Colts
Colts QB Daniel Jones could have gone home to rehab after his season ending injury, but stuck around the team to learn everything he could alongside HC Shane Steichen. For now, it seems as though Indianapolis could at least be considering running it back with Jones under center.
“He’s in every meeting,” Steichen said, via ESPN’s Stephen Holder. “He comes to every practice. He’s always around. Still in the QB meetings. Off days, he’s in the QB room, studying the tape, preparing, even though he’s not playing. Still going through everything. So, he’s still fully engaged.”
“It’s not like I’d be doing anything else.” Jones joked. “I learned a lot, I think, just being around these coaches, being in the system, learning from Shane, learning from everybody here. Very, very grateful and appreciative of everyone and the experience here. Obviously, there’s a business side to it, and I understand that. I think, obviously, it’s a long process in recovery, and there’s a time frame to it. You’ve got to check a lot of boxes along the way, but I expect to be ready to go by training camp. So, we’ll attack the process and make sure I’m ready to go.”
Colts GM Chris Ballard said he thinks Jones will be back to his regular self after rehabbing from his injury.
“I do feel confident that he will make it back. Will he be the version you saw right away? Maybe not, but he’s still going to be really good. I think as he goes along and plays, he’ll be fine. I think Daniel Jones has got a really bright future here in Indianapolis.”
Texans
Texans QB C.J. Stroud threw four interceptions in the first half, and his lackluster performance has many around the league wondering if his stellar rookie season was just a fluke after a second straight year of struggles.
“I look back and I just feel like I let people down, and I’m not happy with that,” Stroud said, via Pro Football Talk. “It hurts, and I’m not naïve to it. I didn’t play my best this year, but I’m going to respond. I’m going to keep my chest up, my chin up high, and I’m going to just keep battling forward.”
“No, I mean, everybody is entitled to their own opinion,” Stroud added. “I know that I’m still getting better, and I’ve still got a lot of things to figure out. Year three for me. It will be year four next year, and I’m still learning every day. Had a new system this year and new guys and it’s something I’m still getting adjusted to. That’s no excuses, just I’ve got to learn from that. I don’t try to — I try my best to forget successes and failures. Regardless of what it is in that specific season, I’m going to learn from this, and I’m going to move on, I’ll be better, and I’m going to be back. I’m going to learn from this, the ball security and everything, especially the way our defense has played all year. It’s something that I had done a pretty good job of, you know, to this point. So I’m going to continue to be better in that area. But I’m not happy with myself when it comes to that, because I took points and opportunities away from our team.”
Texans DE Will Anderson and HC DeMeco Ryans made it clear that Stroud has the support of the team going forward.
“I’m gonna be 100 on this,” Anderson said when asked about Stroud. “It’s so much bigger than football. It’s so much bigger than football. It’s so much bigger than what everybody has to say, especially for C.J. He’s big on his faith, he knows who he does it for. He knows who he is, and he’s God’s, man. God’s hand is upon him. He’s going to be good. We’re rallying behind him. I told him, ‘Man, I still think you’re the best quarterback in this league, hands down. It’s nobody better than you.’ And we’re behind him. We’re rallying behind him, man.”
“C.J. is our guy. I believed that he could come back out in the second half and flip it,” Ryans explained. “I believed that he could play better, and he did that in the second half. He did play better. We had some positive drives there in the second half. I believed that he would do that. And he did that. As I always tell our guys, ‘At halftime, it really doesn’t matter what happened in the first half. You have to flush it, remove it, and you just have to go out and finish the right way.’ We’ve been there before. We’ve been in situations much more dire than this, and we were able to bounce back. So there was no doubt in my mind.”
“I told him, ‘Keep your head up. I love you, like, I’ve got your back,” Ryans recalled. “And that’s what I told him at halftime: ‘This whole team has your back. We’re in this thing together, from Day 1.’ It doesn’t change for me, like we have a really special group, a tight-knit group, and when things don’t go your way, you have bad performances, it’s not a time to point fingers or say it’s all one person. It all starts with me — me as the head coach of this team. We didn’t perform well. Obviously, I didn’t have our guys ready to go in this moment.”
“For him to say that (tonight) meant a lot,” Stroud concluded. “It reminded me of when I was about to get drafted, I was 20 years old, a little wet behind the ears, and he told me if I came to this team, he’d always have my back. So, I was appreciative of that support (tonight), which will help me get to the other side of this. … We’ll go back and look at the film. … This year, we didn’t put enough points on the scoreboard. Our defense got stops all year, turnovers, put us in great position and I didn’t put us in position to get the wins by scoring points. I take full responsibility as the leader of the offense.”
Titans
Titans GM Mike Borgonzi not only spoke about the team’s roster but also the ongoing search for the team’s next head coach.
“We have a lot of good, young building blocks on this roster,” Borgonzi said, via ESPN’s Turron Davenport. “We have one of the best defensive players in the league in Jeff Simmons. We have a young quarterback who has faced a ton of adversity this year, and he continued to get better. It’s having a clear vision, having standards for what you do, and then having that person not be afraid of conflict in a negative way, but being able to hold people accountable is the biggest thing, throughout the whole building. And that person ultimately has to connect everybody in the building, too. So you have to have that balance of being demanding, connecting people in the building, and just bringing people together. So those are the big things that we’re really looking for. Obviously, they have to have a strategic vision in terms of philosophy and X’s and O’s as well.”
Borgonzi was asked if the team considered Chiefs OC Matt Nagy to be their strongest candidate so far, as he was rumored to be a favorite for the position.
“I have a great relationship with [Nagy],” Borgonzi replied. “I’ve worked with him for years. I thought he did some good things in Chicago, and he did a lot of good things when he returned to Kansas City. There is no timetable. I think we have to make the best decision for this team. So it’ll take as long as we have to do it to find the best person.”
“Somebody who can really do everything from top to bottom, and that’s both sides of the ball,” Ward said when asked about what type of coach he wants. “Offense, defense, they know the system in and out. And I think the biggest thing is how the coach is going to be with the players. How’s he going to comrade the locker room? You have all different types of personalities in our locker room. And whoever we get, I know they’ll be the right hire.”
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