What The Jaguars Said Following Their 30-24 Win Over The Seahawks

Postgame quotes from the Jaguars following their 30-24 win over the Seahawks in Week 14 at EverBank Field. Head Coach Doug Marrone (Opening statement…) “Obviously a great crowd today. I was excited for our players. I was excited for our fans to come out there today. I told the players afterwards – I mean we felt good during the week – we felt very confident, just knowing that we had to come out there and perform. I thought that all three phases kind of complimented each other at times during the game, which I think you have to do to win games late in the season in December. I also told the players, ‘hey listen, this is the first game of the fourth quarter. Let’s not get distracted with any noise on the outside. Let’s get ready.’ We have a division opponent next week. You’ve got to get ready to play again, and obviously the season is not over. We’re not going to get too high. We’re not going to get too low. We’re going to work our butts off and see if we can get ourselves ready for next week.” (On if there were anxious moments when Seattle cut the lead to six…) “Hell yeah. There’s a lot of stuff going on. First you’re thinking how many drives in less than seven minutes? What’s the average drive in that range with the three timeouts? Then all of a sudden, boom, there’s a touchdown so we’re playing. I went over to the offense, and I thought we were playing well. I said, ‘hey listen, we’re going to go play. Let’s go play football, you know what I’m saying? Let’s go win this game.’ Then they went out there and we took up some clock and we wound up getting the ball back at the end. That’s a big run. You stop the game and you take the ball away from a guy that’s the best quarterback in the league in the fourth quarter.” (On having to game-plan against Russell Wilson…) “Dangerous. Shoot, you go out there and everyone knows he can make all the throws. He can extend plays. He can run for first downs. He can avoid sacks. It’s like a combination of a lot of different guys that I’ve gone against in my experience all put into one. He’s an outstanding competitor. He really is. I think it showed today. We came out on top, which is good. Why don’t you guys write your stories and get out of here and go relax and go party?” Quarterback Blake Bortles (On gaining momentum offensively…) “Yeah, I think so. It’s still our first year playing in this system. I think that gets forgotten a lot of the time. Week by week [guys] are starting to get more comfortable with it, more confident in it and kind of going out there and playing free rather than thinking. I think it’s only going to continue to get better.” (On not having any turnovers…) “It’s huge. We talk about it every day, every day throughout the week. We have to make sure we take care of the ball and don’t turn it over. Every time we sit in here and Doug puts up what we need to do in order to win, win the turnover battle is always one. It’s something that we know in order for us to put ourselves in position to win each game if we can continue to not turn it over or limit the turnovers then we’ll have a chance every week.” (On if the atmosphere felt different tonight…) “It felt kind of like what you would think about when you think about meaningful December football. I think that’s what it was. It was a playoff-type atmosphere against a good team, under the lights in front of your home crowd. There’s not a whole lot more you can ask for. To go out there and be able to perform like that in front of Jacksonville in our stadium was pretty special.” (On the offensive line’s performance…) “I thought they were unbelievable. Obviously coming into a game like this all you hear about all week is how good their defense is and what they have done in the past and who they stop and who they stopped last week. I think they definitely got a little more juice because of all of that they were hearing. I think they came out fired up and I thought they did an unbelievable job. They opened up holes in the run game, I don’t think there was a sack. I got hit very little. It was a really good day on their part.” Defensive End Yannick Ngakoue (On his thoughts on playing Russell Wilson…) “We just had to strike fear in his heart. from the first plays, we were just trying to get to him and hit him and keep him contained and that’s what we did. We did a great job of it and the defense from the back seven and the DBs did a great job of locking things down.” (On the offense responding to Seattle’s scores…) “You have to tip your hat to the offense. I can’t lie. This week, they’ve been locked in and hitting on all cylinders in practice and everything was good as far as their assignments, so much respect to our offense and we couldn’t have done it without them.” (On his thoughts on how difficult it was to contain Russell Wilson…) “You just got to wrap him up. He’s a little guy, but he’s definitely harder to go against the smaller quarterbacks and he’s a smaller target to hit versus going against a bigger quarterback. Definitely you’ve got to wrap him up when you get a good shot on him.”Linebacker Myles Jack (On what he thought the team accomplished today…) “Accomplished a lot. For me, watching on TV, I felt like that was the closest thing to a playoff atmosphere game as far as the fans, the magnitude of the game, how tight it got at the end. It was a great learning experience for me and to beat a team like that with a veteran quarterback like that, we’ve all seen what Russell Wilson’s been doing this season. I think he accounted for 29 out of 30 of their touchdowns. So, to come out there and stop a guy like that, I think we had three or four picks, that’s big. It says a lot about our defense.” (On what he thought to himself after the two Seattle touchdowns toward the end…) “Man, I was just like, ‘I guess we want to make this a close one.’ We just had some busts, we’ll definitely fix that, we’ll clean that up. As you saw, guys were wide open on bombs, so that won’t happen. We’ll get that right, but I guess we wanted to make it a close game.” Defensive Tackle Malik Jackson (On what this win says about their team…) “It just shows we have true grit. I said we had grit at the beginning of the year and we keep getting tested. I think that is the good challenge of a playoff team. We get tested with the best teams of the NFL coming into your house or you’re going to them. This was a next game up and (Seattle) is a good team in the NFC right now because they just beat the (Philadelphia) Eagles. It was huge for us to change the tone and culture of Jacksonville and the Jaguars and we did that today.” (On the offensive performance…) “It was awesome. It’s one of those things because the offense has been doing their thing. Blake (Bortles) has come out and done one hell of a job throwing like he did. We can talk about Blake, we can talk about Leonard (Fournette) or the receivers but the offensive line went out there and did their thing. They were moving people, getting hats on hats. As a defensive lineman, it was great to see because we see these guys work hard in practice. We see the responsibility they had and they went out and killed it today.” Safety Barry Church (On how rewarding it feels to get the win…) “It feels great. Going out there and matching blow for blow with one of the best teams in the NFL these past couple years feels great and lets you know that we can play with anybody in the League. We’ve just got to cut down on the mental errors and mental mistakes because that kind of cost us on the big plays. Other than that, we played solid football. They’re a great team, especially with Russell Wilson back there. It was a great win, a great win for our team and we needed it because it was the next one and now we’re on to the Texans.” (On how well the defense shut down Russell Wilson…) “Oh yeah, I feel like the D-Line did a heck of a job of keeping him in the pocket, forcing him to step up or run for his life. They were doing a heck of a job by doing that. On the back end we were locking down as usual. Towards the end, we tried to get in to a little bit of lax coverage, made a few mental errors and let them back in the game, which sucked on our part, but we’ll get everything together, watch film, see what happened and get ready for the Texans.”