(on losing Super Bowl 50)
“They just played better than us. I don’t know what you want me to say. They made more plays than us, and that’s what it came down to. We had our opportunities. There wasn’t nothing special that they did. We dropped balls. We turned the ball over, gave up sacks, threw errant passes. That’s it. They scored more points than we did.”
(on how difficult the loss is after having a successful season)
“It’s real difficult. This is a big game. It’s the game you dream about. You don’t dream about it going this way. You dream about winning it.”
(on Carolina’s offensive performance)
“They’re a great defense. So, I’m going to give credit to them, but us as an offense, we can’t do things. We can’t turn over the ball. We can’t give up the sacks. We can’t fumble. We can’t kill ourselves with penalties. That’s the thing; that’s the story of our offense tonight, and unfortunately, we picked the worst time to do it.”
(on if it is hard to even think about coming back after the offseason right now)
“I mean, we have emotions. We aren’t just people out there trying to entertain you guys. Of course it’s hard to deal with. Everybody wants to win. We have to tuck our heads on this one and congratulate Denver for winning the game.”
(on the team committing turnovers today)
“We picked a really bad day to kind of have a meltdown. … For as bad as we were playing in that first half and pretty much through three quarters – to look up and only be down one score, it was a credit to what our defense was doing. But we just could never really find our way.”
(On getting back here again and what the offseason plan is)
“I think it’s gonna be a couple days before we start thinking about that. You know this one obviously hurts a lot. That’s it, that’s all I got for you.”
(on his thoughts of QB Cam Newton’s performance)
“We weren’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough. Offensively, we weren’t good enough. You don’t try to just single out one guy here or there. If I did it, I should lose my job – other than singling out myself because I’m the coordinator. This is the closest group of guys that I’ve ever been around. We worked so hard and I think probably all of us could’ve been better today.”
(on challenging Panthers WR Jerricho Cotchery‘s incomplete pass in the first quarter)
“Based on what I saw, I disagreed, and the answer I got was there was not enough comparable evidence to overturn. That, to me, seems like a hard thing to do. If they would’ve said that was a completion, it would’ve been a completion. Instead, he called it an incompletion and that’s what we have to live with.”
(on whether he is surprised that the game came down to a defensive battle)
“Defense wins games and offense sells tickets. That’s been the saying since football was created. At the end of the game it’s on our defense. You saw that out there.”
(on if he still considers this season a success)
“We definitely had a successful season, but you know we let so many people down. It’s tough to get over that feeling. We definitely feel like we should have won this game. Hats off to Denver, they did a really good job and they made more plays than we did today.”
(on how disappointed he is)
“It stings. I previously said it, we accomplished a lot of what we wanted to do this year. We won the division, we won in playoffs. We made it to the Super Bowl. We checked off a couple boxes, but we just weren’t able to get this last one checked off.”
(on the loss)
“I’m not going to lie and say this doesn’t hurt, because it does. It’s going to be with me for a while, but I know I’ll be back in this game.”
(on whether the season was still a success)
“Yeah, I guess. You’ll look back on it later and be happy for all the things you were able to accomplish. We had a player of the year, we had a coach of the year. We won 17 games, which is extremely hard to do in this league. The culture of this team kind of changed and caught fire around the whole world. I think are some of the positives we will take from it. We had college coaches dabbing. It was crazy. It was a phenomenon, and you will take of those positives; all the fun times, and the great times.”
(on how effective Thomas Davis was)
“I thought Thomas (Davis) played well. Just to go out there 13 days out of surgery, he’s just a warrior. He’s one of our leaders both on and off the field and so I’m extremely proud of what Thomas has done for us and meant for this organization and this defense. That’s who we are, that’s our identity and I’m very proud to be associated with a man like Thomas Davis.”
(on if this is his last game)
“I don’t know the answer to that. Like I said, Tony Dungy who I spoke with—I communicated with last night when he got in the Hall of Fame and that was very special—I talked to him last week and he called me and said, ‘I need to talk to you,’ and said that he got some good advice from Dick Vermeil and I think maybe Bill Cowher as well about not making an emotional decision one way or the other. So I think that was good advice to kind of let this sink in. It’s been an emotional week, emotional night, and the night is just beginning, I look forward to celebrating with my friends and family and I think I’ll take some time after that. Like I said, I am going to enjoy the night, take it one step at a time.”
(on being successful at causing fumbles)
“Yeah, I guess so, I’m going for the ball every time. That’s just the type of football player I am. If it was basketball, I’d definitely be a three-point shooter. I’m definitely going for the ball. That’s what Coach Phillips has been preaching all year: we need turnovers. We need turnovers to win the game and we were able to get that today.”
(on how tough it was for him to dial back a little bit after his early flags)
“It was all good. (They were) BS flags, one was on our sidelines, the guy was talking on our sideline, one I just did on purpose and I just had to show him. It’s probably going to be a fine, but, hey, we’re world champs.”