Q: I know a little bit was probably based on game flow, but with the way the offense operated in the second half, do you think maybe you uncovered a style that might fit what you have right now, with (quarterback) Jameis (Winston) and these pass catchers?
JOHN HARBAUGH: It was good, no question. We've been talking about some of the tempo stuff. We've been working on that. It's been part of our system from day one, really. It's something we built in from the beginning. And it was good to get to it. We've been talking about getting to it. We got to it maybe because we had to. Maybe you're right. Maybe game flow forced us to do it, but it was a good thing in that sense. So yeah, it opened up the offense. It was good to see, and it probably needs to be part of what we're doing going forward.
Q: And then, just from a game management perspective, I don't think you've had the situation yet here. But down 14, you score, the whole do you go for two or not? You didn't yesterday, just curious what your approach is on that.
JOHN HARBAUGH: Yeah, it's a great question, kind of in that sense of what do you do? We definitely, I think generally speaking, theoretically, you go for two. Then you see if you have to go for two twice, you give yourself a chance to win the game in regulation. But the way the game was going, as we talked about it, I just decided that I wanted to put it into overtime. If we got to that point, I wanted to put it into overtime. So, I didn't want to take the chance on the two-point conversion. I thought overtime would give us the best chance. Plus, it's a road division game, so the tie isn't the worst thing for the road team. So, I just feel like all in all, I made that decision to go for one and put it in overtime if it came down to two scores.
Q: I'm just curious, you guys have been, before this game, were really good stopping the run. It seemed like you guys made some strides there. But then obviously, (Washington Commanders quarterback Jayden) Daniels did his thing. I'm curious, do you see it more as a one-week situation where Daniels was just the player that he is? Or do you think that there's a bigger concern about you guys giving up too many chunk plays, like ten-yard plays and whatnot with the run?
JOHN HARBAUGH: Yeah, I think we've had too many chunk plays overall. We've played kind of feast or famine run defense. We've had a lot of really good plays, a lot of really good plays in that game where we stuffed the run, which we're very capable of doing. And then there's a couple of line of scrimmage runs that get out on us that we're not happy about that can be played so much better. Whether we don't adjust to a motion the right way, we don't get over in our gaps, we don't quite come in through the angles. I think sometimes our tackling in the back end is really good. And sometimes it's not good, especially if it's spacey. It's always tough to tackle a really fast ball carrier, especially a scrambling quarterback who can run, in man coverage. And that's what they caught us in. So, you don't have the help of the angles and group guys coming together with eyes on the ball. Guys have their backs turned to the quarterback, so it ends up being one-on-one sometimes. But you still got to make the play and get them down. But mostly it's been the quarterback, it was just Jayden, and that's everybody. That's not just the back end, that's not just the front, that's everybody. And those were plays that should not have gotten out. We did not play those right with our rush lanes. We know that, everybody knows it. And it hadn't been a problem the last couple weeks, really. It was a problem the first week, and we got to make it not a problem next week.
Q: So, just to be clear, that was a great answer. Do you think that it's a season issue with the chunk plays, you think? Or do you think it was just a one game aberration with Daniels?
JOHN HARBAUGH: I think I answered it, because it could be a season problem if we don't fix it. We don't rush lane the correct way. Every quarterback's capable of running like that. But I don't think it's going to be a season issue because I think we're going to correct it and get it right next week.
Q: Just a question about some of the injuries. (Offensive lineman) Jermaine Eluemunor, (safety) Tyler Nubin, (cornerback) Colton Hood. I noticed (cornerback) Greg Newsome spent some time in the tent looking at maybe his foot or ankle, but he did come back in the game. But just wondering if any of those are more serious. And definitely looking for an update on Nubin, because that seemed like a concerning situation there.
JOHN HARBAUGH: Yeah, the three main guys are going to be day-to-day this week. They'll have a chance for the game. We'll just have to see how it goes throughout the course of the week.
Q: Three main guys being the guys that don't have the concussion, you're saying?
JOHN HARBAUGH: I'm really not keeping track of it in my head. It's the three main injuries, I don't know. It's all three main injuries besides Newsome. You can figure it out.
Q: How's Newsome?
JOHN HARBAUGH: Newsome's fine.
Q: I feel like every new coordinator, whenever they take a job anywhere, says, 'I'm going to fit my scheme to my players and not my players to my scheme.' And then I don't know that everybody does it. But what (Defensive Coordinator) Dennard Wilson's done the last two weeks seems pretty impressive. Cause he's blitzed, ever since (outside linebacker) Brian Burns went out, you guys have blitzed for the stats at a much higher rate than you did the first couple games. And a much higher rate than he did in Tennessee at any point. So, is that a coach making an adjustment based on personnel? And what do you think of what he's done?
JOHN HARBAUGH: Yeah, I think Dennard does a great job. He's got pretty much every blitz known to man in the system. And every blitz coverage, almost every blitz coverage, we don't have quite all of them, but we can get to them soon enough if we want. And he does a great job of organizing it. It's a great, week to week game planning mindset. Whether it has to do with Brian Burns being out or not. Could be, but it's also who you're playing, quarterback and those kind of things, or what the game situation calls for. I think in this game, you saw probably more zero, all out pressure blitzes from two teams in the fourth quarter and the fifth quarter than you'll ever see again, probably. I mean, every play pretty much was zero blitz by both teams, it seemed like. So, that's probably going to drive the numbers up a little bit game situation wise. But we feel like we would consider ourselves probably a blitzing team generally, but we also consider ourselves a cover defense too. We think we play zone match well. We think we play man well. We think we can do all those things. We want to keep it moving on people. That's Dennard's philosophy, does a great job of coaching and teaching along with all the other coaches of trying to be diverse in what we do. So, I do agree with what your premise is. The ability to blitz like that is a big plus. And it probably in the end got us the stops we needed, for sure.
Q: And then the other injury thing would be (cornerback) Paulson Adebo I think is eligible. Do you know if you have any plans to maybe open his window this week?
JOHN HARBAUGH: We'll see.
Q: We didn't ask about (offensive lineman) Andrew Thomas. It looks like he's really been laboring through some stuff. I'm not sure if you saw that when you went back and looked and how you basically manage that moving forward maybe.
JOHN HARBAUGH: I'm not sure what you're asking.
Q: He's been dealing with a groin injury. Is that something that concerns you going forward? There were times in that game where he was really limping pretty badly.
JOHN HARBAUGH: I think he's doing a really good job of just playing through whatever he's got. I mean, guys have things this time of year. He's doing a great job. He's so tough. Got the Purple Heart last week. He's playing at a high level. I mean, it may be laboring for him, but still the result is better than almost every player in the league at that position. So, I feel like he's playing at a really high level still. Doing a great job. Just tough as nails. Nothing but respect for him. And I'm sure he'll work through it, and hopefully he'll even feel stronger every week. But we'll just have to see how that goes day to day, week to week.
Q: And what's the Purple Heart? What is that?
JOHN HARBAUGH: It's one of our awards. It's one of our awards for guys that are working through injury type things, that they play, or they come back from. (Wide receiver) Malik (Nabers) got it the first week, for instance, coming back from the knee and playing well, and it's one of our awards.
Q: And with Jameis, how impressive is it, the optimism that he has? He's able to maintain the positivity. I know guys try to stay positive, but there's also human nature to it. He really does seem to always try to be positive and optimistic. What's that like, and how important is that for a quarterback?
JOHN HARBAUGH: It's awesome. I mean, it's how important is it for a person? I mean, it's the best thing to be around, and it's genuine. I mean, he's a very strong faith person. He's a very strong Christian. He is a very good guy. He works extremely hard. He's very motivated. He's an unbelievable competitor. He's tough as can be. He's a fighter, and he just doesn't let adversity get him down. He understands. It's like (former NBA player) Michael Jordan or (16th President of the United States) Abraham Lincoln or all the different stories you've heard. It's not how many times you get knocked down, it's how many times you get back up. You need to be plus one in the get up category. And that's exactly what he does every single day of his life, I would say. And that's why people like him are always successful. I mean, most successful people are optimists. Didn't (former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Winston) Churchill say that he knew a lot of successful people in his life. He knew a lot of pessimists in his life. And none of the successful people were the pessimists. Are you aware of that quote? It's along those lines.
Q: I would imagine you have people give you printouts or videos of what went on in the league as far as a lot of these late game situations that you can study, learn from? I mean, what happened with the Eagles in London, a couple weeks ago in Rio with the Cowboys, obviously, what happened with the Commanders yesterday, just as far as the importance of these late game time management situations that seem to, people go crazy every week, like how could this happen? And it happens every week.
JOHN HARBAUGH: We do. I mean, we have a library and a catalog of plays from years and years that we study in the offseason, and we show our players the best ones. We roll them all the time. We have slides that we teach off of and then we practice them and we look at them. I look at them every Thursday night with (Director of Football Data and Innovation) Ty (Siam), our guy, and we go through all the plays around the league. We go through not just the time management plays, but all the challenge plays, all the officiating plays, all the officiating points of emphasis for the week and anything else that we can teach our guys or we can learn from ourselves. And we have those conversations. We had the conversations about do you kick a touchback or do you put it in play, and what the difference was in the two. I mean, the one team kicked the touchback, pass got hit, field goal got made, got roasted for it. The other team put it in play, kickoff return gets returned back into the field goal range, game-winning field goal, gets roasted for it. So, what's the nuanced difference there in those two plays? We got to dig into that and study and decide really what we're going to try to do. But at the end of the day also, those are advantage defense situations either way. I mean, on the one hand, we need to cover the deep in routes for sure and we need to cover the deep sideline routes at the field goal range and hopefully not allow a completion there if we put them at the 35-yard line. On the other hand, if we're going to kick it to them, we got to cover it. We got to cover it. We got to get them. That only works if you get them and the chances of them hitting that long pass aren't that great. The chances of them hitting that kickoff return are probably even less. So, we got to do our jobs too. That goes kind of with those time management ideas.
Q: Do you think you have an advantage based on your experience and your study that in these late games, I mean, you can't guarantee you're going to win all these games with your decisions, but that we're going to way more often than not do the right thing and then hopefully the players follow suit and do what they need to do?
JOHN HARBAUGH: Wouldn't we all like to think that? But as soon as you start thinking that, then that's when something bites you. So, we just got to really just do the best we can. Because you just can't predict what's going to happen. And you've got to keep chasing all those things all the time, every week. You got to keep rolling through. You can't practice them all in one week. So, you got to keep rolling through them as much as you can. Don't get complacent. Look for new things. If you see something, if you see a hole in what you're doing, try to plug it up before it comes up. But man, it's a crazy league. My wife, she was visiting my daughter and so I was talking to her after the game. And she's watching games on TV. And she says, the whole NFL is like crazy town right now. It's crazy town. It's like, there's so much crazy going on in this league right now. That's what makes it so exciting, I guess.
And we were right in the middle of it. And we would like to do a lot of things better, we'd like to play. And we're so proud of the good things and things we did well. And there's so many things that we know we can do better. And we're going to chase, we're going to chase with everything we've got. Because we've got next week to try to be a better football team. And our guys are very, very optimistic. They're very optimistic about that. Very optimistic that they can improve and get better and get ready for the next challenge.
JOHN HARBAUGH: Here is the Churchill quote: 'The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.' That's one of the quotes. There's another quote though, where he talks about not knowing any pessimists who are successful. Look that one up.
Q: So I haven't found it from (Winston) Churchill, John, but whoever stockbroker, I know you're a reader, stockbroker and author William O'Neil said exactly what you said, which is, 'I've never met a successful pessimist.' I don't know if you know who that is, but that's who it's attributed to.
JOHN HARBAUGH: You know, I got to say, I might've got it wrong. I mean, maybe I saw that one somewhere and confused it with my hero, Winston Churchill. I don't know. It's a great quote though, right? A stockbroker. So, what does that mean? That means just let it rip in the stock market.
What is he saying?
Q: I guess. That's not my philosophy.
Q: I just wanted to know why you guys stuck with Bryan Hudson at center.
JOHN HARBAUGH: He played well. He played well. He played well in the game the week before and he played well in this past game. Things he can do better, but things he did really well and that's what we based it on.
Q: Are you sticking with him then going forward over JMS (offensive lineman John Michael Schmitz)?
JOHN HARBAUGH: We will for this week. We will for this week. He'll be the starter. JMS will still be in the plans. He could play, but Huddy will be the starter?
