Here’s what the Falcons had to say after the 34-30 loss to the Washington Football Team on Sunday at Mercedes-Benz Stadium:
Running back Cordarrelle Patterson
On how he expects to move forward after this loss: ”Honestly it sucks. Losing sucks but we are all grown men and we gottta keep our head high. It’s a long season and we just gotta keep playing football.”
On whether he’s worried about the mindset of the locker room: ”We are not worried at all, like I said, we are grown men in that locker room. We’ve been doing this our whole life and nobody is going blame nobody. Nobody is going to cry about it. We are going to get here tomorrow, watch the film, and put it behind us and go to London.”
On his first career game with three touchdowns, and what was working so well for him: “Coaches calling the players on the mat. Like I said earlier in the week, whenever they call you, you just have to go out there and make a play and they did a good job in calling my number. All I do is play for my team.”
On what the other team did to slow them down: ”Honestly man, they just caught the win. They were just a better team today. They beat us up you know, they got to win and that’s all that matters.”
On what they will do differently as they head towards London: ”We are just going to go out there and play together you know, and just do whatever it takes to get a win. No matter how we get it, hopefully next week it will be two and three.”
On how he will remember this game: ”I’m putting this in the past. I’ll take all that back to get a win you know. It’s not about what I did, it’s about the team. We didn’t win and that’s all that matters.”
Credit: D. Orlando Ledbetter/AJC
Linebacker Foyesade Oluokun
On mood in the locker room, reaction to this loss: ”It’s a tough loss for sure. A lot of things on my mind. First of all, I want to shout out my boy Isaiah (Oliver). You always play for a why and you know, him going down like that, we worked hard together all off-season so definitely another thing I’m playing for for the rest of the year. It’s been tough to see him go down, but as far as the loss, there are definitely things that we’ve got to clean up and improve for next week, and we’ll definitely get on that.”
On if he has checked in with Isaiah Oliver to see if he’s doing alright: ”Yeah, I dapped him up after the game. I mean, it’s tough. I know how much work he puts in and how much work we put in together. That’s my boy, as I said earlier, so it’s another thing I’m going to think about before every game -- attitude and my reason why.”
On what QB Taylor Heinicke was doing so well to drive Washington’s offense: ”Creating plays, buying extra time. We’ve got to stay in our rush lane to stay plastered on receivers and just play longer.”
On what he felt like the Falcons’ defense was doing to allow Heinicke to make plays: ”He wants to buy time, you run backwards, you see what space you’ve got and then you go and find the space, run to it and throw the ball. So we’ve got to stay in our rush lanes, as I said earlier, and be more disciplined within the play.”
On what stands out from Washington’s final drive for the go-ahead touchdown: ”Play longer. Again, the last play, he flushed out to his left. He’s better at flushing out to his right, but he flushed out to his left and we’ve just got to stay on our people and then make the tackles. And really as I said, stay disciplined, keep him in the pocket and do everything we’re supposed to do.”
On near-miss plays, being fingertips away from making big plays: ”I mean, when I look back on it, we dropped some picks and that fumble, things could have gone our way, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to finish. That’s all it is.”
On how to keep this loss in the past moving forward: ”Every week is a new week and every game, we’re trying to win the game. So as soon as we get that new game plan in, as I said earlier in a different interview, we’re going to attack it and try to win games. That’s the name of it. That’s all we’re trying to do here.”
On if he agrees with Matt Ryan saying the little things added up to contribute to loss: ”We could have played a cleaner game for sure. Any time you start dragging out a little mistake here and there, it’s going to lead to a long drive and then you’re tired. So as long as you play a cleaner football game, I think we’ll get the outcome we want. But, we’ve got to work on that -- playing cleaner for sure.”
On how he’d describe the mood of the locker room: ”Somber. That means sad, right? Somber. Disdain. Disappointed. It was a close game and we always want to win close games and you know, it didn’t turn out the way we wanted. They do what they do, but point the finger at us and clean up what we need to clean up in order to endup on the winning side.”
On what the strategy was defensively the last two drives: ”They were in a one-score game and we had the whole playbook open -- two minute drives. You know, I’m not in Dean’s (Pees) head, but I’m thinking we’re playing normal football. They played normal football. They ran plays and they basically ran the whole game. Maybe if they needed chucks, they ran that deep dagger and stuff and bought some time. At the end of the day, we just have to play our plays better than they play theirs.”
On if he was impressed with RB Cordarrelle Patterson’s play: ”I love that boy. He played with heart, Mike Davis played with heart. I think our whole team, we’ve got a chip on our shoulder, so we played with heart. So we’ve just got to play cleaner. On the defensive end, we’ve got to play cleaner.”
Credit: D. Orlando Ledbetter/AJC
Running back Mike Davis
On trying to seal the game late “In that moment, going through our head was get the first down. I don’t know how else to explain it. We’ve just got to get the first down.”
On blaming self for how the game ended
“I hurts. It does, it really hurts. We’ve got a short week, we fly to London. We got to put this one behind us and make sure we keep it rolling.”
On late third down run
“I think it was read perfectly, I haven’t seen the film yet but give them their credit, they won the game.”
On if this game will be the toughest loss to put behind the team
“Anytime you lose a game like that, it hurts. It really stings. I felt like our defense came to play, our offense came to play, and I feel like this team has made great strides from the first game. I mean at the end of the day, we lost, but I think we’re just getting started.”
On if the end of the game fell apart
“I don’t think it fell apart. It was just a four-minute situation and we just didn’t get it done.”
On Coach Arthur Smith’s message about finishing games
“We had self-inflicted wounds. We’ve got to get better on handling the penalties, hurting ourselves. That’s the main thing and just give them credit, they won the game.”
On his role in the last play of the game
“It was a Hail Mary … my role? I’m just trying to get in the end zone.”
Credit: Curtis Compton / curtis.compton@ajc.com
Credit: Curtis Compton / curtis.compton@ajc.com
Washington QB Taylor Heinicke
On how emotional the win was: ”It was pretty emotional there for a little bit at the end it was, it was even more so, again, for my sister and my brother-in-law to be there to experience that type of ending with all the stuff I kind of put them through living with him for a while. It means a lot to me and I know they were excited to be there.”
On late touchdowns to WR Terry McLaurin and RB J.D. McKissic: ”He kind of has like a triple move on that one. It looked good all week through practice, unfortunately Dante Fowler got through — I think it was him — and got me pretty good but luckily, I escaped from him and I saw Terry in the back of the end zone wide open. When you have a guy like Terry, you want to give him a shot to make a play. He makes plays days in day out so I kind of threw it up to him, you know, let him do his thing and, fortunately, he came down with it. Then that last one the J.D. one, we had a flood concept, but we had four guys going to left and they did a good job covering it, and J.D. kind of slipped through the line and went to the right and there’s no one there. So, initially I thought, ‘Hey this is great. It’s going to give us better field position.’ He broke that first tackle and then he kind of superman-ed into the end zone which was huge for us if you kind of look at it. That made the Falcons have to go score a touchdown. So, little things like that, those guys are making big plays. So, I’m very fortunate to have those guys in there.”
On whether he can sense he’s frustrating a defense by extending plays with his legs: ”No, not really. I’m just kind of still focused on my job. But again, I think it’s a good part of my game that I can do. Just like last week, it’s good to have that. Being able to keep making good decisions while you’re doing it and I feel like today I did that.”
On whether he practices cross-body throws: ”Not really, again, he was my fifth read. So, it was one of those things where no one’s open, and we have to make a play and I knew he was going to be out there late and again he just made a great play.”
On throwing passes into tight coverage: ”There’s a couple throws out there I kind of wish I had that they had a chance to make a play on. But again, it was one of those things I talked about throughout the week just taking what’s there. So, there’s a lot of check downs today and when we don’t turn the ball over, we move the ball pretty well so I really hung on that this week and I think we executed that pretty well.”
On friends and family attending the game: ”So only got 10 tickets for close family and friends, but I want to say, estimate probably like 60-70 guys, here, that I knew. The Falcons had a little promo with the high school. So, I think a lot of high school kids I actually trained, when I wasn’t playing was here so it’s (a) cool experience. I think that was cool for those kids to see it, hopefully gives them a little inspiration to know that they can one day do this too so overall today has been pretty special.”
On defying the clock in his head: ”You want to get the ball out quickly, obviously. Offensive line has been doing a great job these last four games. I want to keep saying that because they don’t get enough credit so the offensive line, they did a great job. (Wes) Schweitzer came in and did his thing, but again when you have more time, and you kind of let those guys that we have at receiver, do their thing, awesome special things can happen. So again, like I said earlier, just got to be smart with it. I think today we did that today”
On whether a play he made shocked him: ”No, I mean throughout the years, high school and college, there’s been some bizarre plays so, you know, things like that happen, it’s a lot of fun, it’s really cool, but I feel like I’ve kind of been doing that, those type of plays throughout my life and I think that’s kind of the player I am. Again, I grew up watching Brett Favre, so I saw a lot of crazy stuff from him so it’s a good part of my game.”
On a bizarre play that shocked him: ”I don’t know, maybe throwing the ball over my head. Again, there’s been a lot of a lot of crazy plays throughout the years so that one to J.D. (McKissic) and that one to Terry (McLaurin) were up there.”
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