Washington Redskins head coach was available to the media on Monday after losing his coaching debut at the Houston Texans on Sunday, 17-6. Gruden spoke on injuries and strategy, and also looked back on the loss to the Texans.
Gruden talked about Barry Cofield and Jordan Reed’s respective injuries as the Sunday game against the Jacksonville Jaguars quickly approaches:
Cofield has a high ankle sprain. He’s getting checked out today, but it looks like he could miss some time. Then Jordan Reed has a mild hamstring strain and that’s another one. He was very sore after the game, so that could be some time also … we did the MRIs on both of them. So, we’ll see how it goes. We have the trainer and it’ll probably be a week or two or three. We’ll see.
It’s very difficult [having Reed out]. You have a lot of formations and part of your game plan designed around him, playing him outside, in the slot and all that. When he goes out after the seventh play of offense, it hurts you a little bit. But, luckily we had other things we could do. We didn’t do them very well, but we were able to do some other things. But he was a major part of the game plan, especially in the red zone. But, it didn’t work out that way and now we’ve just got to get him well as soon as we can and keep moving.
Chris Russell reported on Tuesday afternoon that that the Redskins will use a short-term IR designation on Cofield.
Gruden is trying to take a positive outlook on the mental mistakes that had a significant impact on the team’s loss to Houston:
Well, you try to be the positive one – and you look at [the fact that] there are very correctable mistakes that we made. The one thing I did like was our defense was flying around to the ball – there’s a lot of good things on tape, but we had some monumental mistakes that can’t happen in pro football. You can’t fumble the ball in the red zone, you can’t give up big plays, and you can’t let a guy rush inside of a wing guy on a punt protection.
There are some things that are very correctable obviously, but there are some things that we did well, but we just didn’t play good enough all the way around. There is a good thing – offense, defense, and special teams – they all had their hands in this loss. It wasn’t like it was just the offense, just the defense, just the special teams – I think everybody can really take a long look at themselves in a mirror and realize that everybody could’ve done something better, and hopefully they will and move forward to next week.
Robert Griffin III went 29-for-37 for 267 yards against Houston, but had no touchdowns and looked ineffective in the pocket, often not throwing the ball away under pressure. Gruden talked about his quarterback’s play, saying that he did well:
It was pretty good. He did some good things, obviously, and there are some plays there that I’m sure he wishes he had back obviously as everybody does in that game. We took a sack at the 34-yard line when we’re in field goal range – didn’t have much protection, but we’ve got to throw it away. We took a sack on a screen pass in a two-minute drill that we can’t have happen, but he did complete I think 75 or 80 percent of his passes, which were good, but really to score six points on offense – not quite good enough.
Finally, the rookie head coach also critiqued his own performance. Gruden said that from a play-calling standpoint, there are things he could have done better:
Yeah, we could have done better in the first half. First half we were poor, I was poor in the first half and we could have had a nice lead. However, we didn’t execute and I took some shots with play-actions that failed miserably, and didn’t quite work out, but you’re right. Defensively we’ve got to do a better job of getting off the field on third down.
If you look at the stats, if you’re a stat person, third downs were a major issue for us on offense and on defense. They were 50 percent, I think we were 25 percent and that’s a huge issue. Third-and-six, they get a first down, they gain seven. Now that not only obviously gives them better field position, it eats up another minute and a half of the clock. Hats off to Houston playing good ball control offense and keeping the offense off the field, but you’re right, we have got to do a better job defensively getting off the field and stopping them on third down.