Mike McCarthy Speaks!

There isn't much to get out of a press conference, but sometimes a few interesting bits fall out. This post game press conference was about injuries, penalties, and the awful run defense.

The problem with the run defense is that they're trying to hard? I'm not buying that lemon. I guess poor gap control is coach-speak for not getting the job done.

The run defense, really the biggest thing that factored for us in run defense was a number of times, it's almost like we took turns doing it, was guys trying to do too much. I think that's something you try to guard against, you try to practice against, because that's emphasized. Maybe they read your guys' articles too much. But when you've got a problem, run defense is all about gap control, the proper technique and playing to the guy next to you. And the way we're situated and organized on defense, it's very evident when something goes wrong, someone not being in their gap. We had it a number of times where the defender had his head in the right gap, he has his gap in control, and then he pulls out trying to make the play.

The first thing I thought when DT Cullen Jenkins was lost for the season was that the interior pass rush would vanish. I thought they got some pressure on QB Matt Ryan, but it didn't show up on the stat sheet. McCarthy said Atlanta put a chip block on DE Aaron Kampman and DE Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila to slow them down. They could send LB A.J. Hawk to blitz more, but that might not be a good idea if he's not 100%, and they can't blitz LB Nick Barnett either because he's vanished this season. I don't know where their pass rush will come from the rest of this season.

There was a number of five-man pressures, and frankly we had a number of one-on-ones, if you watch the film closely, that we didn't win. I thought Bob was aggressive with the number of five-man pressures, man free, that we had called in the game. We didn't do a very good job pressuring the quarterback.