Giants HC John Harbaugh FULL POSTGAME Press Conference After Losing to Commanders in Week 10 #giants

[0:00] I appreciate you guys all being here. [0:02] Tough loss, obviously. [0:03] Credit the commanders. [0:05] Played a very good football game. [0:07] And we played a pretty good football game, too, just not good enough to win the game. [0:10] So we pointed toward our next opportunity. [0:13] I think our guys are tough. [0:14] There's no, we have a good spirit. [0:17] It's not one of fear. [0:18] It's one of power and courage. [0:21] And we will continue fighting. [0:22] So what questions do you have? [0:23] Can you explain the last two throws? [0:27] Zero blitzes. [0:28] Zero blitzes. [0:28] And those are the routes that ended up getting run. [0:31] Yeah. [0:31] How seriously did you think about going for that one? [0:35] I thought about it. [0:36] But, you know, if we had been four or less, I think I'd have gone for it. [0:40] You know, losing the two yards was disappointing on that one. [0:44] So, I mean, you know, Stiles made a great play. [0:47] I ran through it. [0:48] You talking about the fourth down at the end there? [0:50] Where you're in your own, like, ten yards? [0:53] No, I wasn't seriously thinking about going for it there. [0:55] I thought maybe we could draw them off sides and try to get them to jump, you know, [0:58] took a shot at it. [0:59] But they played, you know, they didn't do it. [1:01] They played with good discipline there. [1:02] Did you happen to hear that Jameis said who let the dogs out? [1:06] That's what he was saying at the line of scrimmage? [1:08] Yeah, I knew that. [1:09] Is that like a thing you guys practice? [1:10] It's part of the cadence. [1:11] Yeah, it's part of the cadence. [1:13] You know, teams do jump in those situations sometimes. [1:15] So, that was the idea. [1:16] I thought you were talking about what's the thinking there. [1:19] You can say, D.C. [1:20] Which play? [1:21] J.J. [1:22] Power there. [1:23] I'm just curious what the thought was of that play call. [1:26] It's a crack. [1:26] It's a quarterback crack sweep. [1:29] So, you usually have an extra blocker on that. [1:32] That's the idea. [1:33] You pick up an extra block with the quarterback running on that. [1:36] So, I mean, I thought I had a chance. [1:38] But I have to see the tape to see how Stiles got through there. [1:41] You like to think he might get blocked. [1:42] But I'm not exactly sure what the front was. [1:44] We'll have to watch the tape. [1:46] How much of a missed opportunity do you view this of grabbing sort of a stranglehold on the division? [1:51] It's a missed opportunity. [1:52] But like I told the guys, it would have been great to win the game. [1:54] But it doesn't change our goals or our opportunity going forward. [1:57] So, it's a tough loss. [1:58] It's a national football league. [1:59] You're going to lose some games. [2:01] And everybody in this league is good. [2:04] The commanders are good. [2:04] Everybody's good. [2:05] So, and we've got a really good team coming in here next Sunday. [2:08] So, a team that we can beat. [2:09] So, we just got to get back to work. [2:12] What did you think of the way J.J. played in this game in general? [2:17] I thought he played very well. [2:19] I mean, there were some plays made. [2:21] He made some throws. [2:22] Scrambled. [2:23] I thought J.J. played very well. [2:25] I thought everybody played well. [2:27] We just didn't play quite well enough. [2:29] We had a false start in a critical situation. [2:32] We didn't finish some plays. [2:34] We didn't always tackle. [2:35] There were some leaky yards in tackling. [2:37] Although, there was good tackles, too. [2:39] There was a couple runs that got a little more than they needed to. [2:41] They got into third and short too often. [2:43] You know, we weren't in third and long enough. [2:45] So, credit them for that and things that we have to get better at. [2:48] There was another missed kick, John. [2:50] There was another missed kick. [2:51] I mean, can you just talk about that? [2:53] And I feel like the confidence level of the kicker has been a topic for a while now [2:56] over the last couple of weeks. [2:57] Just where you stand there for me. [2:58] I can't even hear you. [2:59] Sorry. [2:59] There was another missed kick tonight. [3:01] Another missed kick. [3:01] There was. [3:02] That's correct. [3:02] Just the confidence level, obviously, in the kicker at the moment. [3:04] Yeah, we're confident. [3:06] You know, you can't as soon as a guy doesn't make a play, I mean, start firing people left and right. [3:11] Especially your kicker who's a rookie. [3:13] So, I'm confident that he's going to become a good kicker. [3:15] I mean, if at some point in time it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. [3:17] But we're not going to panic, you know, halfway through the season with a guy who's made a bunch of kicks [3:21] if that's what you're inferring we should be doing. [3:24] So, you know, I mean, we're just not going to knee-jerk it like that. [3:27] He's going to make kicks. [3:28] You know, he's going to make a lot of kicks. [3:29] I believe in him. [3:30] I think he's really good and really talented. [3:32] And we're going to give him an opportunity to do it, and it's up to him to do it. [3:35] John, you've won most games like this this year. [3:38] What's your sense of the response from tonight? [3:42] They're good. [3:42] They're down. [3:43] They're disappointed. [3:44] You know, I think they felt right to the end they were going to find a way to win the game. [3:47] I mean, Javon makes the interception there. [3:49] We think we got a shot. [3:51] It'd be great to close that thing out on offense. [3:53] We weren't able to do it. [3:54] That's disappointing. [3:55] You know, then we get into a blitz, and we get beat on an inside breaking route. [3:59] You know, you don't really want that to happen, and it happened. [4:01] I mean, it's football. [4:02] It happens. [4:03] So we can be better in so many ways. [4:05] But there's a lot of plays that, you know, that's how football goes. [4:08] There's a lot of plays that they didn't make either that we made. [4:10] So I think it's just you keep chasing improvement. [4:15] You keep chasing all the little details of the game [4:18] and try to improve as the course of the season goes along, [4:21] and then hopefully we'll win these games going forward. [4:23] John? [4:23] What was the problem of not closing it out on offense there after those two interceptions? [4:27] They stopped our run play at the end on third and four. [4:32] You know, it was a TFL. [4:33] That was the key to the stop. [4:36] And then on that quarterback sneak to Jameis, right, [4:39] it seemed like Scatterpool was stating his stance a little bit. [4:43] I'd have to see the tape. [4:44] I'm not sure about that. [4:45] I didn't probably have as good a view as you had of it. [4:47] Yeah, I don't really have a comment until I see it probably on tape. [4:52] Your fullback was not in the game on that sneak, was he? [4:55] You know what? [4:56] I'm not sure. [4:57] You know, we have like four sneaks that we call. [5:00] So you've got to give me more than five minutes after the game to answer these kind of questions. [5:05] John, the opportunity to separate was massive tonight. [5:09] How difficult is it not to have seized that? [5:13] I don't understand. [5:14] In terms of the division, just separating, you kind of separated yourself from Philly on Sunday. [5:17] You had a huge chance to separate yourself further from Washington tonight. [5:21] How difficult is that not to have seized that opportunity? [5:23] Because you really would have been in amazing shape. [5:26] How difficult was it? [5:29] Just so you don't change it. [5:30] Oh, no, it's disappointing. [5:31] Yeah, I mean, I think that's the best word. [5:34] It's just disappointing. [5:35] We worked hard for this. [5:36] I mean, we put a hard weekend. [5:38] And we were prepared. [5:39] The guys came out with, I thought, tremendous energy. [5:42] They played very hard. [5:44] Plays were made. [5:45] Plays were missed. [5:46] But it wasn't good enough to win the game. [5:47] And, you know, that's the disappointment of it. [5:49] So it's disappointing. [5:51] But you can't let it bring you down. [5:53] You know, that's why I said what I said about our spirit. [5:55] Our spirit's going to be fine. [5:56] You know, we're going to be good. [5:58] We're not going to curl up. [6:00] We're going to come out fighting. [6:02] You said they were down in the locker room just now, disappointed. [6:07] What was your message to them right after the game? [6:10] Just the same one I gave you, you know, in terms of what our opportunity is, you know, [6:16] to do the things that we want to do. [6:18] I don't really remember the exact words, but it was an excellent message, I can tell you that. [6:22] It was a very good message. [6:25] It's a message of common sense. [6:26] It's just like we have, you know, it would have been nice to open up the lead in the division. [6:30] We didn't open it up as much as we could have if we'd have got the win. [6:34] And we've got a lot of tough games. [6:37] What do we have? [6:38] Seven games left? [6:39] So, you know, it's going to be seven dogfights. [6:42] That's what it's going to be. [6:43] It's National Football League. [6:45] I'd like to say we're going to win all seven of them. [6:47] But, you know, it's probably not very likely. [6:49] You're probably not going to be putting your money down on that. [6:52] So we've got to win enough. [6:54] And this was one that got away. [6:56] And we've got to find a way to get the next one or the next one after that [6:59] and the next one after that and get as many as we need to win the division. [7:02] That's what we've got to find a way to do. [7:04] So just try to keep it in perspective is very important. [7:08] Why do you think you weren't able to get consistent pressure on Jaden tonight? [7:12] Well, part of it is he moves around pretty good probably. [7:15] That's probably it. [7:21] A lot of it is play action. [7:22] I mean, you know, you want to talk about third down. [7:24] We probably didn't have him in third and long very much, did we, Jordan? [7:26] I mean, you get him in third and one, third and two, [7:29] it's probably not going to be much pressure. [7:30] First down especially is tougher because it's mostly play action [7:33] and they're running the ball too. [7:35] So there's not a lot of pressure in play action unless you blitz. [7:40] Two more. [7:42] John, what did you think of your run game tonight? [7:44] I mean, Cam had two touchdowns. [7:46] How did you assess it? [7:47] Yeah, I thought it was good. [7:49] I mean, Cam ran really well. [7:52] I mean, Cam ran hard. [7:54] He played really well. [7:56] I thought it was an excellent game for him. [7:58] And I thought our offensive line was much better, you know, [8:00] more like it was in Houston. [8:01] It was good to see. [8:03] Guys made plays downfield at times, you know. [8:05] It was good to see. [8:06] We did a lot of good things. [8:08] We just didn't do what we needed to do to win, you know, [8:10] and that's the bottom line. [8:13] JJ had a career high in passing yards. [8:15] What are you seeing in his development? [8:20] Yeah, I mean, I thought he played really well. [8:21] You know, he made plays with his legs, [8:23] and I didn't know about the career yards, passing yards. [8:25] That's interesting. [8:26] A lot of chunk passes. [8:28] You know, guys, he threw some dimes out there. [8:31] He made some great throws. [8:33] The throw to Isaiah Likely with the blitz, I mean, [8:36] the touchdown pass was just crazy good. [8:39] And Isaiah obviously, you know, housed it. [8:42] But that's probably as good a play as you're going to see [8:45] in the National Football League all season, honestly. [8:48] So I'm just not too disappointed, you know. [8:50] I mean, I feel bad about the loss. [8:52] It's going to be a long weekend. [8:53] It's going to be tough to watch all these games without the win, you know. [8:57] So, but you can't overthink it, you know. [9:01] You've got to just play for play. [9:03] We'll go to work tomorrow afternoon. [9:04] We'll study the plays. [9:06] We'll look at all the things that we can do. [9:08] That's always going to be an ongoing process. [9:10] That's never going to stop. [9:12] You just, it's just the way it works. [9:14] It's kind of, it's just, it's an ongoing deal, you know, [9:17] throughout the course of the season. [9:18] So, all right, thanks.