out, that's one thing. Some of the other scenarios where we're bringing pressures of different kinds with either fire zone or different types of coverages behind it, that's when it seems to me like Justin had quite a bit of time on some of those to sit in there and push the ball down the field when he wanted to. So that's where we just gotta try to find a way to get home. Hopefully we can get Marcus going at some point. I think that's been an element that we've been missing just his physicality and his versatility as a guy on all three downs. So hopefully we can get him going and maybe add a little juice in there to some of those rush groups on third down to get people off the field.
Q. Kevin, you started the game with those five straight runs to Alexander.
A. Yep.
Q. Was that kind of your statement of confidence in him?
A. Yeah. It's easy to keep calling them when you're moving the chains and the runs look like that. So I credit our guys. A lot of work went into trying to make sure we continue to hone in on what we want to be in the run game, which we want to be versatile. We want to be multiple, but in the end we challenged those guys to win the line of scrimmage, and Alex was running it really hard.
As much as we emphasized turnovers all week and we talked about it and we did multiple drills, we do have a conversion right there close to his forward progress being stopped or not, we've gotta make sure we finish the down with the football, and nobody was more upset about that than T.J. But across the board if we get that first down, maybe we can continue to run the football and hit our head on the goalpost the way we were running it to start the game. But turnover there ends that drive and they turn it right back around and turn it into points.
Q. Just for crystal clarity, did Kirk not hear you?
A. He was having trouble hearing me initially.
Q. Was it like crackling?
A. I haven't had a chance to -- it was probably the crowd noise and probably just the -- sometimes that happens that it's not always noticed when we're in just a normal two-minute mode or we're just using -- but I do know we called a pretty similar play before in two-minute this season down there to even score last week against the Eagles kind of towards the end of the game. And it's just a situation where communication is key, and whatever -- if there's any roadblocks between that, that's where we just gotta make sure everybody's got clarity in that moment of what we're trying to get done and doing it as fast as possible.
My expectations are always sky high for our group, so I'm trying to steal one more play, but clearly with that much time going off the clock, even though I don't ultimately think time was the issue with that game ending the way it did, it certainly would have been -- if that ball does get thrown away, we're down against it to where we might not even get the other ops anyway. So that one, purely on me trying to be too aggressive in that moment. We get the first down. Definitely looking back on it, just wish I would have clocked it. And no matter what benefit we had going fast, the value was not received with what that execution looked like in the moment, and that's something that, looking back on it, I wish I would have just had him clock it and not tried to steal one there.
Q. Was it cramps for Justin?
A. Yep. Byron had a contusion of some kind, and any other updates I'll get to you guys tomorrow.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports