WEEK 3 — PODIUM AVAILABILITY
Monday, September 16, 2019 | Hoag Performance Center | Costa Mesa, Calif.
LOS ANGELES CHARGERS HEAD COACH ANTHONY LYNN
Opening statement:
"After watching the tape, there are no surprises. You can't win in this league when you make those type of mistakes. We did for whatever reason. The good news is that everything is correctable. I expect these guys to bounce back like we always have and go from there."
On S Adrian Phillips:
"That is accurate [that he has a broken forearm]. I don't like to put timetables on players, but he is going to be out for a significant amount of time.
"Yeah, we'll put him on [injured reserve] so that we can get someone else on the roster."
On the team's injuries:
"There are more than I like, but we have guys that are stepping up. We have complete confidence in these guys. I feel like we hadn't missed a beat. Even the game yesterday, we had six starters that didn't go, but I feel like if we hadn't made those mistakes that we could have controlled our own destiny. It's just part of the game. You look around the league, guys are going down. It's football."
On if Phillips could return from injured reserve:
"Absolutely."
On the safeties:
"We're looking at different combinations to see what best fits our team."
On S Nasir Adderley:
"For the last couple of weeks, Nas [Adderley] has been practicing. He looks like Nas, but he missed all of training camp. There is a lot that he doesn't know. Once the season gets going, it's hard to get a player caught up. We'll do what's best for our defense, I can tell you that.
"Each week is game-plan specific. There wouldn't be much for him to catch up, but like I said, we're going to do what's best for the team."
On replacing Phillips:
"It's kind of like when we lost [S Derwin] DJ [James Jr.] and AP [Phillips] stepped. AP's versatility is huge. He was a special teams Pro Bowler last year. He's the captain of that secondary. He'll be hard to replace. We have some guys that will try to fill his shoes."
On S Jaylen Watkins:
"Jaylen is a versatile [defensive back]. He can play corner, he can play nickel, he can play strong, he can play free. He has been a heck of an insurance policy for us."
On if Phillips had a communicator in his helmet on Sunday:
"AP is like a coach on the field."
On LB Kyzir White having a communicator the previous week:
"You're just going to see more sub-packages. That's why you saw AP with the green dot [yesterday]."
On the team's resolve:
"This team has always had that 'next man up' mentality. We're going to compete every single week. That's one thing that we're going to do. We're going to try to get those guys healthy and maybe get them back later. For right now, we have enough. I like to say all we've got is all we need."
On the challenge of injuries:
"It creates a lack of depth. We can't continue down this road. Right now, we're pretty thin in certain positions."
On the strategy to sit players in the preseason:
"Unfortunately, when you have cracked fibulas and cracked forearms, I don't know if there's anything you can do to avoid that. It's just part of the game. These are really tough injuries."
On bringing players back from injured reserve:
"You can only bring two back. [It's not who is ready first] necessarily. It will be the two that we feel like can help us win football games at the time."
On TE Hunter Henry not being placed on injured reserve:
"Hopefully, he's not out as long as those guys. That was the main reason."
On Detroit's second touchdown:
"When AP [Phillips] goes out, you have two guys that affects — [S] Rayshawn [Jenkins] and [Jaylen] Watkins. Watkins has to now go play Rayshawn's position and Rayshawn has to go play AP's position. We could have been in better position on that play, I can tell you that.
"[Phillips not being in on the play] did [have an effect], but that's football. You have to make adjustments. You have to have contingency plans. We have to execute."
On missing Henry during the game:
"We miss Hunter a lot. We miss him every day in this building, just his presence and his leadership. His production on the field? Absolutely. He's one of the best combo tight ends in the game. He's hard to replace.
On two tight end sets:
"It's kind of hard to do when you only suit up two tight ends. You can't go in with two tight end sets. Those packages change from week-to-week. It's something that we're definitely looking at doing."
On RB Austin Ekeler:
"It's a concern because you don't like to see patterns, but Austin is a heck of a football player. He's a smart, young man. We have to learn from our mistakes. Unfortunately, sometimes that's a process. You have to go through those growing pains when you're a young player. I believe he'll learn from it and he'll be a running back because of it."
On the fumble:
"The only thing that I would fault Austin [Ekeler] on for that play was I don't like for a back to go over the top on first-and-goal. I like to stay on the ground and try to cram the cut. He went over the top. When you go over the top, you expose the football."
On T Sam Tevi's penalty:
"It's a call that you see all the time. Sometimes they call it and sometimes they don't. I can't argue with the official on that. His hands were on the back. Did it affect the play? No, but his hands were on the defender's back."
On WR Dontrelle Inman's penalty:
"You hate to see it called, but you can't argue with the official because it was there."
On the interception at the end of the game:
"I don't think [a potential field goal] had anything to do with it. We have a lot of confidence in [P] Ty [Long]. Ty has done a heck of a job since he's been here. He was having an off day, for sure, but we were definitely going to give him another chance to kick that ball if we hadn't thrown the interception. I don't think that played into [QB] Philip's [Rivers] decision whatsoever to throw that ball into double coverage. I think it was just a bad decision. It was just one of the bad decisions that we made all day. You could go back and any one of those decisions that [if] we hadn't made [it], we probably could have won that football game. I don't think it was that play. It was any play."
On other options on the interception:
"We had a read. We had [TE] Virgil [Green] coming across on the shallow. We had [WR] Mike [Williams] come across on the deep-in. [WR] Keenan [Allen] was running a route that takes him to the back of the end zone. It was not open. We made a bad decision there, that's all."
On P Ty Long handling kicking and punting:
"Ty has been doing that all of his life. When he was in Canada, he did it every single game. He did it last week. I think he was [AFC] Special Teams Player of the Week. That's not an excuse, he just missed two kicks."
On watching the film:
"I don't like watching games like that because it reminds me of 2017 at Jacksonville and 2018 [against] Denver. For whatever reason, those types of games show up once a year. I don't like it. It's my job, when I see it happen, to stop it. We just didn't get it done yesterday. We had six penalties in the third quarter. We had three penalties the whole game the week before that. For whatever reason, it just showed up yesterday. Hopefully, we'll learn from it and we'll put it behind us."
On preventing games like Sunday's:
"We're a smart football team. We don't do that a lot. It kind of blindsides you when it happens because the week before we only had three penalties. We played a very smart game. If we hadn't played that smart, we wouldn't have won that game last week. This team is a tough team and it's a smart team. We normally don't beat ourselves, but there has always been that one game that has popped up. I think, hopefully, that was yesterday and it's over."
On his approach following the Jacksonville loss in 2017:
"That was two years ago. That was a first-year head coach. That approach was a whole lot different. I've calmed down a lot."
On the rushing defense:
"It was better, much better. I think we held those guys under four yards-per-rush attempt. Our goal was to get better at run defense. We knew they were going to pound it. They tried — 28 times. We held them, I think, to like 3.8 [yards-per-carry]. I thought that was good."
On the defensive line:
"That whole defensive line, I thought they strained. I thought they played well. [DE] Joey [Bosa] and [DE] Melvin Ingram [III], those two stood out the most to me because when you have elite rushers on the edge, sometimes they don't like to play that run. I saw them making extra effort to make plays in the run game. That's being really unselfish as a pass rusher."
On not having a sack:
"There was a lot of emphasis on the run defense, but there are more ways to affect the quarterback than just sacks. Their plan was to pound the football, a quick passing game and max protection shots down the field. It's going to be hard to get to that quarterback with that type of plan. There are other ways to affect the quarterback. You can tip balls, you can play tighter coverage, you can push the pocket. I thought they did that. Any time you hold a team in their house on opening day on the road to 13 points, you should win that game."
On Rivers' scramble:
"He's smart enough to know that he has to slide. I like it when he comes out [and scrambles] every now and then because people don't expect him to do that. When you go and get a first down with your legs, I think it just shows that this guy is just competing. He's doing whatever it takes."
On CB Brandon Facyson:
"I thought Facyson's coverage got a little tighter. I think he's a guy that's going to continue to improve every week. He really has no choice because people are going to challenge him."
On injuries to starting quarterbacks:
"It feels good [to have Philip Rivers and his durability], but you just never know. He [could be] just one hit away, but he has avoided that his whole career. That's one of the things that I really loved about him [when I was] coming here, was his availability. The guy shows up and he's there for you every single week."
On K Michael Badgley:
"He's getting better.
"He was still a little sore. It's just an injury that you don't want to linger. You want this guy to get 100 percent healthy before you bring him back. I think when you're a running back, you can play at 90 percent. At receiver, you can play at 90 percent. When you're a kicker, I need you at 100 percent."
On S Roderic Teamer:
"We'll see, he's going to practice and take some reps this week.
"He was a backup strong safety before he got hurt. He's going to get some opportunities."
On WR Mike Williams:
"I thought he was good. He was a guy that we didn't intend to play at all. Then, we thought by Friday, 'Well, maybe we could just use him in certain situations.' He ended up playing a lot more than we thought. He fought through it. You could tell he was in pain, but he fought through it.
"We watched him run around a little bit on Saturday at our walkthrough practice. We decided then that he was going to play."
