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Postgame Quotes: Philadelphia Eagles 15, New Orleans Saints 12 | 2024 NFL Week 3

Coach Allen: ' I don’t think we played as well as we are capable of playing'

Check out the game action shots from the New Orleans Saints game against the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 3 of the 2024 NFL Season on Sept. 22, 2024 in the Caesars Superdome.
Check out the game action shots from the New Orleans Saints game against the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 3 of the 2024 NFL Season on Sept. 22, 2024 in the Caesars Superdome.

NEW ORLEANS SAINTS COACH DENNIS ALLEN

"Disappointing loss for us. I don't think we played as well as we are capable of playing, yet you have to give those guys credit. They beat us today, and we had our opportunities. I don't think we played, obviously, as well on offense as we had played the first two weeks. Give their defense credit. Defensively, we just gave up too many explosive plays. That was really the key to the game is the explosive plays that we gave up and really kind of our inability to move the ball offensively."

On the last explosive play by the Eagles:

"We ran into each other. We kind of knew that (Dallas Goedert) was the guy they were going to try to throw the ball to. We had a double on him, and we just ran into each other, creating an explosive play. Yeah, it's disappointing."

On facing quarterback Jalen Hurts:

"I think it is extremely hard. He is a heck of an athlete, a really good football player. He makes it challenging on every single down, and I thought he executed well today."

On Erik McCoy's injury early in the game:

"It's a big blow. I think he's an important part of our offensive line and the way that we play up front. It was difficult to lose him, yet it is part of the game. We have to be able to step up and still play at an acceptable level when we lost guys like that."

On the adjustments that have to be made when losing a center:

"It's difficult, both from a mental standpoint and that guy making sure we're getting onto the right people and doing the right things, not to mention the fact that he's probably one of our better players on our offensive line. I think that was certainly a factor in the game, yet we have to be able to still perform."

On what he saw on the last explosive play with Goedert:

"I think as the game went on I felt like they were trying to find ways to get him the ball, particularly after DeVonta Smith went out of the game. I thought that was the guy they were trying to get the ball to."

On the Eagles' 65-yard touchdown run by Saquon Barkley:

"I'm going to have to look at the tape to see exactly what happened on that. At the end of the day, the kid made a great run, and once he got into space, he's a hard guy to catch, a hard guy to get down."

On his decision to go for it on fourth down at the start of the fourth quarter:

"It was trying to win the game. I felt like we needed to be able to get a yard."

On why he didn't challenge the play:

"It's technically a turnover, so you can't challenge. New York looked at it, and it stayed."

On the offensive struggles after the first drive:

"Listen, I think they did a good job. When you look at it, I think they did a better job up front than we did. I think that's really where it started. Again, that's a good football team that we played today. It's a team that was in the Super Bowl two years ago, and they started the season 10-1 last year. It's a good team; they beat us today. We have to regroup and get ready for Atlanta."

On if the run game struggled because of the battle at the line:

"I think it starts up there (in the trenches). As you get back in and watch the tape, we'll have a better feel for exactly what the issues were. I don't think we were as good, from an assignment standpoint across the board today. I think we made too many mistakes, and when you play a good team and you make mistakes, they take advantage of it. I thought they did that today."

On if Taysom Hill was close to playing:

"We ended up deciding to rule him out. I'm hopeful he will be able to go next week."

On if Derek Carr was injured in the game:

"It looked like he took a shot on the last play, but I didn't get any report from the trainers on him."

On if Demario Davis was injured in the game:

"There at the end of the game, he had a little hamstring or groin tightness."

On how his team responded to the adversity it faced in the game today:

"Well, I'd say not good enough, yet we gave ourselves some chances. They just executed better than we did. We have to get ready to make some corrections and get ready for Atlanta."

On if the run game struggles and the injury to McCoy was the reason for the failed fourth down attempt:

"I think we have to get a yard. I don't think that weighed into the decision one way or the other. Like I said, I think they just executed better than we did."

QUARTERBACK DEREK CARR

On his injury status at the end of the game:

"I just got the wind knocked out of me. I was fine. (I) Just needed a minute, but I'm good."

On offensive struggles:

"I think they did a good job mixing up their fronts. They had a lot of dudes on the line of scrimmage, really set out to stop the run and they did a good job. You have to give credit to them. They made more plays than we did, we as an offense. I start with myself. I wasn't perfect in all of my stuff, and you go back and you've got to correct it. You knew adversity would happen at some point. It's not going to be that easy all the time. For us, it's a great opportunity. You get hit in the mouth, and with that said, I thought we responded to a tough, gritty game. It wasn't all just bombs and this kind of stuff. We had to grind it out a little bit, and still make plays at the end and all that kind of stuff. And at the very end, they made one more play than we did, and that's just how this game goes sometimes. There's no discouragement or anything like that. You're pissed because you lost, you're mad at that. You want to win all these games, but at the end of the day we played a really good football team and we knew what type of team they were. You turn the film on and we knew what we were going to get ourselves into. It was a grind, but they made more plays than we did."

On losing center Erik McCoy:

"Yeah, it's hard, especially for communication and things like that, but I thought Lucas (Patrick) did a fantastic job. He's a veteran, super smart, he's been in this system in different varieties. I thought he did a great job. Obviously, any time you lose anybody on a football team, you never can just replace them. They bring a certain role, they bring a certain piece of the puzzle, but it's always next man up and I thought those guys battled. I thought they did a great job battling against one of the better fronts in our league."

On Eagles' preparedness for Saints' offense/studying film:

"It could be. That's throughout the season, there'd different ebbs and flows of that. Coaches switching things and changing things, all of that. Again, you've got to give credit to their players and to their coaches. They beat us today, and as players and coaches we take that personal. But we still believe and we know we're a good football team. The belief is so strong in that room. Disappointed, because we want it real bad and we really believed we were going to pull that one out, but we didn't. So for us it's about staying positive, but making the corrections that we have to make and working on it during this week."

On attempted pass to Rashid Shaheed in the first half:

"I thought it was close, but he's made so many of those plays for me. I'm going to keep throwing to him whenever he gets an opportunity. I trust my receivers so much. It was close, but that's football sometimes."

On the interception on the last drive:

"At the very end someone just came free, and in that situation a sack is terrible. I was trying to just make a tight throw, hopefully that he would look for me as I was getting hit. I wish I had just tried to skip it, whatever, get to the next play, but in that situation with the clock and how many yards we needed to get, I just tried to make that play for our team and I didn't. I tried to stand in there and make a throw, and they ended up making the play."

On what the team can learn about themselves from this game:

"This is a great opportunity for us to come in tomorrow and see if we bring that same energy that we've been bringing, but bring it to some more corrections, bring it into some things. Everyone's going to look at this tape and it's going to hurt, man, because you're going to see things like 'What the heck did I do there? Why did I do that?' And again I say it, but that's football. The teams that continue over this long race continue to improve. It's a race to see who can improve the most towards the end, and it's a great opportunity for us to look at some different fronts we hadn't seen this year, to see some different kind of games, different kind of routes, different kind of throws for me, coverage, all of that, for me to be better than I was the last time. My commitment to this team and this organization is to be hard on myself and push our guys in the same way. That we look at it just like we look at it after a win. You're hard on each other, and you've got to be hard on each other especially after this loss so we can be better."

On not having as much success with the run game as in the first two weeks:

"They did a good job. We had some good runs and we still were able to make some adjustments and have some really good runs, and I thought the pass game, too. There were some play actions I thought were good. I don't want to overdo it. Coach (Jon) Gruden always told me 'We didn't lose, we just ran out of time.' They beat us today, and we ran out of time on that one. I thought we were making good adjustments and started moving the ball well, so my confidence is high. Anytime you don't start off hot it's a grind a little bit, but I thought we handled it well."

On the Chris Olave touchdown pass:

"Cover zero. They had the safety matched up on Chris, and for us, that's a great matchup. Just throwing it to my spot, and he ran it down like he always does and made that play."

On the crowd volume:

"It was electric. That was a playoff atmosphere, when we get to play in one of those, but it felt like that. That was amazing. We need them all year, because that's such an advantage for us. The fans were fantastic. That was awesome. Hopefully (we will) make some corrections and give them more stuff to cheer about."

On emotional swing of touchdown to then being back down:

"In this game, most of these games, mostly every time, it comes down to one possession. You score when there's time on the clock, the other team always has a chance. For me, I've tried my best to try and stay even keeled. Obviously you're excited, and then when they score you've got to stay still ready to go, make your next read, and make the next throw. It really is a microcosm of what a football season is like, you've got to stay like this. You've got to trust your process, keep working, and enjoy the process, too."

More on losing center Erik McCoy:

"Again, anytime you lose anybody on a football team, you don't just replace somebody. They bring a certain gift, they bring a certain talent and ability, leadership. But with that said, I thought Lucas (Patrick) did a great job. Again, I get work with him, too, during the week just in case something like this ever happens. You lose a guy like Erik and it hurts. He's a captain, he's a leader of our football team, so it hurts, but with football that stuff happens all the time. It's next man up, and you've got to be able to pick right back up and the expectation doesn't change. But I thought Lucas did a fantastic job of really listening to and communicating to the young guys, new coming in. Just watching him communicate. He's a true pro, he's a true leader, and I'm glad we have him."

SAFETY TYRANN MATHIEU

On the loss:

"It's frustrating. Hat's off to those guys. They made the plays when it mattered the most. You can play great defense for 55 minutes, and for five minutes, it can kind of get away from you. We will learn from it. It's still early. We're still confident in what we can do. Hat's off to those guys. They executed in those moments."

On the third down conversion to Eagles tight end Dallas Goedert on the game-winning drive:

"It's one of those situations where we are in man-to-man defense. It doesn't matter if it's third and 90 (yards) or third and three. We believe in us. Like I said, hat's off to those guys. They executed. Clearly, they practice that particular play because we got that exact play maybe three or four times. I missed one tackle. Then, the next time we had three or four guys running into each other. Hat's off to those guys. They executed in a critical moment."

On what it does for the team to experience this adversity:

"Adversity is a builder of life. You cannot go through life and expect great things without hiccups, without setbacks, without adversity. It sucks. We poured our hearts out into the game. We sacrifice a lot to get to Sunday, and we want to be able to win. It's not just for us, but it's for everybody. It doesn't always go your way, but the positive is that there are a lot of great teams (and) a lot of great people that wouldn't be great without hard times. Yeah, we've got another game next week, a divisional game, so we can't sulk in this too long."

On Jalen Hurts' ability:

"He's an athlete. Year after year, a lot of guys come into this league at the quarterback position. A few of them are much more than quarterbacks; they are great athletes. Obviously, his team believes in him. He believes in himself. He has played in a lot of big football games. So, hat's off to those guys. Like I said, they executed in the most critical moments of the game. It hurts. It sucks, but it is a part of it."

On defensive stops in the red zone:

"We always want to take the ball away and try our best to limit teams to three (points) when they get to the red zone. It doesn't always go our way, but outside of a couple of third downs, I thought that we played hard. I thought that we played fast. There's a couple of moments in the game where we kind of broke down as a defense. We will learn from it. The coaches will learn from it. Us, as players, we'll learn from it. We'll be ready for Atlanta next week."

On Saquon Barkley's 65-yard touchdown run:

"We were in cover zero and we got beat. It's like once he got past the first level, it was off to the races. Great play by him. They blocked it up pretty well. He kind of cut back to the left and there was nobody there. Great vision by him. Obviously, we want to make that play, we want to make that tackle. He made a great play. He made a great move."

On if the defense overran on the on the Barkley 65-yard run:

"Nobody overran it. We were blitzing from the left. He got the ball and cut back to the left and nobody was there. He ran bubble slant to the field, so all those guys were in man-to-man so they were following their man. Once he rolled off the tackle, it's just paint. All you see is end zone."

On the teams talking to each other on the field late in the game:

"It's an intense game and emotions get high. Obviously, it was a one point game for a while there. Defensively, obviously, we want to defend our home field. Me and Latt (Marshon Lattimore), we should never go to those guys' sideline. So, we will learn from that. It happens to all of us, where emotions get the best of us. We didn't really hear it much from those guys all game until they went up at the end. We will just be looking forward to playing again against those guys, hopefully."

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