Q. Why so many drops, turnovers and mistakes in a game that you had to win? Are the Redskins that much better?
COACH KELLY: Well, I think sometimes in the drop game, it's not -- it's more us than them, you know? But we didn't play well enough on the -- or coach well enough to win a football game like that. And you can't put yourself in the hole like we did. You know, those two turnovers were costly for us. And then obviously the drops, I think, affected us on the offensive side of the ball.
Q. What was the message to your team just now?
COACH KELLY: That we know the situation, we've been eliminated. They know Washington is in. We still do have one more game just like the Giants have one more game. The Giants have been eliminated and we've still got to go play. We've got to represent this organization and we have to come back on Tuesday and prepare to go play the Giants. It is a similar situation that we were in last year, but we've got one more game to play and we've got to go play it.
Q. You've said that you believe you have a good football team. Why are these mistakes continuing to happen?
COACH KELLY: I wish I had the answer to that and we would stop it. But you know, obviously we're not doing a good enough job coaching them.
Q. What went wrong this year?
COACH KELLY: There are a lot of things. I think there's not -- this isn't the time for it. I'm not going to think back on the whole season. In this game, we didn't play well enough to beat a good football team.
Q. You spent three high draft picks on wide receivers over the last couple years. How do you explain the lack of productivity and the amount of drops?
COACH KELLY: Again, those are end-of-the-year things where we will look at the whole thing and we'll go through all that. I'm not looking at that right now, I'm sorry. But we didn't catch the ball well enough today to win and, obviously, that's a problem.
Q. On the fumble there with QB Sam Bradford, what did you see happen?
COACH KELLY: It looked like the snap was a little low from what I saw, and I don't know if [QB] Sam [Bradford] got a great grasp of it before he tried to get it out to the perimeter, but I'd have to look and study the film. I just saw the quick replay up there.
Q. Could conditioning be a part of not being able to hold on to the ball?
COACH KELLY: Conditioning? I don't think it's conditioning.
Q. Their running backs and tight ends ended up with about 230 receiving yards and three touchdowns --
COACH KELLY: We knew the tight end was a difficult matchup. I think the running back one was the one that is disappointing. I didn't think that would be a match up that we would not win. We knew we had our hands full with [Washington Redskins TE] Jordan Reed. I think Reed is one of the really good tight ends in this league and he has done it to a lot of different people. We thought we would be better in the running back matchup.
Q. Did you have a look at WR Riley Cooper's drop/catch before you challenged it?
COACH KELLY: Yeah, and it was extremely close. And I just felt, at that point in time, it could go either way, we might as well take our shot. If we lose it, then we were going to lose a time-out. But it was -- you know, it looked like when he rolled over, it was still on him, and you just couldn't tell quickly if it touched the ground.
So they [the coaching staff] were mixed upstairs in the box on what we should do, and that was my decision, and that was on me to challenge that. And I just said, 'I'm going to take a shot at it.' I didn't know if we were going to get it or not get it.
Q. Did you think this was a string of another good game for Bradford even though it is a continuation of the way he has played?
COACH KELLY: Yeah, I thought Sam threw the ball really well tonight in midst of pressure. But I thought there was one or two he wants back.
But I thought, overall, that Sam was on and Sam threw the ball well. The deep ball to [WR] Jordan [Matthews] was a big play. But I thought he was -- I thought we could ride him. I felt like he was on and putting the ball on people. But we just didn't do enough around him.
Q. Bradford was four for four, I think, on the first drive, and then I think he ran the ball five out of the next eight plays. Did you get away from the --
COACH KELLY: We had some penalties and I was just trying to get back on track. I think really the biggest thing, looking at those other drivers in the first quarter where we had an illegal procedure, we jumped offsides and we had an intentional ground. We had a couple of situations where I think we were behind.
We're trying to get it into a workable second- and third-down situation and it seemed like we were behind, unfortunately, and that's on us.
Q. What was the deal with T Jason Peters? It seemed like he was kind of hurt and maybe not playing as well as he should have.
COACH KELLY: I know he hurt his elbow and was out there, I think that was in the first quarter. And then he was cleared to go back in the game, and then I was just told at the end that he was out. They [the trainers] don't get into -- whenever they tell me they [the players] are out, they just say they are out and then they will come back and tell me they are back up. But we don't have time to discuss the injury and where it is. I didn't get that information. That will be something we'll do on Monday.
Q. How much responsibility do you put on your own shoulders for not making the playoffs two years in a row?
COACH KELLY: One hundred percent. That's all on my shoulders. It's the same thing I said a year ago, it's unacceptable. We have got to find a way to do a better job, and we have to put these guys in a better position to make plays. So it's one hundred percent on my shoulders.
Q. What are you most disappointed in from a coaching standpoint?
COACH KELLY: Today? Just our execution. We didn't do a good enough job to put those guys in position to make plays because I think we have some guys that can make plays, and again, that's on us.
Q. What was the reason for the lack of ground game?
COACH KELLY: We knew going in, I think, with Knighton [NT Terrance Knighton], Baker [DL Chris Baker] and some of those big guys inside that it was going to be a little bit tough sledding in there a little bit. We felt like with some of the injuries they had at secondary and some of the things at linebacker we were going to try to exploit that in the passing game, so that was kind of our game plan going in.
Q. Is your approach next week going to be the same as last year? Or will you start maybe playing some of your younger guys?
COACH KELLY: No, we are trying to go win the football game so this isn't -- if someone told me we don't have to go try and win a game, then we are in the wrong spot. We have the opportunity to go play one more game and we are going to go try to win it.
Q. On defense you run a lot of nickel and dime, with respect to their weapons, but weren't able to generate enough pressure with those alignments to get Washington Redskins QB Kirk Cousins off his spot. Do you anticipate trying to be able to do a better job with that?
COACH KELLY: Well, we have to. It's not like if we were in base defense we would have been better because that puts our outside linebackers in coverage so they are not in the rush mode. So what we do have to generate is the combination of both of those. We didn't generate enough pressure on Cousins tonight to affect him and then didn't match up well, especially with the tight end and the running backs.
Q. You said the coaching is the reason that you haven't made the playoffs the last couple of years. How much of that is personnel that isn't good enough to make the playoffs the last two years?
COACH KELLY: I think we're good enough. I just think we have to put them [the players] in position to make plays.
Q. You went to RB DeMarco Murray quite a bit in the second half. What were you seeing from him in the way he was running?
COACH KELLY: We thought he did a good job. Obviously, we wish we could have run the ball better against them, but I thought he hit the ball in there and gave us some good spark in the run game. He was doing a good job for us.
Q. On both of Washington Redskins TE Jordan Reed's touchdowns, it seemed like he had a linebacker on him. Was that the matchup you wanted?
COACH KELLY: Well, the first one it was a zone, so there wasn't a linebacker on him. It was a split-safety zone and they ran a power pass. So our middle linebacker stepped up, they ran one route to clear out the other safety and then Jordan split us down the middle so we were in zone coverage on that one.
Q. How about for the one that Washington Redskins RB Chris Thompson scored where LB Kiko Alonso was on him? Was he supposed to have help in that situation?
COACH KELLY: I have to get the exact call from Billy [defensive coordinator Bill Davis]. I think we did have help to the inside, but I'm not sure where it was. I've got look at the tape, but I know there was help in there. It was only a four-man rush, so there should have been help in there.
Q. Why have your inside linebackers been such a problem this season? That was supposed to be one of your best --
COACH KELLY: Well, I think we've been banged up a little bit at that position. All three of those guys have missed games during the year, I think, multiple games during the year. And then, obviously, losing Jordan [LB Jordan Hicks].
Q. On Murray's fumble, given that the ball kind of squirted around in the previous couple of plays, did you give any pause to think, 'Okay, a lateral pitch, horizontal pitch at this point --
COACH KELLY: Yeah, that's on me. That's on me. Not a good call. It's one hundred percent on me. I made the call. Not a good call.
Q. If you say you take 100 percent responsibility, do you worry about job security at all?
COACH KELLY: No. If it's not good enough, it's not good enough. But I'm going to continue to work as hard as I can and show up early in the morning and stay late at night and continue to work. But I don't think anybody in my situation would tell you they are worried about -- if they are worried about getting fired, they probably should already have been fired.
Q. How do you keep the team invested? How do you sell the rest of the season to them?
COACH KELLY: I think they understand, they did the same thing last year. These guys will go out and compete. That's not a question where I think I've got to give them a rousing pep talk on Tuesday. They need to go play. We have one more football game to play and we've got one more opportunity to go out and do it. And I've seen, you know, there's a lot of knew new faces, but I've seen the guys that were here a year ago go out and do the same thing and compete last year when went up to New York. That's our plan to do the same exact thing.
