Ron Rivera Presser: Why are other NFC East teams further ahead? “Quarterback”

Ron Rivera

Penalties:

“Well be more consistent. I mean, you’ve got to gain yards. If you’re going to run the football and run it successfully, you’ve got to be able to gain yards. You know, it was a good stout defense we played, but we had opportunities and one thing we can’t do is we can’t have penalties, silly penalties. Don’t necessarily agree with all of ‘em, but you just can’t have them.”

William Jackson III:

It’s not going to happen overnight...in Year 3:

“It means we gotta continue to work at it. It’s interesting because when you put all the pieces together that you want and you get ‘em there for that period of time, it starts to happen. So, we just gotta continue to work hard at it. That’s what I mean. I mean it’s difficult. It’s not hard and when the pieces change, sometimes the expectations change. Maybe they’re not as they were a year ago or two years ago, but things do change.”

What has changed if things are not where it was a year ago?:

“Offensive line. Quarterback. I mean there’s a lot of things that change.”

Pressure:

Is there anything you would say you needed to do different on the last sequence at the goal line?:

“Yeah, I mean that’s the biggest thing. Like I always say too, let’s not forget the other team guys paid too because that was the heck of a play that young man made. I mean, not only did he jam Terry but he was able to slingshot himself into the way of making a play on the ball. If that’s the read you have and that’s the throw you’re going to make, that’s a pretty good decision and again, that’s the heck of a football play.”

Missed opportunities:

“This is the missed opportunity. I mean, we played well enough to win, we just didn’t play consistent. You know, you have a couple of lows, you give up a couple of big plays and then you miss a couple opportunities. I mean, I know I’ve said that before, but that’s the truth. When you watch the tape, you go back, you watch the game, you see those things and sit there and say, ‘Wow, that was a missed opportunity, man. How can you know it gave up that big play there? That’s crazy but that’s part of the game.”

Getting past this point:

“Well, I think we have some pretty good pieces in place. I’d like to have them all on the field at the same time, but we don’t, we can’t. So this is the lot we have. So we could go, we have to go out and play. I mean that’s the truth of the matter is, you look at where we are offensively with the offensive line and it’s not what we started with. We’re getting our running backs back. Yesterday we played four tight ends, a second-year, playing three first year players.

One of the consistent spots has been to play the wide receivers. A couple of them came up really big yesterday. I thought Dyami really flashed and showed what he’s capable of. Terry made a couple of plays, the typical Terry plays and Curtis made a couple of nice catches and runs for first downs. I mean there’s some of those elements that you get excited about.

And then you see some of the command Carson has of the game, that touchdown he threw to, to Dyami with the check at the line of scrimmage. I mean, he’s starting to grasp and get the feel of it. Do we think there’s some promise there? Yeah. And then you look at what the defense did and you start saying, okay, there’s some promise there. You like what you’re seeing from the defense now and you don’t like giving up an explosive. You got the guy in third and six, you got the quarterback wrapped up and he flicks the ball out. It turns into a first down that sustains the drive and they go down and we blow a coverage and it’s a touchdown. It puts the ball on the goal line and then they score the touchdown the next play.

It’s that type of thing, that’s the sustained success you’ve got to build on. You make a good play, you gotta build on the next play. You get a chance to score, you gotta score touchdowns and those are the things that give you a chance to win.”

Injuries:

Dax Milne not fair catching a punt:

“Because the ball was gonna be short. I don’t know if he wanted to risk coming at it as fast as he could and potentially bobbing the ball and missing the catch. It’s one of those that if he goes in there and he’s running real hard, he has a chance to catch it, but at that point he might have thought something bad might have happened.”

Antonio Gibson:

Quarterback:

Cowboys having Cooper Rush:

”They started with [QB] Dak [Prescott]. They build around Dak and the offense is built around Dak. Their back up is a guy that is very solid inside of what they do. The truth is that this is a quarterback driven league and if you look at the teams that have been able to sustain success, they’ve been able to build it around a specific quarterback.”

Is the difference between other teams in the division and Washington is the chance to build around a QB?:

“That’s basically it is that this is an opportunity, now we have a guy that we think we have a chance to build around. We had a guy in [QB Ryan Fitzpatrick] and he gets hurt in the first quarter and a half of the season. And so it was a little different. I just think right now we have a guy that is really growing in what we’re doing. I thought yesterday was a good indicator of his potential for us in this and we’ll continue to work with it.”

Any regrets on trading for QB Carson Wentz?:

“No, I got no regrets about that quarterback. I think our quarterback has done some good things. There’s been a couple games that he struggled, but you look at his numbers from yesterday and you would say, okay, look, his numbers he’s had throughout the year, there times he was very solid. And then we had the unfortunate Philadelphia game, and he struggled a little bit in the Dallas game. But the way he performed yesterday, and it just shows you what he’s capable of and we chose him because we believe in him. We chose him because we looked at what we felt were things that pointed towards him.”

Pieces around QB Carson Wentz aren’t there?:

“No. Now he’s got to work with those pieces. It’s like walking into a new job. Okay. The job’s already been there, right? The newsroom’s already been in there. You walk in and you’re the new guy. You got to learn everybody, don’t you? You got to learn to work with everybody. You learn to do your job with everybody.”

4th down decisions:

Assessment on Andrew Norwell and the rest of the interior offensive line:

“Well, I think what we need to do is first and foremost, we got to be able to run the ball and run the ball successfully. I think the thing that really helps offset some of those issues is being able to run the ball successfully. And that’s something that we’ve got to continue to stress and work on and get better at. You know, the, the numbers show it. Last year, we had a little stretch, we ran the ball on the average six more times in a game and we were able to win those games because the guys were able to do the things that they’re capable of and that’s firing off and attacking. And I believe it’s the same thing with this group of guys. If we give them the opportunity to run block helps sets up the play action pass. And it also helps with some of the other passing downs.”

Jahan Dotson

Hamstring injury: