NY Giants S Logan Ryan (12.20.20)
NYG Postgame (vs. Cleveland Browns) Transcripts: S Logan Ryan
Q: How much did not having James (Bradberry) affect the secondary tonight?
A: It definitely changed some things. I think you can’t replace James Bradberry, but I think everyone has to step up in a different way by doing a little more. Honestly, our hats off to the Browns. I think our coverage was tight; they made some contested catches. We really loaded up to stop the run game which we did, but we really weren’t good in third down or in the red area which is, situationally, how you win football games. I think James (Bradberry) would’ve helped, but him missing wasn’t the only problem tonight. Obviously, James affects things, but I don’t think it’s the reason we lost tonight, and it’s definitely not an excuse you’ll hear me make.
Q: You haven’t been a part of a team with a losing record since you’re freshman year at Rutgers, and you guys just clinched that. How do you feel about where this team is at as you go into these last two games?
A: I love where the team is at. I’ve never been 1-7 before either, but we’ve fought, and we’ve fought, and we’ve fought. We’ve been counted out, left for dead, we won some games, surprised some people who didn’t believe in us, then everyone believed in us, now people don’t believe again. It doesn’t matter, we are where we are, we’ve got two games in front of us, we got to go out there and win. And that’s all that matters. I’ve been a leader since my days at Rutgers, and all of our games were hard fought. If you watched Rutgers games they were hard fought, and a lot of the games in my career have been hard fought. I was never a front-runner, I’m not a front-runner now, so I have no problem with the position we’re in as long as we believe we can win next week. We’ve got to watch this film, and get our attitude to be there.
Q: Did you like the fact that (Coach) Joe (Judge) was aggressive the whole game?
A: Yeah, I loved it. Joe is an aggressive head coach. When you’re like that, you can do that when you have a really good defense, and you believe in your defense. We have to back our head coach when he does make aggressive calls, when he goes for more points, when he goes for the win, when he goes for the big plays that were close to being made but weren’t. Defensively, we have to come on the field and defend the grass a little better than we did. Hats off to them, hats off to Baker (Mayfield); he played really efficiently today, and if we didn’t have respect for him before, we definitely have it now. He was one of the most efficient quarterbacks we have gone against this year.
Q: When a coach tests positive, and you have to have a practice canceled, and a teammate who’s very valuable can’t play because of a mistake he’s made away from the facility, does any part of you feel frustrated that the mistake of one person affects the whole group?
A: Not at all. I don’t know how it’s a mistake. My wife can go pick my kids up from preschool or she can go get COVID and give it to me and I’ve done everything I can to avoid everyone I could… it’s something that I don’t know is 100% avoidable, I think we predicted that this year. It wasn’t our first time missing a practice, it wasn’t our first time having someone test positive for COVID, it wasn’t our first time having to fill things in. We’re not the only team dealing with this, so that’s definitely not an excuse. In these situations, I expect myself, and my team to step up and win. I think the opportunity was there. I think the story was written to have every excuse we could make and not make an excuse and go win the game. I think the opportunity was there to win the game tonight, to rewrite the story, to come back just like we did in Seattle with a backup quarterback and upset this and that. I thought we had the opportunity to do that again. And we didn’t play well enough to do that. You’re not going to find one mistake or one excuse in this franchise, I know you guys are going to try, but I don’t think we’re making that. They did a better job on third down, in the red area, and we didn’t get any turnovers tonight, and that’s a recipe for losing football.
Q: How much were you forced to play zone because of personnel?
A: Just as much as we do any other game. Look at the Seattle game, how much man did we play? I don’t know what the analytics say, we can look it up on PFF or NextGen stats, but look, we’re calling the game to win the game. Cleveland is a team that runs the ball the third best in the league. We sold out to stop the run, we made Baker Mayfield be a pocket quarterback, he was extremely efficient at that. They were in third and managables, which we don’t want. They got a bunch of third downs, and in the red area we were 0/3. So man or zone, whatever you want to call it, when you’re not good in the red area or on third down, you’re not going to play great scoring defense. Is 20 a whole lot of points given up? Of course not. But we had to give up less in order to win the game. That’s our job, to give the ball back to the offense, get them more opportunities, force turnovers, and make it hard on the quarterback. I felt like he was extremely efficient today, I felt like he was extremely prepared today, and he played a good game. We have to take that on the chin, and get ready to go against the former MVP in Lamar Jackson next week.
Q: What did you think of the way Baker (Mayfield) performed out of the pocket?
A: He played well. We didn’t want him to extend plays. We didn’t want him to get out of the pocket, we think he’s really great at that. My guys play adamantly tonight. The defensive backfield played spot duty, they came in and we knew it was going to be the most physical game of the year, and we went toe to toe with those guys. Situationally, they executed better. No matter how physical you are, how tough you are, if you’re not good situationally, you’re not going to keep them off the board. We have to go back and clean up our third down, get back to being one of the top defenses in football where we were for a little bit, we got to clean up our red area, and get that fixed. I think you’ll see a better performance next week since we have to have a better performance next week.