Jacksonville Jaguars 37 - Indianapolis Colts
Q. Joe, can you kind of take us through that fourth quarter, the ups and downs and maybe just not having quite enough at the end there?
JOE FLACCO: Yeah. Obviously it was one of those games that ends up being kind of like you want the ball last, but, hey, Shane said it to us in the locker room after the game, like, this is the NFL. You're going to play games like this and you gotta be able to dig deep and try to find a way to win.
Q. What did you think of Alec giving you all a chance to win?
JOE FLACCO: It was awesome. I was actually excited to get the ball to him because you could see -- he's coming up to me and he has ideas as to how we can get him the ball, and he's good. Man, he's done such a good job this year, I think he's a hell of a player. So I was actually kind of feeling bad, like man, we gotta get him involved in this game, we gotta start getting him involved in these games, like how can we do that, and then boom, he makes an awesome catch on the sideline, and then things just start rolling. So a lot of credit to him to kind of keep his head in the game, stay focused, because I don't really think he had anything before that. And then you could probably look at a couple of plays and he's like, oh, man, Joe could have gotten me here. You could kind of think like that. And even if he did, like it didn't show. So a lot of credit to him, like I said, for keeping his head in it and like showing up big for us at the end.
Q. How much do you need those explosives, because it is hard to go --
JOE FLACCO: For sure.
Q. -- 14 plays --
JOE FLACCO: Well, especially the first one because the first one, like we get a ball back with five minutes. We're in two-minute mode. Have you to score quick, because if you don't score quick, you give them the ball back, they could end the game. So the fact that we actually got those explosives right there, that was huge. We had a three-play drive what we thought was a two-play drive. That's exactly what we needed. That was kind of the drive that obviously kept us in the game.
Q. How much of not being able to get Alec the ball earlier, ton of shell coverage?
JOE FLACCO: Yeah. They did. I think last week they started to play a lot of shell against Houston, and this week they played a bunch of different stuff against us, and they did play a ton of shell, and they were making us -- I mean you saw it, it was frustrating to a certain extent. They were making us take one-yard, two-yard completions, ah, did I miss something there, should I have thrown that down the field? You know, I don't know. Those are some of the questions you start asking yourself, but I think we did a good job staying patient, and then this is the kind of game it ended up being, but yeah, they did a good job of making us go the long, hard way. I think we had a 16-play drive for one of those touchdowns. That's not the easiest way to do it.
Q. They are playing you that way, do you have to fight any urge to just try those shots?
JOE FLACCO: For sure. For sure, yeah. You know, I think that's a lot of the dialogue with yourself on the sideline and a lot of just kind of sitting there and calming down after each drive and not trying to get too high, not trying to let the emotions of like being in the moment affect you so much, and it's just that dialogue with yourself to just kind of keep doing, keep riding this thing out. You've been through enough of these to say that, hey, you just need to have a chance at the end.
Q. Can you explain that one ball to Cox. Were you intending to throw it to him? There was another guy kind of running behind him as well. Early in the fourth quarter?
JOE FLACCO: The one I hit him on or the one that we didn't hit on?
Q. The one that you hit on.
JOE FLACCO: Yeah, yeah. So I saw him. Like they came up and played man and he got an inside release and he was running the corner route. So I was just trying to back shoulder him and give him a shot, and he did a great job going up for it.
Q. Joe, what stands out to you about the resilience of this team that's kind of made an impression on you?
JOE FLACCO: Yeah, listen. It's tough to kind of look for those things when you lose a football game, but there's a lot of good guys in that locker room. You see it. Like I've been on enough teams now, you know, I don't think NFL guys get a ton of credit for like being high-character people necessarily all the time. But there's a ton of high-character guys in that locker room and just good people. I think when you get guys on your team that are good people, they're tough, they're willing to fight, you know, they want to show up for themselves, they want to show up for the guy next to them, when you get people that are like that, that's kind of the recipe for building a good football team because you're going to have people that are constantly playing throughout the full 60 minutes and that's what we have in there.
Q. When you look back on this game, do you think you managed things well in your role knowing Anthony was kind of battling to come back and you were still taking all the reps obviously in practice? Do you think that you handled things well leading up to this game in your role?
JOE FLACCO: I did what I know, you know. You go back to that -- listen, even the last few weeks, I'm trying to stay in that routine of being the guy. Obviously you can't quite get to that spot. Like I wish there was something that you could take and turn the blinders on and you just thought you were starting all week and then all of a sudden you showed up right before the game and they told you you weren't, because there is a little bit of a difference, obviously, but that's the fight of being the backup is trying to maintain that routine every day.
You know, I tell people like in that role, you kind of distract yourself from like thinking about Sunday on Tuesday by that routine. You come in and you take care of Tuesday. You come in and you take care of Wednesday and you feel good about what you did. You do this, this, this, this and you go home at night and you're like, okay, oh, man, I did it all, and you feel good. You're not thinking about Sunday and like letting the weight of that kind of get on you. So getting back in the role where you're getting practice reps and you're probably going to play, that's the easy part, to be honest with you.
Q. You've been in Anthony's mark before where you're dealing with injury and you want to play, but it might not be the best idea. Is there anything you could say to him this week?
JOE FLACCO: Hey, listen, everybody is different, you know. For me this week with him, you kind of want to give him his own space and let him kind of feel that out. I wasn't sure. You know, I wasn't sure how he was feeling. To his credit, he looks good. He's trying to do things. He's trying to get back out there. But I wasn't sure, so like I just wanted to kind of give him his own space to kind of see how he wanted to go about that, and like I said, I was kind of just the guy that was like, all right, I'm here, I'll be ready if need be.
I've been in that spot once. It was my last year in Baltimore. I hurt my hip, and man, I did not want to let Lamar get out there. That's for sure. That was my team. And that was very hard mentally for me. You know, I pushed it as far as I could in terms of trying to let them convince me to go out there and play, but at the same time you don't want to put your future career, you know, in danger, and I mean, that was my eleventh year and now I'm sitting here 17, so sometimes you gotta be able to be patient with those things as much as they may hurt in the moment.
Q. You guys have had quick three-and-outs all season long. What do you think is the biggest thing just getting more consistent on offense?
JOE FLACCO: Yeah, like I said, lisp, you're going to have some of that sometimes, and it is disappointing, but they did. I think if you look at those drives, like there may have been a couple things that we could have done to like actually keep the chains moving, but we had like a zero-yard completion and a one-yard completion and they're playing zone and we're running crossers. You try to get the ball in the guy's hands and see if he can make something, but, ah, you know, it's just little things.
There was a couple times where we did get down in the red zone or maybe once or twice if we get touchdowns, maybe it changes the game a little bit. Those are probably the things I'm going to look at more so than some of those three-and-outs that we had is like, could we have scored a touchdown here and made a difference in the game.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports