Jaguars 40, Cowboys 34
Q. What were your emotions watching Rayshawn Jenkins on the pick six and seeing the team celebrate like that?
DOUG PEDERSON: No flags on the field. Didn't step out of bounds. Make sure he caught the football. There were a bunch of things still going through my head. I've been a part of, I think, two walk-off games, one when I was a player in Green Bay. In fact, the guy on the other side of the field, Al Harris, actually picked it off for us and went into the end zone, and today. This one was obviously a little more special.
Just happy for the guys, man. They never gave up. We talked about it last night at the hotel. We talked about it again today. We just kept chipping away against a really good football team. That's a well-coached unit. They're obviously one of the top teams in the league. But this win today I think kind of just gives our guys confidence in who they are as a team.
Q. There's a magic with a franchise quarterback; do you see the belief in Trevor Lawrence in the locker room? How is that growing and particularly over the last five or six weeks? What's that belief like?
DOUG PEDERSON: Yeah, the belief has always been there. Trevor has done a great job of just running the show, running the team, doing what he's capable of doing. Just so happy for him, but really for the whole team.
The guys are starting to believe in themselves, too, and that's important down the stretch. Just a tremendous win by everybody, all three phases had a hand in it.
Q. Just want to ask you, the first half their offensive line I thought did a pretty good job of keeping you at bay and obviously they built a lead. What happened in the second half that might have changed everything around? Was there something you did differently?
DOUG PEDERSON: Yeah, no, they obviously have a really good offensive line. They pride themselves on running the football. They did a nice job in the first half. I just think it's a lot like last week against Tennessee. At some point you just have to wake up and say enough is enough. The guys just hung in there and made a few adjustments up front as far as staying in base or going nickel defense, things like that, but other than that, we committed 11 guys to the run, and then it opened up our pass rushers to get after Dak in the passing game there in the second half, which really helped us on the last play of the game.
Q. Keeping the composure, even after Trevor's fumble, and they recovered with whatever time they had left, you still had three time-outs. How important was it to say, guys, stop them here, we get another chance?
DOUG PEDERSON: That's exactly the message we had on the sideline. There's three time-outs, still a lot of time, we get the ball back with just under a minute to go and a chance to go tie the football team.
What I appreciate about our guys and really the coaching staff is how we prepare our players for situations like that, and there's no panic. Guys are prepared. My hats off to the staff for putting them in positions to go win games, or in that case to go tie the game. Just a great effort there.
Q. The two 17-point comebacks this year, what does that say about a team that's trying to figure out who they are and how good they can be, that you were able to do that twice, especially against a team like this?
DOUG PEDERSON: Well, I mean, we saw the game last night, the Minnesota game. I've been a part of games where we've been down and you work your way back.
Listen, our guys -- I don't really think they worry too much about where it is, what the score is. I really don't. I just think they keep focused on their job and keep getting better at what they're doing in game, and as I said, we just keep chipping away. Somewhere we're going to get a stop on defense or a takeaway; somewhere we're going to score a touchdown or a field goal on offense; special teams are going to step up. That's why you play 60 minutes.
So I think it's just a matter of the guys just kind of trusting in themselves and gaining confidence as the game goes on.
Q. Tre Herndon had a little bit of a rough day but gets his hand in on that final pass and knocks it up. Is that the kind of kid that he is and the kind of player he is?
DOUG PEDERSON: Yeah, I think Roy had an impact on that play, too, as a D-line pass rush. I think he maybe hit Dak's arm or something, too.
So listen, for 60 minutes and however -- 65 minutes or whatever it was in the game, it really doesn't matter. It comes down to players making plays, and those guys, those two or three guys at that point made a play, and that's what games come down to. It just comes down to a handful of plays, and just happy and proud of the guys for the way they hung in there.
Q. Yogi Berra had the old saying, "It's not over until it's over." We saw what happened with the game yesterday with Minnesota and Indianapolis. Is there any kind of a halftime speech when you know you're behind by a lot, especially against a top-tier football team?
DOUG PEDERSON: Listen, I've been around this game a long time, from my dad coaching me in pee-wee leagues until now. There's no magical speeches, there's no words you can say. It just comes down to the players, we talk about players making plays. These guys are playing with a lot of confidence. They're playing together. We're playing complementary football.
Early in the season we probably weren't. We're doing that now.
I guess the biggest thing, too, so if we just continue to focus on us and keep it internal, I do think that good things are going to happen for this team, and they're starting to show up.
We still have a long way to go, even with three games. We're on a short week, playing on Thursday night, on the road. It's tough. We've got to check out the injury situation. We've got our work cut out for us still.
Q. Do you want to see this get to a point where the Jacksonville Jaguars are no longer a trap game, that people are going to start taking your program a whole lot more seriously?
DOUG PEDERSON: Well, I don't get into a lot of that as much as I want our team to understand that we need to be playing meaningful football games in December and January, and we've put ourselves in that position. So I'm proud of the guys for doing that.
Our season could have gone sideways three, four weeks ago, and the guys weren't going to let that happen. I don't get caught up in all the storylines and all that, the shoulda-coulda-wouldas. It's just a matter of those guys in that dressing room believing in themselves and getting the job done.
Q. Against this defense you're going to have to run the ball effectively and Travis did that in the stuff he ran with Jamal, nice little change up and everything. Talk about how much that happened Trevor, and then you went back to Travis almost immediately right back in the game after the fumble. The confidence you have in that kid obviously is pretty high. How much did the overall run game help you today?
DOUG PEDERSON: We felt like we had to try to run the ball today. It's a good pass defense, and they're good on 3rd down. We saw the pass rush and how dynamic it is. So we felt like we had to give the run game a serious consideration today.
Offensive line did a nice job. We had some missed direction runs, too. You saw Agnew on the perimeter and of course T.J. between the tackles and things like that, and JaMycal Hasty had a couple nice runs in there.
Just being able to keep a defense like that off balance and not really knowing where the run is coming from opens up some of the movement game, opens up some of the play action stuff.
It was just great to see that our guys were able to kind of do that and create those opportunities offensively.
Q. The ball security on Travis, you just keep working and working --
DOUG PEDERSON: Yeah, with Travis. It's like a quarterback; if you throw a pick, we're going to put the ball back in your hands the next time we get a touch. I wanted to make sure that Travis knew we still have a lot of confidence in him and we're going to keep feeding him the football. He did a nice job after that, and we've just got to keep coaching him and making him understand that listen, ball security is everything.
Q. Four touchdown game today for Trevor; talk about how your receivers today stepped up big to make that possible.
DOUG PEDERSON: I mean, these guys, it's an unselfish group. They work hard in practice every single day. You never know who's going to get the hot hand in a game. A week ago it was 17. Zay had some nice catches today, Christian down the stretch, Marv got in the mix, screen to T.J. There's all kinds of things that took place in this game, but just the way these guys work with one another, work with Trevor, the way they practice, the way they study their opponent, study the game plan says a lot about who they are, the type of people and men that they are.
Q. Cam Robinson, Jawaan Taylor, can you update us on those --
DOUG PEDERSON: Yeah, I'll check with Ferg when I'm done here. I don't have any updates right now.
Q. Is there fear that it's a severe one on Cam?
DOUG PEDERSON: I don't want to speculate.
Q. Sometimes coaches just get a feeling about a team. What's your feeling about this team? Do you have a feeling that it's a special team? That doesn't necessarily mean you're going to win a Super Bowl, but do you have a feel about this team?
DOUG PEDERSON: It's a special team in the sense that I'm seeing this group starting to come together, playing that complementary style of football. Even going back to training camp, the way we practiced and the way we did things back then, you had the hope and the glimmer that we would one day be one of those football teams. It takes time. I've said this before; it's not an overnight fix. But the way these guys continue to work together, I'm telling you, the way they practice -- I know you guys don't see practice all the time, but the way they practice, and they practice hard, they just keep believing in themselves.
From that, yeah, it's a special team. I really don't think you win games like this if you weren't a close group, if you didn't have the right leadership in the locker room, if you didn't practice the way we practice.
Hats off to the guys for really buying into all that.
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