Washington Commanders head coach Ron Rivera addressed the media following the team's second preseason game against the Kansas City Chiefs. Here are some of the highlights from his press conference.
On the team's performance against the Chiefs:
"I thought there were some good things. I thought there were some positive things that we're gonna build on. Really pleased with some of the things we did on both sides of the ball. Big disappointment, obviously, is the third downs, especially with the first bunch, more so than anything else. We get them into good situations. We had a couple third-and-longs, and we lose our rush discipline, and with this quarterback, you cannot give him time to hit people downfield, and that's what happened. We asked our guys to stay with him. That's not gonna work. So, we've gotta be more disciplined. We gotta understand our responsibility of staying in our pass-rush lanes, not giving him an opportunity to escape the pocket and extend the play."
On whether mistakes were on players' techniques or Mahomes:
"Well, I think there were some mistakes our there obviously that we need to get corrected. We can't have that. We've got one guy coming off the edge, and we have somebody else that's not setting the edge. And so the quarterback steps aside. The touchdown pass is a great example of that. And that was the big disappointment, that second touchdown pass that Mahomes threw. We had great pressure coming off the backside. And the defensive end gets upfield, doesn't get back to his level and washes up and under. And Mahomes just steps where he was and buys time and he's able to stretch it away from Montez. Montez was coming off the backside. And it's just, you have to stick to the process. You have to do your job."
What did you make of your offense:
"I thought offensively, we showed we could move the ball. We got the ball to the 40s. Carson got the ball to the 40 a couple times and inside the 40, and e didn't get points out of it because we made a negative play. We had a third-and-5, ended up in a third-and-10 and then we take a sack. We can't do that to ourselves. We're in a great situation. We've got at least a field goal, and false start. So, if you're gonna do that, if you're gonna take points off the board yourself, you can't do that to this team. We know who they are."
On how you balance the current third-down problems with last year's issues:
"You don't balance it. The situation is what it is. We're gonna look at it on tape, we're gonna see exactly where the culprits were, and we're gonna make sure it's understood. I mean, this is team defense. This isn't you just run around the edge or you jump out. You have to be disciplined, we gotta make sure we coach them up to be disciplined. And then as always, we go back and we look at what we're doing, just making sure that what we're doing gives them a chance a chance to succeed."
On how the secondary performed:
"For the most part, yeah. There were a couple things that we gotta get shored up in terms of communication. One time, we jumped when shouldn't have, but we made a great play on it."
