Rivera
On status of QB Cam Newton:
“I don’t know the status. I only know they took him in to examine him. I purposefully didn’t ask because I didn’t want to have to answer the questions.”
On biggest reason for loss:
“Missed opportunities more than anything else. We had some opportunities to get off the field on third down, and we didn’t do that. We had some missed opportunities on offense and we have to give them credit, they played hard and did some good things.”
On play of offensive line without LT Michael Oher:
“I don’t think it affected the offensive line at all. I thought the offensive line did a good job. We have some plays we are going to have to get cleaned up, but we will watch the tape. We went in at halftime only down by seven and feeling pretty good about the game. Unfortunately we didn’t get the stop we needed coming out.”
On level of concern at this point:
“Well, I just know this much. We have been in this situation before and four games do not make a season, again we are going to take time to digest this and then get ready for Tampa Bay after we get this out of our system.”
QB Derek Anderson
On whether he saw the hit Newton took and if it could have been avoided:
“I think we all saw it. Maybe he could have avoided it, but I don’t think he saw the guy, so that’s neither here nor there.”
TE Greg Olsen
On starting the season 1-3:
“Obviously there is a lot of concern. Through three quarters today that was probably the worst collective game that we have played since a lot of us have been here.”
DE Charles Johnson
On not being able to get to Matt Ryan:
“We have to get more pressure. We’ll take ownership of that.”
Benwikere
On struggles of the Panthers’ secondary:
“We have to go back to practice and get more conditioned. At least for me that’s one thing I need to do — get back and get more conditioned. I started out doing well, but after that, I just started to get tired, get out of breath, … I wouldn’t say across the secondary at all. That’s something for me, definitely me, most of the time I rotate. I just need to take it upon myself to do some extra running after practice.”
S Kurt Coleman
On the Falcons’ record-setting day:
“We just didn’t make the plays. We had them in a lot of third-and-longs. We just didn’t execute. We didn’t make the plays when we were in position. It’s definitely not who we are. We have to correct this. Bottom line is I’m going to keep fighting and we’re going to keep fighting as a group.”
Falcons DE Dwight Freeney
On what message the Falcons sent:
“We’re turning things around here. That’s the message, that this is not the 2015 Falcons, 2014, and all those years prior. This is a new team, new players, new faces and we’re going out there trying to play and win every game.”
On pass defense against Cam Newton:
“I think we did a pretty good job. Great job on coverage. We stopped the run great. I think they had like 49 yards rushing. Especially when you play a team like this where that’s where they want to dominate you, is in the run game. If you can stop that, then you can have this type of outcome.”