Vikings 34, Texans 7
A. First of all, I want to thank God for this wonderful opportunity to play a great game in a wonderful environment. Some of my takeaways, just the shooting ourselves in the foot a lot. Just got to play cleaner football, protect the football and play complementary football, all 11 guys on the same page and just fix the issues I feel like is the next steps and goals for us. But those are some of the things that just stick out right now.
Q. How did what you (indiscernible)?
A. I mean, they kind of did exactly what we thought. Played a lot of 2 high, a lot of taking away our passing game, and then they would either blitz the edge and try to stop the run on a certain down, so I mean, they did a lot of things that we thought they were doing. We just weren't moving quick enough, we weren't executing, weren't playing hard enough. It starts with me.
Just got to be better. It's something that I felt like it can be fixed, so it's nothing to hang our heads down about, but definitely can and will be better.
Q. Everybody talked about the pre-snap penalties and how tough they were. What was the main issue, and how tough is it when you're constantly backing up and you find yourself in 3rd and long?
A. Can't live on 3rd and long, especially a defense like theirs. They cause a lot of issues on 3rd and long. You have to give yourself a chance. You keep shooting yourselves in the foot and moving backwards, backwards, backwards, you're not playing complementary football even for yourself.
I don't know exactly. I can't just tell you right now exactly what the issues are there. There has to be conversation away from the game and just meetings and just seeing what we can do to be better when it's loud and how intentional we have to be in practice and things like that, just to get those things fixed.
We're moving the ball, it's just you're kicking yourself out of the red zone and kicking opportunities, and it's hard to live on 3rd and plus 10.
Q. (Indiscernible). What's your perspective on that?
A. 100 percent agree. I've dealt with games like this before where it's like, man, we looked terrible, but that's not the truth. They kicked our butts today. They are a great team, and they will continue to be doing great things. But we know what we are, and that's not what we put on the field today. Got a lot of respect for those guys over there, but this is just the beginning. It's week 3. It's no time to point the finger or separate -- it's on its own to come together. The thing that matters is we don't care about the outside noise. We know everybody is probably going to turn their back on us. We know our fans are going to stay loyal. It is what it is. We know what we're going to be, and we're going to continue to go through the lumps that everybody goes through during a year at some point, and we're glad it's happening now.
Q. The first pass of the day, it gets batted and then it gets intercepted. Talk about what you saw on that play, what your read was and how it developed.
A. It was my second pass. Made the right read. We had a lot of guys open, through it to Tank. They were playing a certain technique, if they can't get home then they just sit there and jump.
Honestly, got to just try to find a lane or something. You can't sit there as a quarterback and everything is happening like this. I can't sit there and see him just about to jump. It's not the truth. I can maybe try to sidearm it, just try to find a window. But I was making the right reads all day. I felt like I played well other than the turnovers, especially the one at the end.
But I was seeing it well, trying to just stay in the pocket and deliver as best I could, but they had some coverages and some pressures that they did at a very, very high level. Kudos to those guys. That's kind of what happened on that play. They made a great play.
Q. (Indiscernible).
A. I smile, realizing that we're still very, very talented, we're still a force to be reckoned with, and we're still very dangerous. It's nothing to -- I mean, I always use this quote, but I just never let a hard time try to humble you. All the way to zero, you learn and you have some humility, but you don't let you take it back to square one or square zero. We built a foundation solid on rock, so we're not going to act like everything was perfect out there, but we're not going to act like there wasn't some positives. Once we fix the negatives, we're going to be rolling.
I'm excited, man, because the only way we can go now is up, so I'm very grateful and blessed that we did get our tails whooped today and there's something to learn from. I'm glad it happened early. Now it's time to go to work.
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FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports