Bruce Arians spoke to the media following the Tampa Bay’s 34-23 season-opening loss on the road to the New Orleans Saints on Sunday. Arians called the result “very disappointing” and was surprised by the mental errors and penalties that ultimately sunk the Bucs after two solid weeks of practice.
Arians touched on the highs and lows from the Bucs’ divisional match-up. Read the full transcript from his post-game press conference below.
(Opening statement)
“Very disappointing. After the way we practiced for the last two weeks, I would have never thought that I’d see us have that many penalties, turnovers and basically a mental error that really cost us once we got back into the game in coverage. It’s round one. We’ve lost round one, and we’ll get ready for round two.”
(On the special teams mistakes – a blocked field goal and botched onside kick recovery)
“I didn’t see any of that coming. we practiced all of that stuff. We had a poorish protection up the middle on the long field goal. He had good time. He hit it good. We just got beat inside. And then you never go backwards for a football, you learn that [expletive] in high school. Mike Edwards decided to go backwards for a ball and it’s another thing that you practice and you never anticipate guys doing it in the heat of the battle.”
(On Tom Brady’s two interceptions)
“One was a miscommunication between he and Mike [Evans]. He thought Mike was going down the middle. It was a different coverage and Mike read it right. He should have bent across his face but Tom just overthrew it. The other one was a screen pass with an outlet called and he threw the outlet and it was a pick-six. It was a bad decision.”
Bucs QB Tom Brady – Photo by: Getty Images
(On Brady’s overall play)
“He came out lighting it up and we go right down the field and scored a touchdown, so I wouldn’t say that he was out of sync at all until we started screwing it up. We didn’t run the ball as well as I thought we would on the edges. We had some success but we had some good drives and we had some really poor drives but the turnovers and the penalties were the key.”
(On if he expected more from Ronald Jones II)
“I thought RoJo … and I’ll go back and watch the tape, but I thought he ran really well.”
(On how communication was on the field)
“There was no noise, I mean it was like a regular practice with no noise. We’ve practiced with a heck of a lot more noise than that. I was a kind of disappointed, I don’t think it was fair to the Saints to have it that low because you could have an easy conversation across the field with somebody. It’s not a good deal, it should be fixed.”
(On the performance of his offensive line, specifically the offensive tackles)
“[Brady] held the ball some. We’ll go back and watch the film but when you get into those known passing situations, it’s tough on them but they have to do their job so I’ll go back and watch the film.”
(On if the Bucs beat the Bucs)
“There’s no doubt. That’s what I said to start with, and it’s my job to make that stop. I thought we had it fixed, but obviously I didn’t do a very good job of getting it fixed.”
(On the lack of sacks and turnovers)
“We had a couple go right through our hands. He threw it to us two or three times and we had a penalty on one when we should have had an interception and another one goes right through Jamel [Dean’s] hands so we’ve got to catch them when they throw them to us.”
(On how deflating the loss of this much-anticipated game is)
“We kind of cancelled all of that noise out. We knew we had a tough opponent and that we were going to have to play really, really well and we didn’t play very well. That’s the most disappointing thing, the way we played. The mental errors and the penalties. We practiced fourth-and-short – never jumped offsides 100 times. Actually, guys were telling each other not to jump offsides, and we jump offsides. That’s unexplainable to me, but we’ve got a lot of things to correct.”
(On the play of ILBs Devin White and Lavonte David)
“I thought that the second half, the defense played really well the whole second half. They got a bunch of three-and-outs that gave our offense a chance but those two guys especially played really, really well from what I could watch.”
Bucs WR Mike Evans – Photo by: Getty Images
(On how much Evans’ hamstring bothered him)
“To me he had 100 yards. You get that many pass interference calls and those are yards. They aren’t catches. They don’t go in the stats, but he had a 100-yard game easily with just pass interference penalties. He’s going to catch those balls if they aren’t hanging all over him, so I don’t think Mike was bothered that much. We kind of tried to watch him as much as we could.”
(On if they have to get Evans more involved in the offense)
“No, like I said, he had 100 yards. He had 100 yards. He had – I don’t know how many targets, but when you’re getting that many balls downfield thrown to you and you’re getting PIs (pass interference), I don’t know what else we can do to get you the ball but no, I don’t think so.”
(On the other adjustments that stood out other than the crowd noise)
“Obviously it was the first game for the officials with no preseason, too. I would have liked to have had it really loud, we’re okay with noise, so it’s just more energy in the building. There was absolutely no energy in the building with no noise the way it was but other than that it was just like practice.”
(On if he’ll have the crowd noise louder next week if he has control over it)
“I would hope so. My mom probably wants it louder too, so she doesn’t hear me cussing all the time.”
(On the play of Scotty Miller)
“He’s done it every day in practice. He’s getting better and better. Tom trusts him. He utilizes his speed really well and that’s what I expect from him every week now.”
(On the positives from the defense)
“I thought that our second-half defense was outstanding, other than the one busted coverage when we let [Jared] Cook catch the ball down the sideline. Other than that, I thought it was really, really well in the second half. It gave us a chance to win.”
(On if he believes that the Bucs can still win the division)
“Hell yeah. The Saints didn’t do some of the things that we did to ourselves so we’ve got to play better, but there’s 16 games. We can win this division without a doubt.”
(On if it was too much to expect Brady and the offense to click this quickly)
“Yes and no. I thought that we came out and went right down the field and made some good plays and scored and then we hit some lows when we weren’t on the same page. I don’t know why but we’ll work on it. We’ve tried not to listen to the hype and just go to work every day and we’ll go back to work on Tuesday and get better for Carolina.”
(On Brady’s grasp of the offense)
“He’s got a total grasp on it. He made a bunch of checks today and some were good and some weren’t but he was on top of it.”
