Every week, we spend a few hours with the players and coaches speaking to them about their thoughts on the upcoming opponent, last week’s game and even some existential topics and silly conversations. Sometimes we’re not able to fit them into an article, but we’d like for you to be able to check out a small selection. Enjoy!
Chris Clark on the offensive line coming together and the Panthers offensive identity: “It takes a little time to gel together, and I feel like we’re falling into place, you know? Every offense has their things they’re good at, and when you figure out what you’re good at, you create your offense around that – we’re inventing ourselves.”
Jarius Wright on the Baltimore defense: “We’re playing a top-three defense, but to be where we want to be come the end of the year, we need to beat these teams – we also have to play well against these teams and I think it will help us towards the end. As we go on, we expect to get better.”
Jarius Wright on starting fast: “[If] we come out and we start early doing what we do well, it sets up a lot of different things later in the game. Coming out and starting fast, it will definitely help us – imagine if we didn’t have to come back from 17, it’d be a lot easier for us.”
Eric Reid on parity in the NFL: “It tells you a lot about the NFL – no matter how the game is going, we gave up 17 points quickly, but if you keep fighting, you keep doing what you have to do, you can get back in the game. It just comes down to execution. If you execute the way we executed at the end of the game the whole game, maybe we’re in a little better position in the fourth quarter, but we were able to get the job done.”
Taylor Moton on how to win close games: “11 people all doing their job at once, being in sync and knowing that you can rely on the guy next to you doing what they’re supposed to do and they can rely on you to do what you’re supposed to do.”
Norv Turner on Baltimore: “I think they’re the most complete defense we’ve seen. We’ve seen some really good fronts where we felt like we could take advantage of some things in the secondary and we’ve seen the opposite of that, but this group is very complete. They’re great in the secondary, they’re way way up in pass defense, their ratings and they’re a very good pass rush front, a very physical front. They’re very aggressive, they’re going to pressure you and pressure you from a lot of different looks and they’re going to try to confuse you and give you a lot of different looks. When it’s going good, they create some real problems.”
Devin Funchess on how the team can start faster: “I think it’s just the little things with us – starting on myself, it’s the little things. If we all pick up on the little things, we are an exceptional team. We do things other teams can’t. If we put those little things together, I think we’ll start the game off right. We work to perfect these plays throughout the week and say we miss one step or we miss a cut this way, then everything is messed up. To see what we did in that fourth quarter and to bring that on for this first quarter we’re about to play on Sunday, I think that’s what we need to do – to piggyback off of what we had last week.”
Funchess on what clutch means: “I don’t know. It’s just a mindset – I try to go up and make a play when the ball comes, so I don’t know what that word means.”
Ron Rivera on how the team drafted Donte Jackson: “I think Daryl [Worley] was too close to the type of person that James was, moreso than anything else – very similar in build and stuff like that. With Donte, we have the complete opposite – a much more athletic, smaller sized player; very quick; has the ability to play in the slot as well so we went opposite is really what we looked at. It’s crazy – this is the guy that Marty targeted and it drove me nuts because I kept thinking somebody’s going to take him; I kept telling him, ‘we should trade up we should trade up’ and he just kept saying ‘Ah, he’s going to be there’ and I said ‘well, I hope he’s there’ because I was getting frustrated with him, too but he just kept telling me ‘relax, trust me, he’s going to be there.’ He looked at everybody ‘they don’t need a corner, they don’t need a corner’ – he went through it – ‘they don’t need a corner’ and kept going through it and then there he was. That’s how that worked out.”
Torrey Smith on Cam: “Obviously, Cam is a weapon that there’s not many people in the history of the game that are built like him and have the ability to do what he does beyond just being a quarterback – he’s blocking [defensive] ends, in the red zone, he’s probably one of the most valuable weapons you can have, he can run with it but he’s a great quarterback as well.”
John Harbaugh on how longevity and continuity helps a team stay at a high level: “That’s a good question. Probably just too big of one for me to really be able to probably encapsulate right now because it would take…to answer it well would take a little bit of thought, but what I can say is that I think…owe that to God basically, and the fact that this organization has some really great people in it. That’s really all you can say at this point. We’re just trying to win the next game right now, so 11 years doesn’t really mean anything when you try to win a game. We have great people here, very blessed to have a great organization, and that’s really the main thing that jumps in my mind.”
Donte Jackson on what clutch means: “Somebody who comes through at a time when you need them to come through. That’s something that you can gain over time, some people are born with the clutch gene.”
Ron Rivera on how the short passing helps open up the offense: “I think decision making, in terms of what the quarterback has done, in terms of getting to the second and third guys – I think that’s a big part of it. It’s not necessarily hanging on one guy longer as much as getting off that guy sooner to get to somebody at the next level or the closer level to him. I think that’s one of the things that’s helped him and helped our offense in terms of keeping the chains moving – basically taking what the defense is allowing.”
