What the Dolphins’ players and coaches had to say following their victory at Hard Rock Stadium.
What both teams’ players and coaches had to say after the Miami Dolphins defeated the Las Vegas Raiders 20-13 at Hard Rock Stadium.
HEAD OF DOLPHINS MIKE McDANIEL is on defense.
“I think that there’s a lot of very prideful, very high-quality players on that side of the ball, and you figure it’s just a matter of time with the way that our defense is orchestrated from a coaching perspective, starting with Vic (Fangio), but really down to all the assistant coaches, and then you see guys strain each and every week.”
TUA TAGOVAILOA, QB, DOLPHINS, on his team’s 7-3 record and first-place finish in the AFC East
“Well, the job isn’t finished yet. Being 7-3 has accomplished nothing. But, as far as our focus today is concerned, we won the game, and we’re going to take that and learn from it.”
TYREEK HILL WR DOLPHINS
“Man, all I want to do is help this team win.” That’s how I see things. Two thousand yards is just something to get the fans and Twitter going, but the main goal for me is obviously to win games and help this team win games. That is my frame of mind.”
JALEN RAMSEY, CB, DOLPHINS
“Everyone is here. At times, (the offense) will have our back, and at other times, we must have their back. We also have special teams, and those guys can go out there and make some plays. Yes, it is a complete team. We do need to play a little better complementary football at times, and we’ll keep striving to be that team that we believe we can be. But I’d never say something like that.”
LB DOLPHINS PHILLIP PHILLIPS, JAELAN
“We may have to win the rest of the season that way.” You never know what will happen, and in this league, teams can bring their best stuff on any given Sunday, while we may not have our best stuff. I think the key is to keep our heads down and have faith in each other – defense, offense, special teams – that no matter what happens, we’ll pull it out.”
“It was one of those things where there was kind of some soul-searching to be done,” DOLPHINS OLB BRADLEY CHUBB said. Nothing was wrong, we just didn’t think we were playing up to our standards. It’s been coming together a lot better for us as we’ve been gelling, learning the defense, and getting to know each other. It’s one of those things we’re doing for and with each other right now. So it’s just been lovely to see.”
RB RAHEEM MOSTERT on Hard Rock Stadium’s success
“Congratulations to the fans. They’ve arrived. Alec (Ingold) was sitting right next to me at one point, and I could barely hear him. It was simply loud and powerful. Being at home, you always want to take advantage of that home-field advantage, and fingers crossed that when we get to playoff talk, we do have that home-field advantage because it will be very, very important for us.”
TERRON ARMSTEAD T
“Our defense was incredible. Mr. Gold Jacket, Jalen Ramsey, controlled the game and provided us with all of the opportunities we needed to win. However, the overall defense is impressive. It’s wonderful to see them come to life, reaching their full potential and fulfilling our expectations. Now that we can combine offense, defense, and special teams, we’ll be a very difficult team to beat, which is the goal.”
ANTONIO PIERCE, RAIDERS INTERIM HEAD COACH, on facing veteran Dolphins DC Victor Fangio
“Yeah, they’re a learning experience for all of us, and you know I start with AP, right?” Learning experience for me, Bo (Hardegree), and Aidan (O’Connell). We need to do a better job of matching the game and not putting them in situations where Aidan has to win, and that starts with me.”
RAIDERS QB AIDAN O’CONNELL on Jalen Ramsey’s last-second interception
“There were about 20 seconds left, no timeouts.” I knew we’d have to take a shot at some point because we needed a touchdown. I saw Tre (Tucker) take a step and again hung it up there too long, and the defender made a great play. I think we were a little off in our alignment to begin with, and I didn’t communicate well enough when we got into the huddle. So better communication would have gotten to the play faster, and everything would have been better overall. We were a little sloppy on the play, but we were trying to take a shot. I knew we’d have to get some at some point. I hung it up too much there, and he made a good play.”
NATE HOBBS, RAIDERS CB, on the Raiders’ defense
“I definitely believe we came as physical as we needed to in order to make it a very competitive game.” “As I told the guys earlier, I’m just proud of our effort and how we came on to the field drive after drive and did what we needed to do.”
