By Scott Salomon
(On turnovers) “Yeah, credit to the Eagles, man. They played better than us from start to finish. We didn’t start how we wanted to. Obviously, the turnovers hurt, and I mean, I just gotta, I take all the blame for that. Those early turnovers swing the momentum of the game, and then they capitalized on them, and they scored on the one, and then they got a touchdown immediately after, so that’s 14 points that I kinda gave them, and it’s hard to come back from that in the Super Bowl, and so, just didn’t play to my standard and I have to be better next time.”
(On interceptions) “Yeah, the kid [Cooper DeJean] made a great play. He sat underneath [Xavier] Worthy, and I tried to reset back and throw it across the field to D-Hop [DeAndre Hopkins] and put it in a tight window, and he made a great play on it and then returned it for a touchdown. And then the second interception, I was trying to throw it to Hollywood [Brown], got bumped a little bit, but still can’t, gotta find a way to make the throw and it kind of sailed behind Hollywood and went right to the linebacker.
(On the Eagles defense) “Yeah, they played great. There’s no way around it, they played great from start to finish. They got after it, defensive line played really well. The DBs played well to complement them and linebackers as well. And so, like I said, I can’t turn the ball over early in the game when it’s not going our way, and I’ll have to learn from that and try to be better the next opportunity that I hopefully get.”
(On Super Bowl loss to Tampa Bay compared to today) “Um, I mean, both sucked. There’s no way around it. Anytime you lose a Super Bowl, it’s the worst feeling in the world. They’ll stick with you the rest of your career. I mean, these will be the two losses that will motivate me to be even better for the rest of my career because you only get so few of these, and you have to capitalize on these, and they hurt probably more than the wins feel good.”
(On losing out on the three-peat) “No, I mean, not necessarily. Losing the Super Bowl just doesn’t feel good either way. I was proud of how my team fought this entire season with the expectations that we had on us. But, we came up short, and so now it’s how you respond, and hopefully, that we can learn from this like we learned from the last loss that we had and try to continue to get even better because it’s gonna take a better football, especially for me to try to make a run at another Super Bowl.”
(On his words in the locker room) “You know, I didn’t have to say much, you know. I thought our other leaders, Chris Jones especially, spoke and like we talked about, I mean, it hurts. It’s gonna hurt for a while, but how can you respond from it. We have a great football team. We still have a young football team. And a lot of these guys, it will be their first time having a defeat in a season, and how can you get better? How can you not be satisfied with just getting here and taking your game to the next level? And that starts with me and the other leaders on this team, but it’ll feed throughout the entire team, and hopefully, we can come back next season and put up a better effort.”
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(On the close games in-season vs. type of ball the team was playing tonight) “I thought our team played really well. I feel like I didn’t play to my standard, just with, especially with the struggles that I had earlier in the season. And so, there’s things that I have to get better at, and they kinda showed today on the biggest stage. And so, I have to find a way this off-season to combat what defenses are doing to me as far as rush lanes and different coverages that they’re playing. And that’s the beauty of football is that you never can be satisfied with just going out there and playing and thinking you’re going to have success year in and year out. These defenses are going to continue to get better and better, and so, I have to get better. I take a lot of ownership in that, and I wanna hopefully come back and play better football this next season.”
(On defenses) “Yeah, I think just when defenses are gonna play to the shell coverage and stay back and play man on third-down, I can’t make bad plays worse, and I think that’s something that you saw today is that there was times when guys aren’t open, and I need to throw the ball away or check it down and let other guys make plays happen. Sometimes I get where I wanna make a big play, a big play to kind of spark us, and that’s something that I’ve dealt with my entire career. And if I don’t show that I will take what’s there in the game, the defenses are gonna stand in the coverages that they’re in. I think they only blitzed like two times, one time, this entire game today. They were gonna make me be a fundamental quarterback from the pocket and take what’s there and I, that’s stuff I have to get better at.”
(On pressure from the three-peat chances) “Nah, not really. It’s just the pressure of the Super Bowl. There’s always pressure, and you have to find ways to deal with that and find ways to respond to that, and we’ve have good games, and we’ve had games like this now. And we’ll have to find ways to respond to this adversity and, like I said, hopefully it’ll motivate these guys, especially myself, to be even better. It’s a short off-season. We have a lot of guys come back, we’ll have some guys that won’t, but it’s a short off-season, and we have to get better so that when hopefully we get this opportunity again that we can go out there and capitalize on it.”
(On Travis Kelce potentially retiring) “I’ll let Travis make that decision on his own, man. He’s given so much to this team and to the NFL and been such a joy, not only for me to work with, but for people to watch. And so, he knows he still has a lot of football left in him. You can see it. He always makes plays in the biggest moments. But, it’s if he wants to put in that grind because it’s a grind to go out there and play 20 games, whatever it is, and get to the Super Bowl. He’s done enough to be a gold-jacket guy and first-ballot Hall of Famer. But I know he still has love for the game, and he’ll get to spend some time with his family and make that decision on his own, but, he knows he’ll come back here with welcome arms. We love that guy not only for the football player, but the person that he is every single day.”
(On team fighting to the end) “That’s why I was proud of the guys, like we’re gonna fight to the end. That’s just who we are. You get to a point where it’s kinda out of reach, but I mean, all you can do is go out there and take it play-by-play. That’s what we did. We fought to the very end. I was proud of the guys. Obviously, we didn’t play great football, like I said, it started with myself, and I will take full ownership in that. But I was proud of how the guys kept fighting to the very end of that football game and until those clocks hit zero.”
(On Eagles pressure on him without blitzing a lot) “I think in order to make a team blitz, you have to be able to beat what they’re showing and that’s what we didn’t do, especially in the first half. We made some good adjustments in half time and came out better, but it was almost too late. The momentum had kind of flipped in their favor and how they play with Saquon [Barkley] and how they can run the football and control the clock with Jalen [Hurts] making big third-down conversions, it kinda put our defense in a really bad spot. And so, when you’re in these big games, you have to play better from the beginning, and that’s something I’ll have to continue to work on and continue to get better at. Force defenses to blitz by attacking their zone coverage the right way, and so, that’s something that I can continue to get better at in my career.”
(On his impact on the game) “I threw two interceptions in their end. I threw a pick-six, and I threw a pick that they returned to the five-yard line, and they scored immediately after, so when you give a team 14 points, especially a really good football team, a Super Bowl football team, then not a lot of good things happen. And so, that’s why I take ownership in this loss more than probably any loss in my entire career because I put us in a bad spot, and even though we put up some stats at the end of the game, those stats didn’t really matter because I’d already kinda lost the momentum for this entire team, and so, I have to be better at not turning over whenever it’s not going my way, trusting in my defense, trusting in the rest of my team to get those stops until I can figure out what we need to do as an offense.”
(On what he respects about Jalen Hurts) “Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of things, but the one thing that I’ve always respected about Jalen is that he’s a winner, and I know that sounds, some people take that as like it’s not a good thing, but you have to find ways to win with your football team that you have around you, and that’s what I’ve learned in my entire career and that’s what he’s came into the NFL and done his entire career is that if he needs to run the ball, he will run it; if he needs to throw the ball, he will throw it and if he needs to make a big play, he will make the big play. And so, that’s stuff that not everybody has, and that’s something that I have a lot of respect for Jalen and I said it after the first Super Bowl we played against them, I said he will be back, and he was, and he got the better of me today. I’m sure we’ll face again at some point in our careers in a big game like this.”
