Jaguars 9, Bills 6
URBAN MEYER: Just I want to thank -- our crowd was fantastic. I know Buffalo travels very well, but the challenge of ours is the vision that I have, Shad has, and there's a lot of reasons why our guys play so hard, and number one is the city of Jacksonville and then also our owner. Just to see that locker room and to see our stadium, even though Buffalo -- give credit, Buffalo is a great organization, great players, and to travel like that, but I really appreciate our fans pumping them up. I pulled the headset off a couple times on those 3rd downs, and they were great. Our fans were great.
I'll answer your questions.
Q. Can you describe your pass rush today and what this win means for you guys?
URBAN MEYER: Well, Josh -- someone said Josh the last few weeks. Josh has been really that all year, but he hadn't had the help inside. We have not had that -- so I thought -- especially Roy was hurt a few weeks, Taven Bryan came in and did a heck of a job, Adam Gotsis, and Jihad Ward gave great penetration inside, and that forced the quarterback, a lot of those sacks you saw when he was scrambling away from the interior pressure. Really it's a combination of both, but those guys are great. But the interior pressure really set up a lot of things.
Q. Overall you've had games where you've given up 20 points plus. Now you go out there and have that kind of performance. Did you see something in practice this week that led you to believe that this was coming?
URBAN MEYER: Well, we transitioned the bye week and didn't show out in Seattle but actually did, we held them to 220 total yards, Seattle, and 60 in the second half. We transitioned a little bit, and Joe Cullen and his staff did a really good job. We really believe we were going to be a man coverage team and we had to adapt, and we now are a pretty good zone coverage team because of the hard work our coaches and players put in. A lot of that was zone coverage today.
Q. Could you just talk about the scene in the locker room afterwards, what that was like, because you've described previous celebration scenes when you were at Florida. What was the one like today?
URBAN MEYER: You hope to get more accustomed to winning, which I believe we will, but that's a very -- I think Shad said it one time, there's a perception of Jacksonville, there's a perception of this team, oh, the locker room this, the locker room that. That's a great locker room; I've been saying that all year long. We've had some close games, they've stuck together, and we just beat one of the best teams in the NFL.
I'll fight for that locker room. I believe in that locker room. If someone has something negative to say about that locker room, they're incorrect.
Q. Could you be more specific about the scene in the locker room in postgame?
URBAN MEYER: I'd rather the players -- the players can tell you about it. You should have had the spokesman Shaq talk about it. It was what you think, a bunch of guys enjoying each other and a big win.
Q. If you could just elaborate on, number one, Matthew Wright's performance, obviously the bulk of the scoring, the entire scoring was all field goals and then he missed the three. I know he is still taking kickoffs, Logan Cook previously took kickoffs. If you could also clarify why Matt was taking them.
URBAN MEYER: Yeah, Matt, obviously we had that one where he missed one and missed like three on one shot because of the penalties, et cetera, but we have a lot of confidence, our players do. Our players love him. I think he had a 55-yarder today, had all the scores. He's part of our team now. I made the comment after London most people didn't know who he was and now he's a big part of this team and they enjoy him.
Our punter was getting a little bit of -- it's such a different -- I've had that happen to a punter before. That's an injury waiting to happen if you have your punter kick off too many times, so Matt did a pretty good job. Our kickoff coverage unit wasn't very good today, so we've got to get that fixed.
Q. Did Carlos and Jamal on that one play, did those guys give you kind of what you were looking for in the running game? I think there was one called back as a penalty, but did you feel like they did a good enough job?
URBAN MEYER: No, I felt our running game really was -- you look at statistically, we didn't do very good. Right before the game in pregame warmups, Cam Robinson's back locked up on him, and I really thought James Robinson was going to play up until this morning. But we took him out on the field and he just didn't feel that -- we should have him back next week, but Walker Little came in, and against a top defense in the NFL really hung in there. I thought Bev was involved in that, too, that we wanted to do certain things, but the way defense was playing we're not going to screw around.
I was disappointed down in the red zone. We get down there, we get paid to score touchdowns, not field goals. I remind everybody of that. We've got to do better.
But at times it was conservative because of the way our defense was keeping Buffalo intact.
Q. You've been telling us I think since training camp that Rudy Ford is not just a special teams player.
URBAN MEYER: Yeah, he's a great player. It's hard to -- when you watch him play, he's one of our better players. He hasn't gotten many opportunities in the NFL, but he's a hell of a player.
Q. How good is it to put together two full halves, a complete football game?
URBAN MEYER: Well, it was complementary football and that's kind of what we talked about in our last night's meeting was our -- all we do is we had a nice -- our video guy does a nice job putting it together, and all we ask of these players is to be the best version of themselves, and if they are, they're pretty good. If they're not, they're awful, and we saw that last week. That was awful last week.
It's not bad players; no one ever said that. But the best version of ourselves is pretty good. First half against Cincinnati, at one point you were beating a really good Cardinal team 19-10. You hold Seattle to 60 yards of offense in the second half, so the best version of yourself is pretty good. They kind of bit into it and believed it, and they had a good day today.
Q. Do you feel like it's going in the right direction?
URBAN MEYER: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I get so upset about last week because I really felt the momentum coming, and you could see the way they played early in the year compared to the way they're playing now. It's not even close. Just last week -- we've got to move on. We've just got to get ready for Indy now.
Q. Getting that win in front of a Jacksonville crowd, how does that feel to you personally? Jacksonville and its fans is something you've talked about a lot.
URBAN MEYER: All the time, and our players talk about it all the time. We have a vision that we're building a brand new facility and we want to make this a destination spot. Our owner wants to make Jacksonville one of the top cities in the United States of America, which we already believe there's a lot of positives about Jacksonville, but a great football team really helps. And developing this whole area, it's one of the most beautiful areas in the United States of America with great people.
Q. What does it say about your team when you make mistakes the way you guys did with the drops and Matt Wright but you're still able to overcome that and win a game? Does that show that the build is starting?
URBAN MEYER: Well, the great defense piece is what saves the day. We were hoping we'd have a great defense earlier in the year, and at times we didn't play great defense. But the last few games now our defense has hung in there and done a heck of a job. When you have injuries on offense, you have a young quarterback, you have this, you have that, great defense is how you win games, and you complement each other. I thought today was a perfect example of that.
Q. What happened with Trevor and how is his ankle?
URBAN MEYER: Low ankle sprain. They took him in for an x-ray. He's coming in here in a minute, but he was ready to fight me when I wouldn't let him in right away. I had to remind him I'm still the coach.
Q. How far did your heart drop?
URBAN MEYER: Oh, just like everyone in that stadium. I imagine even the Buffalo crowd because you don't want to see that to a young player. But he came back -- I thought CJ -- how about CJ? He practices, and with Trevor he gets most of the reps just because he's young and you don't give as many to CJ. I'm really proud of him. He's a pro's pro.
Q. I wanted to piggy-back off what he was asking because you had the touchdown and of course it was taken away because the ball bounced off the receiver in the end zone and then of course you had the fumble and gave the ball back to Buffalo. How do you keep your spirits up as you go into halftime and it's 6-6 at that point?
URBAN MEYER: I didn't say much. The players did. We've got some pretty good leaders developing in this locker room right now, and they're a little bit of us-against-the-world mentality, which I like. I like the fact that -- when you have good leaders, coaches can say all you want, but those leaders stuck together, and I just felt a real confident defense that entire day out there. I saw them coming off the field talking to them, and they were very confident. You're talking about the No. 1 offense in the NFL.
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