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September 22, 2013
FedExField
Quarterback Robert Griffin III
On how he feels after the team has started the season 0-3:
“We had too many mistakes at crucial times. Of course, the fumble and the interception early in the game, we’ve just got to make those plays to win the game. We actually put ourselves in the position to have a real good shot of winning the game and putting it away. The way our guys fought, we just didn't come up with it. We've just got to clean it up.”
On his fumble:
“I was declaring myself down to avoid the big hit coming from the safety that's coming from the middle. Knee down, elbow down, but that's the rule. It could be a sucky rule, but it's still one of the NFL rules. They said, 'It’s a fumble.' It's unfortunate. I just have make sure if I dive forward, hold onto the ball. And if I slide feet first, it's going to fumble.”
On if he consciously lost the football:
“No one consciously loses the football. I hit the ground, thought I was down, and the ball came out. I'm looking at the ref like I was down and they told me I wasn't.”
On if he knew the fumble rule:
“A couple years ago, [New York Giants quarterback] Eli [Manning] did the same thing. He slid face first, fumbled the ball, and they called it a fumble. They changed the rule. I think they changed it back this year.”
On fluidity of the game compared to previous games:
“I think it was a lot more fluid. Our defense was coming up big; we were moving the ball on offense. We were really helping each other out in special teams, offense and defense. I thought everything was a lot more fluid. But you want to come away with that win at the end of the day, and we didn't do that. You’ve just got to go back after it.”
On if he thought the Redskins beat themselves:
“Yeah, I think so. No one wants to be 0-3. We play this game to win. We don't play this game to get more victories and say we did better. You play the game to win and we didn't win. Nobody in this league is going to feel sorry for us sitting at 0-3. Every time you suit up on that field, you've got to be ready to play. Everybody in this league is good. If they're going to point their finger, just point it up and keep your head up. Keep your head up and fight on.”
On the decision to slide feet instead of head first:
“I think it's just an instinct thing. On the sideline, I slid with [Lions safety Glover] Quin coming after me. I slid feet first because I didn't want him to hit me in the face. On the run I had the fumble on, I went face first because they were a little further away. You can't really be out there thinking about that kind of stuff. You've just got to do what happens when you react and hold onto the ball.”
On the overturned touchdown pass to wide receiver Aldrick Robinson:
“It was real frustrating but it's not anyone's fault. We went from a moment of having a lot of excitement to knowing, 'Hey, we’ve got to get back on the field and do it again." The one thing you try to make sure doesn't happen in those situations is you have a negative play. And we had a negative play right afterwards. That can demoralize a team. It was really unfortunate that we lost the game on two judgment calls, but that's just the way the game went today.”
On his assessment of the interception:
“Coming down, I didn't get to see the throw. I got pulled and tackled on. I thought I saw [wide receiver] Pierre [Garçon] coming right back down the stem towards me on the sideline. And when I watched it on the big screen, he actually stepped out of bounds and the corner behind him kept coming down. Another play where if you make the play, it’s a great play, but if you don't, it’s a bad play. And it was a bad play.”
On if the team needs to play with more desperation now that they are 0-3:
“I mean, you want to get that win. I don’t know if 'desperation’ is the right word. No one sitting at 0-3 is going to say, 'Hey, if we go 0-4, it’s all gravy.’ No one’s going to ever say that. We were in this situation last year, sitting at 3-6. We have to dig ourselves out of this hole. We’re the only ones that can do it; no one else is going to do it for us. And nothing that we say at these press conferences or any of that is going to change it. It’s decided on the field, in between the lines, and that’s what we’ve got to do.”
On if the offensive line moved the pocket around more today and if it helped him:
“I think it did help us a lot – moving the pocket. They have a very good front four. [Defensive tackles] Ndamukong Suh and [Nick] Fairley are two of the toughest in the league to block consistently so I thought our offensive line did a good job helping me out there. Moving the pocket definitely helped us get some new openings. ”
On starting 0-3:
“It’s very unfortunate and no matter what’s happened in each of the games, if you told us we’d be 0-3 right now, we’d all be shocked. It’s fine. Sometimes you’ve got to have that wake-up call. I think we’ve had the wake-up call the first two weeks. We played better today but we didn’t get the win, so it’s time for us to dig even deeper and find a way to win football games.”
On how it changed the game when the run was established early:
“I don’t know. I know the threat of the quarterback running definitely helps your offense. They have to play different coverages, and they did the rest of the game. It’s something that we have to be able to use. We were able to use it today because we didn’t get behind the sticks and didn’t get behind in the game so fast so it was good. We got to use a lot of our game plan. I thought our offense moved the ball pretty well. We’ve just got to win, period.”
On the way he played in the second half and if he felt more confident and if the play calling became more aggressive:
“No, I mean we came into halftime and I think it was 17-14 so, no matter what, you’re in the game. It wasn’t 24-0 or 28-0.”
On his second-half play, specifically:
“If you want to ask me questions about myself, I’m not going to sit up here and answer every question from you about myself. So, it is what it is. We lost the game. If you want to pin it on anybody, pin it on me.”
On what similarities there are to starting 3-6 last season and what he and the team can learn from it:
“Similarities – it sucks. The good thing about it is we do have a real family-like atmosphere in our locker room. We have guys who are going to stick together and that’s what you need in times like these. Everybody’s got to dig deep together. We can’t do it individually. No one can do it by themselves. That’s a great thing – you just see it in the locker room. You keep your head up. I mean, you’re not excited about being 0-3, but we’ve still got to go play the next week. We’ve still got to go to work the next day, so I think the guys are doing a good job of that. We’ll dig ourselves out of this hole.”
On the feeling entering the locker room at halftime today versus the previous two games:
“It felt much different. You’re not having to dig yourself out of another hole coming in the second half, playing from behind running two-minute [offense] mostly. We had a chance to win the game, and that’s what you want. When you come in at halftime, you want to have a chance to win it, and we did. We just didn’t come up with it.”
On injuries and how losing tight end Jordan Reed with tight end Fred Davis already out changes things:
“I mean, you don’t want to lose anybody. You don’t want to lose any tight ends – all those guys are playmakers for us. I thought [tight end] Niles [Paul] did a good job coming in and playing even though it wasn’t expected of him. Everybody’s got to be ready and, hopefully, we can get both of those guys back and have some more weapons out on the field.”
Wide Receiver Aldrick Robinson
On his overturned touchdown reception and if he felt he caught the ball:
“When I saw the replay, I saw that the ball was sliding on the ground, but I for sure caught the ball. I had the ball in my left hand, but the camera view was on the right side and then I had it in my right-side hand. I secured the catch and I got up knowing that I secured the catch. When everyone was down, I saw that everyone wasn’t as excited as I was, so it was kind of strange to me. When I saw the replay, I saw what everyone else saw.”
Linebacker London Fletcher
On the game:
“Anytime you don’t win, it’s frustrating. We have to continue to try to get better. It was better today, but it wasn’t good enough. Collectively, we made too many mistakes today.”
On what prompted him to address the team during the week:
“I’ll keep what I said inside the locker room. It was really just that we need to play better.”
On problems that stood out today on defense:
“They had a couple of big plays against us in the passing game. We changed up the game plan to emphasize taking away the run, but we knew they were still going to get a couple of plays in the passing game. I think some of the route combinations they ran to combat what we were doing from a defensive standpoint, they made some adjustments. You have to take your hats off to them, they made some good play calls at the right time.”
Running Back Alfred Morris
On how the team can turn the season around after an 0-3 start:
“Just keep believing in each other and stick together. We’re a family here. A house divided against itself shall fall. I said the same thing after last week. As a team we need to stick together. We have the talent to be 3-0 right now, but right now we just need to knock off the rust and work out the kinks. Penalties really hurt us today.”
On any key plays he felt cost the team the game today:
“The big touchdown getting overruled. That was a momentum-killer for us, definitely, and that would have put us ahead and given us an edge going into the rest of the game, but we didn’t get it. Little things like that definitely hurt us today.”
On how the team can prepare for the game at Oakland next week:
“Go back and watch film – see if there are any areas where we can get better. There was a lot of positive stuff that we did do out here today, but there was a lot of negative stuff that we need to correct to get better. That’s what we’ve got to do to get ready for Oakland – watch the game film from this game and try to get better from it and get prepared for Oakland.”
On if he thought the overturned catch by wide receiver Aldrick Robinson was a touchdown:
“I actually thought he had his hand under the ball. From the angle, you really couldn’t tell. It looked like the ball was on the ground. They overruled it and it’s their job to make calls and that’s the call they made, so there’s nothing you can do about it.”
On the disappointment in the locker room after starting the season 0-3:
“It’s very disappointing. No one wants to start the season off 0-3. That’s tough. That’s a tough pill to swallow, but like I said, we’re still in this thing together. It’s still a long season, but we’re going to try to get a win against Oakland before we go into the bye week.”
On if it is tough to say that there’s still time for improvement when the team has started 0-3:
“Yeah, because you want to do better. Nobody wants to start off rough. You want to start off playing the way you know you can play. We showed it in spurts today. At least we actually got started a little early on, when in the last two games we got started later – usually in the second half. We actually put points on the board today in the first half. With little things like that, you can take some positive from it, but there is also room for improvement as well.”
Cornerback DeAngelo Hall
On how his interception return for a touchdown affected the game:
“It gave us a little bit of momentum, but it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. We didn’t make the plays we needed to make in the end to win the game.”
On where the team goes from its 0-3 start:
“We’ve got to right the ship, it’s no secret. We’ve got to go out there and get a win, bottom line, by any means necessary. We have to get a win.”
On if a seven-game win streak can happen twice in two years:
“Anything can happen, but you can’t hang your hat on winning seven in a row. We’ve got to come out here and take it one game at a time. We can’t live on what we did last year. That means nothing right now. We have to look in the mirror and be tough on ourselves. We just have to make more plays. We have to get off the field when we need to. We have to tackle, and we have to do a lot of things better.”
Linebacker Brian Orakpo
On what changed to make the defense play better:
“Just our mindset throughout the week, and our preparation. All that carried over into the game, but we have to sustain that for the whole game. I thought we did a great job, but obviously it doesn’t mean anything because we lost.”
On his response to the team’s 0-3 start:
“We’ve got to keep fighting. It’s early in the season and 0-3 doesn’t look good on paper, but there is still a long season. We have a long way to go. We’ve got 13 games, so we can still make it happen. We did it last year, so it’s not demoralizing at all.”
On what went well for the defense:
“The effort. The way we started the game, had three-and-outs and were able to put pressure on them. We were able to stop the run, I think that was key. We’ve got to focus on that each and every game. If we stop the run, everything else will come into play.”
Wide Receiver Pierre Garçon
On how the team is going to bounce back against Oakland next week:
“This is a job, you have to come out and play. This is a business. If you’re not doing your part, they’ll get rid of you and you will be looking for a job. You never want that to happen.”
On key plays in the game:
“There were a lot of key plays. We didn’t do a lot of things right. We didn’t convert our plays on third down, we didn’t score points, we dropped balls, we didn’t run well, we didn’t block well. We have to get better as a whole on offense.”
Linebacker Ryan Kerrigan
On how the team played:
“I thought we played pretty well, overall. I thought we did a lot better job on the run, and that was a big point of emphasis this week, but ultimately, still too many big plays and miss tackles that led to big plays.”
If it has sunk in that the team is 0-3:
“I don’t know. I mean, I’m feeling pretty down right now so I guess it has, but we still have a long ways to go, and we just have to find a way to get a win.”
On the positives from the game:
“We improved, that’s for sure. We played better offensively, defensively and special teams. We played better than the first two games, so we are improving, but we’ve still got to make more plays.”
FedExField
Quarterback Robert Griffin III
On how he feels after the team has started the season 0-3:
“We had too many mistakes at crucial times. Of course, the fumble and the interception early in the game, we’ve just got to make those plays to win the game. We actually put ourselves in the position to have a real good shot of winning the game and putting it away. The way our guys fought, we just didn't come up with it. We've just got to clean it up.”
On his fumble:
“I was declaring myself down to avoid the big hit coming from the safety that's coming from the middle. Knee down, elbow down, but that's the rule. It could be a sucky rule, but it's still one of the NFL rules. They said, 'It’s a fumble.' It's unfortunate. I just have make sure if I dive forward, hold onto the ball. And if I slide feet first, it's going to fumble.”
On if he consciously lost the football:
“No one consciously loses the football. I hit the ground, thought I was down, and the ball came out. I'm looking at the ref like I was down and they told me I wasn't.”
On if he knew the fumble rule:
“A couple years ago, [New York Giants quarterback] Eli [Manning] did the same thing. He slid face first, fumbled the ball, and they called it a fumble. They changed the rule. I think they changed it back this year.”
On fluidity of the game compared to previous games:
“I think it was a lot more fluid. Our defense was coming up big; we were moving the ball on offense. We were really helping each other out in special teams, offense and defense. I thought everything was a lot more fluid. But you want to come away with that win at the end of the day, and we didn't do that. You’ve just got to go back after it.”
On if he thought the Redskins beat themselves:
“Yeah, I think so. No one wants to be 0-3. We play this game to win. We don't play this game to get more victories and say we did better. You play the game to win and we didn't win. Nobody in this league is going to feel sorry for us sitting at 0-3. Every time you suit up on that field, you've got to be ready to play. Everybody in this league is good. If they're going to point their finger, just point it up and keep your head up. Keep your head up and fight on.”
On the decision to slide feet instead of head first:
“I think it's just an instinct thing. On the sideline, I slid with [Lions safety Glover] Quin coming after me. I slid feet first because I didn't want him to hit me in the face. On the run I had the fumble on, I went face first because they were a little further away. You can't really be out there thinking about that kind of stuff. You've just got to do what happens when you react and hold onto the ball.”
On the overturned touchdown pass to wide receiver Aldrick Robinson:
“It was real frustrating but it's not anyone's fault. We went from a moment of having a lot of excitement to knowing, 'Hey, we’ve got to get back on the field and do it again." The one thing you try to make sure doesn't happen in those situations is you have a negative play. And we had a negative play right afterwards. That can demoralize a team. It was really unfortunate that we lost the game on two judgment calls, but that's just the way the game went today.”
On his assessment of the interception:
“Coming down, I didn't get to see the throw. I got pulled and tackled on. I thought I saw [wide receiver] Pierre [Garçon] coming right back down the stem towards me on the sideline. And when I watched it on the big screen, he actually stepped out of bounds and the corner behind him kept coming down. Another play where if you make the play, it’s a great play, but if you don't, it’s a bad play. And it was a bad play.”
On if the team needs to play with more desperation now that they are 0-3:
“I mean, you want to get that win. I don’t know if 'desperation’ is the right word. No one sitting at 0-3 is going to say, 'Hey, if we go 0-4, it’s all gravy.’ No one’s going to ever say that. We were in this situation last year, sitting at 3-6. We have to dig ourselves out of this hole. We’re the only ones that can do it; no one else is going to do it for us. And nothing that we say at these press conferences or any of that is going to change it. It’s decided on the field, in between the lines, and that’s what we’ve got to do.”
On if the offensive line moved the pocket around more today and if it helped him:
“I think it did help us a lot – moving the pocket. They have a very good front four. [Defensive tackles] Ndamukong Suh and [Nick] Fairley are two of the toughest in the league to block consistently so I thought our offensive line did a good job helping me out there. Moving the pocket definitely helped us get some new openings. ”
On starting 0-3:
“It’s very unfortunate and no matter what’s happened in each of the games, if you told us we’d be 0-3 right now, we’d all be shocked. It’s fine. Sometimes you’ve got to have that wake-up call. I think we’ve had the wake-up call the first two weeks. We played better today but we didn’t get the win, so it’s time for us to dig even deeper and find a way to win football games.”
On how it changed the game when the run was established early:
“I don’t know. I know the threat of the quarterback running definitely helps your offense. They have to play different coverages, and they did the rest of the game. It’s something that we have to be able to use. We were able to use it today because we didn’t get behind the sticks and didn’t get behind in the game so fast so it was good. We got to use a lot of our game plan. I thought our offense moved the ball pretty well. We’ve just got to win, period.”
On the way he played in the second half and if he felt more confident and if the play calling became more aggressive:
“No, I mean we came into halftime and I think it was 17-14 so, no matter what, you’re in the game. It wasn’t 24-0 or 28-0.”
On his second-half play, specifically:
“If you want to ask me questions about myself, I’m not going to sit up here and answer every question from you about myself. So, it is what it is. We lost the game. If you want to pin it on anybody, pin it on me.”
On what similarities there are to starting 3-6 last season and what he and the team can learn from it:
“Similarities – it sucks. The good thing about it is we do have a real family-like atmosphere in our locker room. We have guys who are going to stick together and that’s what you need in times like these. Everybody’s got to dig deep together. We can’t do it individually. No one can do it by themselves. That’s a great thing – you just see it in the locker room. You keep your head up. I mean, you’re not excited about being 0-3, but we’ve still got to go play the next week. We’ve still got to go to work the next day, so I think the guys are doing a good job of that. We’ll dig ourselves out of this hole.”
On the feeling entering the locker room at halftime today versus the previous two games:
“It felt much different. You’re not having to dig yourself out of another hole coming in the second half, playing from behind running two-minute [offense] mostly. We had a chance to win the game, and that’s what you want. When you come in at halftime, you want to have a chance to win it, and we did. We just didn’t come up with it.”
On injuries and how losing tight end Jordan Reed with tight end Fred Davis already out changes things:
“I mean, you don’t want to lose anybody. You don’t want to lose any tight ends – all those guys are playmakers for us. I thought [tight end] Niles [Paul] did a good job coming in and playing even though it wasn’t expected of him. Everybody’s got to be ready and, hopefully, we can get both of those guys back and have some more weapons out on the field.”
Wide Receiver Aldrick Robinson
On his overturned touchdown reception and if he felt he caught the ball:
“When I saw the replay, I saw that the ball was sliding on the ground, but I for sure caught the ball. I had the ball in my left hand, but the camera view was on the right side and then I had it in my right-side hand. I secured the catch and I got up knowing that I secured the catch. When everyone was down, I saw that everyone wasn’t as excited as I was, so it was kind of strange to me. When I saw the replay, I saw what everyone else saw.”
Linebacker London Fletcher
On the game:
“Anytime you don’t win, it’s frustrating. We have to continue to try to get better. It was better today, but it wasn’t good enough. Collectively, we made too many mistakes today.”
On what prompted him to address the team during the week:
“I’ll keep what I said inside the locker room. It was really just that we need to play better.”
On problems that stood out today on defense:
“They had a couple of big plays against us in the passing game. We changed up the game plan to emphasize taking away the run, but we knew they were still going to get a couple of plays in the passing game. I think some of the route combinations they ran to combat what we were doing from a defensive standpoint, they made some adjustments. You have to take your hats off to them, they made some good play calls at the right time.”
Running Back Alfred Morris
On how the team can turn the season around after an 0-3 start:
“Just keep believing in each other and stick together. We’re a family here. A house divided against itself shall fall. I said the same thing after last week. As a team we need to stick together. We have the talent to be 3-0 right now, but right now we just need to knock off the rust and work out the kinks. Penalties really hurt us today.”
On any key plays he felt cost the team the game today:
“The big touchdown getting overruled. That was a momentum-killer for us, definitely, and that would have put us ahead and given us an edge going into the rest of the game, but we didn’t get it. Little things like that definitely hurt us today.”
On how the team can prepare for the game at Oakland next week:
“Go back and watch film – see if there are any areas where we can get better. There was a lot of positive stuff that we did do out here today, but there was a lot of negative stuff that we need to correct to get better. That’s what we’ve got to do to get ready for Oakland – watch the game film from this game and try to get better from it and get prepared for Oakland.”
On if he thought the overturned catch by wide receiver Aldrick Robinson was a touchdown:
“I actually thought he had his hand under the ball. From the angle, you really couldn’t tell. It looked like the ball was on the ground. They overruled it and it’s their job to make calls and that’s the call they made, so there’s nothing you can do about it.”
On the disappointment in the locker room after starting the season 0-3:
“It’s very disappointing. No one wants to start the season off 0-3. That’s tough. That’s a tough pill to swallow, but like I said, we’re still in this thing together. It’s still a long season, but we’re going to try to get a win against Oakland before we go into the bye week.”
On if it is tough to say that there’s still time for improvement when the team has started 0-3:
“Yeah, because you want to do better. Nobody wants to start off rough. You want to start off playing the way you know you can play. We showed it in spurts today. At least we actually got started a little early on, when in the last two games we got started later – usually in the second half. We actually put points on the board today in the first half. With little things like that, you can take some positive from it, but there is also room for improvement as well.”
Cornerback DeAngelo Hall
On how his interception return for a touchdown affected the game:
“It gave us a little bit of momentum, but it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. We didn’t make the plays we needed to make in the end to win the game.”
On where the team goes from its 0-3 start:
“We’ve got to right the ship, it’s no secret. We’ve got to go out there and get a win, bottom line, by any means necessary. We have to get a win.”
On if a seven-game win streak can happen twice in two years:
“Anything can happen, but you can’t hang your hat on winning seven in a row. We’ve got to come out here and take it one game at a time. We can’t live on what we did last year. That means nothing right now. We have to look in the mirror and be tough on ourselves. We just have to make more plays. We have to get off the field when we need to. We have to tackle, and we have to do a lot of things better.”
Linebacker Brian Orakpo
On what changed to make the defense play better:
“Just our mindset throughout the week, and our preparation. All that carried over into the game, but we have to sustain that for the whole game. I thought we did a great job, but obviously it doesn’t mean anything because we lost.”
On his response to the team’s 0-3 start:
“We’ve got to keep fighting. It’s early in the season and 0-3 doesn’t look good on paper, but there is still a long season. We have a long way to go. We’ve got 13 games, so we can still make it happen. We did it last year, so it’s not demoralizing at all.”
On what went well for the defense:
“The effort. The way we started the game, had three-and-outs and were able to put pressure on them. We were able to stop the run, I think that was key. We’ve got to focus on that each and every game. If we stop the run, everything else will come into play.”
Wide Receiver Pierre Garçon
On how the team is going to bounce back against Oakland next week:
“This is a job, you have to come out and play. This is a business. If you’re not doing your part, they’ll get rid of you and you will be looking for a job. You never want that to happen.”
On key plays in the game:
“There were a lot of key plays. We didn’t do a lot of things right. We didn’t convert our plays on third down, we didn’t score points, we dropped balls, we didn’t run well, we didn’t block well. We have to get better as a whole on offense.”
Linebacker Ryan Kerrigan
On how the team played:
“I thought we played pretty well, overall. I thought we did a lot better job on the run, and that was a big point of emphasis this week, but ultimately, still too many big plays and miss tackles that led to big plays.”
If it has sunk in that the team is 0-3:
“I don’t know. I mean, I’m feeling pretty down right now so I guess it has, but we still have a long ways to go, and we just have to find a way to get a win.”
On the positives from the game:
“We improved, that’s for sure. We played better offensively, defensively and special teams. We played better than the first two games, so we are improving, but we’ve still got to make more plays.”
