Head coach Gary Kubiak
(on the play of his defense) "Defensively, we kept sending them out there in the second half and didn't do anything offensively. They (the Texans defense) did enough for us to win the game. We talked about it at halftime and they stepped up in the second half and did it."
(on his special teams) "They've been getting better and continue to get better. They've been real close to making some big plays with Jacoby (Jones). We had the long field goal and I chose not to kick the other one because I didn't want to flip the field position in the game and let that hurt us. We kept them backed up. "
(on problems in the Texans running game) "They (the Jaguar defense) did a good job. They shut us down. We probably ran the ball pretty decent in the first half. I think we averaged five yards a carry in the first half, but in the second half they shut us down. Obviously, we were trying to run the ball to protect a young quarterback. We only had one guy (quarterback), but we didn't run the ball well enough in the second half."
(on winning five games in a row despite injuries) "I'm very proud of this team. It's hard to win in this league and when you face some of the adversity we've faced and will be facing again and to continue to find a way to win, that's a sign of very solid football team. We have to continue to put ourselves in a position to be successful. We have to get our young quarterback (T.J. Yates) going and decide where we're going after that. I'm just very proud of the effort. It was a hell of a win."
(on T.J. Yates) "He just plays the game fast. He's shown me all of the characteristics you want to see in this league. He can move; he has a good arm. But the bottom line this is the first reps the kid's gotten. He can only get better and I know the team will do everything they can to rally behind him."
(on what he didn't like about the game) "I wish we could close out the game offensively. We usually run the ball pretty well even when somebody knows we're going to run it, but we did not do that today. We could have found a way to close it for the defense in the second half—especially when we had the ten point lead and great field position—but we had to punt it back to them. We'll go back and look at it and find out why it wasn't good enough from the standpoint of how we ran the ball."
TE OWEN DANIELS
(on if he was concerned with rookie QB T.J. Yates taking over) "No, I was just trying to stay focused on my job at the time. The worst case scenario came along. I've been in this offense for a long time and our coaches make sure we know the game plan pretty well so we know the ins and outs."
(on his team facing a lot of adversity) "I don't think a team has faced as much adversity as we have and this was a good example of that. We got a lot accomplished with T.J. He does a heck of a job at practice and a week under his belt will definitely help him and give the coaches more confidence in him."
TE JOEL DREESEN
(on his touchdown catch) "Matt Leinart made a great throw. We run that play over and over in practice. He made a great throw and it worked out."
(on rookie QB T.J. Yates) "We knew we only had one quarterback. We knew we had to comfort him and run the ball and get some first downs. He had a great week at practice and stepped up his game knowing that he could possibly play. He was outstanding in practice and he's only going to get better."
(on T.J. Yates' efficiency) "He did a good job of managing the game at the time and not try to do too much. He took what the defense was giving him and just ran the plays he was supposed to."
WR ANDRE JOHNSON
(on injury to Leinart) "The main thing is that we won the game. Unfortunately, we have another obstacle we have to overcome. It seems like we're just losing players left and right. T.J. (Yates) came in and did a good job for us. It's kind of crazy how we're losing players, but somehow we keep finding a way to overcome."
CB JOHNATHAN JOSEPH
(on how the win felt) "It felt to come down here after a bye week and get a win; get eight wins. We're one step closer to where we want to be and so we've got to keep going and finish up."
(on what his concerns might have been with Jaguars QB Luke McCown relieving Blaine Gabbert at the end) "We just knew he was more of a passer and not a runner. Gabbert is a little more athletic; he runs a little more so we had to contain him a little more in the pocket. Gabbert is not a great passer yet and we knew McCown was a better passer so we had to play a little tighter coverage."
QB MATT LEINART
(on collarbone injury) "It's pretty disappointing. As of now, it doesn't look too good, but we'll get some tests tomorrow and go from there. I think there's a pretty strong possibility that I won't be coming back this season, but we'll see what the doctor says."
(on emotions at time of injury) "I said, not again. This was a great opportunity for me, playing well and feeling good. It's unfortunate but I'm not going to give up. It's not in my nature. I'm just going to keep moving forward, figure this out and move one step at a time. We have the utmost of confidence in T.J. Yates to get the job done. That's why he's here, but it hurts pretty bad."
(on touchdown pass) "It was exciting to have fun playing again. I went from an ultimate high to an ultimate low with the injury. It's the nature of the game, but this was a great team win for us."
WR KEVIN WALTER
(on losing Leinart to injury) "We're very proud of what we've done today. It's hard to win in this league. Obviously, it's very disappointing for Leinart because he was ready for his opportunity. He played well in this game early on. I feel bad for him. But T.J. came in, had an opportunity to make plays and smart decisions, and he did that. The defense played great. That's how we won the game."
(on importance of the win today) "All year, we faced adversity when guys went down. We haven't beaten this team on the road since 2006, so it's huge."
QB T.J. YATES
(on how quickly he had to go into the game) "Those first couple of plays I didn't even have enough time to think about much. I didn't have time to get warm or anything. I just kind of went in there and didn't think about it; I just played fast."
(on going in for Leinart and the team dealing with adversity) "It was kind of a whirlwind. I feel for Matt (Leinart). He was ready to play and he was playing well. It's just an unfortunate situation for him and for the whole team. This team knows how to deal with adversity. We've taken an injury almost every single game of the year and the team has rallied around each other and really found a way to win.
(on being ready to go in the game) "It's going to be different during the week just getting more reps. I prepared this week as if I was going to be the starter just with that cliché you're one play away. It happened this week but I was ready to play."
JAGUARS HEAD COACH JACK DEL RIO
(opening statement) "Guys in that locker room, players and coaches, have shown the kind of grit and fight that we saw throughout out the ballgame, but we're just not able to generate enough offensively to put ourselves in position to win the game. In an effort to find that spark, I made the switch in the fourth quarter and put Luke (McCown) in. Luke moved us down and got us that field goal to give us a little life there at the end. It was nice to see. Defensively, despite missing a lot of people, played very well. Good effort preparing. Good effort of guys going out there and working hard and fighting, slowing down one of the better running attacks and offenses in the league. Obviously, their quarterback got banged up as well and it impacts things. It was a solid day on the defensive part. Offensively, we just are struggling to generate enough productivity to have any fun. It's tough to win in this league when you're not scoring. Some of what we have seen this year where we fight, we give great effort. We are working hard at it, but we are just not making enough plays."
(on not calling time out during the last play of the final drive)* *"I asked Dirk (Koetter) do you want a timeout there, and he said no. That's why."
(on if McCown will be the quarterback for next Monday night)* *"No, he showed me something that as a veteran he is preparing like he is a guy that is one play away. When he was called on, he went in there and gave us a spark."
(on who starts next week) "Blaine (Gabbert) is our starting quarterback until I tell you otherwise."
(on how Blaine Gabbert took the news of being pulled) "I told him. I didn't stop and gauge the reaction."
(on what he said to Marcedes Lewis after dropped TD pass) "I said there is a lot of football to be played. You've got to find a way to bounce back. That was a horrible miss – everybody knows it, you know it and I know it. You can't hide from it and you can't go back and change it. So do everything you can to get yourself out of a funk. Fight your butt off for us for the rest of the ballgame."
(on if the offensive line or quarterback holding the ball caused more sacks)* *"They're pretty aggressive in what they want to try and do. They leave 1-on-1 matchups. We've got to be able to make them hurt for doing that. We didn't do that near enough, so I would suspect there is a little bit of both in there. Luke made quicker decisions and the ball came out a little quicker when he was in there, but he also got sacked. They brought good pressure, they've played good defense this year and they played good defense today. I think it's a combination."
(on if he's concerned the players will be able to muster up a fight for the rest of the season) "No."
(on whose call it was to pull Gabbert)"I made it on my own."
(on thinking behind the final offensive play) "Like I said, I asked if he liked the play and wanted to go with it and we went with it."
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JAGUARS PLAYERS
POSTGAME QUOTES
JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS VS. HOUSTON TEXANS
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2011
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QB BLAINE GABBERT
(on it being a tough game) "You never want to lose a game. As a competitive guy, you never want to be pulled but that's out of my control. I'm there to support Luke [McCown]. He came in and gave us a spark. We had a chance to win the game at the end."
(on Luke McCown having some rhythm and what it was attributed to) "We just sped up our tempo, got the ball out quick and gave our guys a chance to make plays. We drove down the field and had an opportunity to win at the end."
(on how frustrated he is) "You never want, I'm a competitive person. You don't ever want to be taken out of a game. All I can do is learn from it and get better next week to play on Monday."
(on what he learns) "You've got to be consistent. You've got to execute and do your best. Not everything is going to go your way, but you've got to eliminate the critical errors, get the ball out, not take so many sacks."
(on if his confidence has waivered at all) "No I know my abilities. The team knows my abilities. We've just got to execute. It's a team sport. Everybody has got to come. Everybody has got to do their job on a daily basis, on a consistent basis and we'll go up. But right now we're not doing that and we're losing football games."
(on watching the game from the sideline and if he learned anything) "You see things better from under center. You can't get a good view from the sideline. I don't want to be on the sideline, but that's a decision I have to live with and I've got to get better this week to be out there again."
(on Jack Del Rio saying he's the starting quarterback) "I know my position on this football team. I know what I have to do to win games, plain and simple, and I'm not doing that right now."
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QB LUKE McCOWN
(on if he was surprised to be called into the game) "I've been around long enough that when you're in situations like that you don't let yourself be surprised. If you're surprised then you're not prepared, you're not ready to help your team win. No I wasn't surprised in the sense that I was expecting to go in, but I was ready to go if needed."
(on if he has any idea what it means going forward) "No. Blaine [Gabbert] is growing. He's getting better. You guys don't get to see what I see, what the rest of the players see during the week. Even game to game, the things that we emphasize, that coaches emphasize, he gets better at. He's growing, he's getting better. We've just got to hang with him."
(on the ball getting out quicker when he was in being attributed to experience) "Yeah experience, the situation of the game, the urgency that needed to happen in a two-minute type drill. You don't have a whole lot of time to sit around and wait for someone to get open. It wasn't anything that I was doing or Blaine wasn't doing. It was just a matter of doing it."
(on if he was anticipating on calling a timeout on the last drive) "No I didn't want one. I could hear them in my head and I didn't want one. I felt like we could manage that one yard without having to do that. We had a call, we had a good call. They gave us a crunch-time zero blitz and we had a good call for it. We just didn't execute."
(on what he tells Blaine Gabbert with the struggles he's had) "That this is a hard league, especially for a rookie. It's a tough league. It's not all on Blaine. We've had, obviously the injuries we've had are well documented. The ball hasn't bounced our way a lot this year. And at the same time we haven't made a lot of plays. That can go all the way back to me in week two. We just haven't made the plays we've needed to make to be better on third down and the red zone and things like that. That falls on the players. It's not the scheme. The offense has been fine. From a couple of throws from me in this fourth quarter, we just didn't execute."
RB MAURICE JONES-DREW
(on what tipped the scales towards a loss today after many close efforts) "We're just not making enough plays on offense. For us to not score down in the red zone, third down conversions, we're just not making enough plays. Our defense is doing a great job of getting us the ball. They scored today and we couldn't help them out. We have to find a way to make plays, it's just getting old. Same old stuff week after week and a professional team shouldn't be making those mistakes. We've got to continue to work. I've said this every week, but that's the only way you can fix it. There's no one out on the street that can come in and help us. We need to find a way; otherwise it's going to be a long five weeks."
(on the success of the Texans' defense) "No, they were doing some great things. I can't take anything away from them. We had some plays we made; they had some plays they made. There are some things we felt we could have done better, but there is a reason they are the number one defense. They played well but we moved the ball on them. It wasn't that big of a deal, we just didn't execute when we needed to. Third downs are a big thing for us. We have to be able to execute third and seven, third and five. We can't keep putting our defense out on the field. Our defense is playing at such a high level. The last couple of years have been tough over there and they've turned it around and are playing at a high level. We have to continue to keep that going."
(on if he feels after practice Friday everything was fixed then it fell apart in the game today) "Different things happen throughout the course of a game where they make plays. We might have a mental error here or there, but those are crucial mental errors, especially when you are playing a defense like that. Week after week we've been practicing. We've had some of the best practices all year this week. We just have to continue to find a way to translate that to the game. If you don't give effort, you don't need to play. That's known in this locker room. I'm not going to allow it and no one else is. We're playing a game, and I don't care if we're down 100 to zero. You keep playing like it is zero to zero. You find a way to fight your way back. At the end of the day, we're just not executing enough and we need to keep working on it."
(on the spark Luke McCown gave the team at the end of the game) "He did a great job. He put the ball up and gave guys opportunities to go make plays. He had a little more time in the pocket. Luke was our starter at the beginning of the year, so we know he can come out and play. Blaine (Gabbert) progressed so much throughout the year; obviously he just wasn't having a good day. We have two capable quarterbacks that can play. A quarterback is only as good as the players around him. I pride myself, I think everyone else in that room prides themselves on being a playmaker. When they pull your quarterback, they are saying something about you. It's not the quarterback. We have to continue to work to get better with whoever is going to be the starter next week and figure out how to get a win against San Diego."
(on if he was frustrated about Marcedes Lewis' dropped pass in the end zone) "It happens, we all mess up. Against Baltimore I fumbled three times, so everybody has a bad day. That happens in this game. We had another opportunity to score, we just didn't execute. There are no excuses, we aren't playing well. That's it, teams are beating us. They aren't beating us because they are outscoring us; they are beating us because we can't score points on offense. To score six points today is ridiculous, complete nonsense. We have to figure out a way to score more points. We're moving the ball up and down the field; we just need to figure out a way to put it in."
C BRAD MEESTER
(on what it means to play in his 172nd game as a Jaguar) "To be honest with you, it means a lot. Anytime you can have your name beside Jimmy Smith it means a lot because he was a heck of a player. I am just thankful the Jaguar organization gave me this opportunity to be here this long. It means a lot to me, this team, this town has meant a lot to me. It was a real special day, I wish we would have gotten the win but I think down the road I will look back on it and remember this day."
(on the Jaguars falling short today) "So close again. We have got to do a better job early on. We got to keep ourselves from getting in a tough situation and we got to do a better job on converting third downs and moving the ball a lot better than what we did."
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WR MIKE THOMAS
(on his confidence in QB Blaine Gabbert) "There is no question that he is going to be the future of the Jacksonville Jaguars' organization so we just have to get back to work. I don't think it is fair to point the finger at nobody. We just aren't making enough plays on offense and we have to keep at it and we'll see what happens."
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WR JARETT DILLARD
(on how important it is to continue through adversity) "We can't all start pointing fingers because football is a team sport. We have to stick together and find out where we need to make our corrections in what we did wrong today. After we get by that we have to get better."
(on is the offense able to make the same plays in practice and then convert them in a live game) "We make the plays in practice and we make some of those plays in the game. It's just we make routine plays hard and make the hard plays look easy. That's something we have to play the game out."
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G UCHE NWANERI
(on today's offensive struggles) "This game is about making plays. It is about converting on third down and putting yourself in the position to score and getting in the end zone to score touchdowns. For whatever reason this has been a season where we haven't been able to do that as well as we have in the past. Today, it was a leak here, a leak there and we never really got clicking. We had a couple of drives where we moved the ball well but we weren't able to capitalize down at the goal line and get seven-points. I think that really would've turned the game right there early in the first half."
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DL JEREMY MINCEY
(on his thoughts after another close lose) "We missed opportunities. We've got to make more plays I guess."
(on his thoughts on the defense during second half action) "We firmed up. They weren't really passing the ball so I didn't get a chance to rush like I wanted to, but we stuffed the run pretty good."
LB RUSSELL ALLEN
(on his take in replacing LB Clint Session) "Well I think I did okay. As a defense we gave the team a chance, but obviously when you give up 20 points it's more than we want to give up so ultimately its not good enough."
(on how difficult is it when the defense is putting up more points than the offense) "I'm not going to get into that. It's a team game and we didn't have enough points as a team. We didn't score enough."
(on if there were any moral victories in the loss) "Well you always want to build off the good. When you watch the tape, you want to build off the good and correct the bad. That's always the case but there are no moral victories."
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DT LEGER DOUZABLE
(on the tough loss) "It is tough any time you lose, especially, when you put a lot of hard work into it. We got to keep fighting, we have a Monday night game against San Diego that we got to get ready for."
(on adjustments after today's loss) Anytime you lose it is kind of hard. My college coach used to say 'You die a little each time you lose.' So I will think about it over the next 24-hours and shake it off and be ready by tomorrow."
