Pittsburgh Steelers 31, Jacksonville Jaguars 25
Q. I would imagine one of the first things you looked at on film from last year is how the team really struggled in their first possession coming out. It was a lot of three-and-outs and just not good. 12 plays, 44 yards, you take 7:19 off the clock, but it's marred by a couple of penalties. What were your thoughts on that drive?
LIAM COEN: Yeah, we wanted to take the ball and get the 1-0. We weren't going to keep them in very long anyway and we just wanted to get those guys those reps and I thought it was obviously well-executed in terms of the majority of it and then the theme of the day showed up for us on that one drive, which was self-inflicted wounds.
So you get the first play of the game, you get a false start. Go backwards. Overcome. Move it forward. Get a good screen. Etienne makes people miss and then we throw the screen to Travis. BT's got a pressed up corner, the guy, the nickel, he blocks him. They call OPI. I didn't see the block in the back on Ezra there, so that puts us in third and 12 and the thought was, hey, let's do a control pass here, try to maybe get it to -- if we could have got it to third and four we probably would have gone for it, or fourth and four, excuse me.
One of the skill players got a touch I was pleased with. Wanted to get everybody kind of a touch and involved. Was pleased with the fourth down conversion for those guys, so that was good. That was some good stuff but, yeah, we want to finish with a touchdown.
Q. Liam, you kind of hinted at it but just in terms of the penalties tonight, how do you address that with the team? I know you talked about beforehand, you wanted to see more discipline. How do you sort of get to that?
LIAM COEN: Yeah, I did just address it. I think that ultimately it's something that takes no talent to do and, you know, we can't beat anybody. This is something we have been preaching for a long time since we arrived. We cannot start to beat people until we start beating ourselves. That has remained pretty consistent since February or whatever it's been. So, yeah, frustrating for sure.
Q. And then I guess just last from me, Cam Little's 70-yard field goal. What was your immediate reaction? What was the thought process sending him back out there?
LIAM COEN: Yeah, it was -- I forget what the time was. It was five seconds, we tried to run all slants to get it a down, down, time-out situation to try to get it past the 50 if you could. They played three deep soft zone. There wasn't an easy completion right now so we checked it down and just banged it, you know? And Cam looked at me and was like yeah, I want it and so gave it a go and, yeah, that was pretty cool to see, huh? Yeah.
Q. Liam, Hunter's performance tonight, how would you rate that? I guess 18 synapse.
LIAM COEN: Yeah, you know, he made a couple good catches on some option routes and missed the one tackle defensively that I noticed. That was the only thing that I kind of noticed about his overall play. In terms of that, I'll have to watch the tape on how he operated defensively a little bit more, but I thought offensively, he made the right decisions on those option routes. Made a good catch, almost broke out of that one where Trevor put it behind him on that third down we talked about, but I'll have to go watch the tape a little bit more to know more.
Q. Mechanically, though, how did that --
LIAM COEN: Oh, good.
Q. He felt great? No issues flipping over?
LIAM COEN: No, yeah, he wanted to keep playing offense after the first drive. He came up to me, he's like can I go back in? No, no, time to go on D. So that was no problem from a communications standpoint. It was just more we got to go see the film for the actual how he executed.
Q. Liam, you talked a lot about Trevor and just running operation. How did you feel like he did it tonight?
LIAM COEN: Yeah, I think aside from the first play, he was just at the line with a can and kind of just took a little long and it got us a little jumpy, but I thought aside from that, well.
You look at getting through some progressions, you got back to strains on a progression for a first down. That was really nice to see. I thought we protected Trevor pretty well. You know, I thought he was accurate with the ball. Safety made a good drive on BT on that one in-breaker but the ball was where it needed to be. Maybe a little bit more firm for him, but I thought he operated at a good click.
Q. And then obviously guys are going to celebrate, it was a big play, but seeing Travis, Josh Hines-Allen, everybody get excited for Cam, does that show the culture you want to build?
LIAM COEN: It is. I think overall you felt a good sideline vibe down there in terms of there was good energy. We had Wyatt Milum take a dude to the sidelines on a screen that drove him all the way to the stands. We shoved, got the run in from the whatever-yard line where nine guys or whatever are pushing the pile. So, you know, you definitely felt a little bit of a physical difference between the two teams in some ways up front on both sides. In terms of size, they're big, man. That's a big team, but I was proud of the way that the guys played physically. They played hard. They played tough. We just didn't play smart enough.
Q. Any concern about the ease with which the Steelers went down against the first team defense?
LIAM COEN: Yeah, I think there's a little concern with I think we were playing a little loose in some of our coverage system, you know? I was a little disappointed with the early third and two I think it was where we're playing a tight three deep in that situation. We got off coverage to give an easy Omaha away. That was a little frustrating to see.
Those are some things when you're playing a new system, right? They've been playing a lot of man coverage over the last year here, and playing a lot more zone coverage, so. Oftentimes you almost start to do too much the other way where we're giving up a lot of grass and a little bit of room. So I imagine we're going to want to ask these guys to get a little stickier.
Q. Overall, you alluded to it a little bit but offensive line play is one of the biggest changes overall in this team this offseason. What's your general thoughts on them and how they executed it, first, second, third team.
LIAM COEN: I thought zero sacks is always nice to have. I didn't feel like the quarterbacks were always under duress all that much until kind of the end there where you felt it. I didn't think we got great movement in the run game but I thought we tried to lane on them a little bit and had some good runs. I'd like to be able to see us run it a little better than we did, but I was pleased with their overall effort.
I thought Shaun had great communication with those guys and they did their best, but we can definitely be better there.
THE MODERATOR: Okay. Thanks, Coach.
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