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News | Washington Commanders - Commanders.com

Gibbs Post-Game: Redskins-Browns

Opening Statement:

"Obviously, right now we are being tested. The biggest thing is that we all need to hang together and try to work our way out of it. It is a tough situation for us, but I think most of us have been in tough situations before. Right now, it is penalties, mistakes and turnovers. We are hurting ourselves, and because of that we are not consistent. When you are not consistent, good football teams, like Cleveland, will beat you. My hat's off to them and we have to find a way to work ourselves out of this."

On the reason for some of the mistakes:

"It's ourselves. We spend a lot of time in practice making sure that all the things that a referee can help us with in practice, we are doing. Right now, we are making a lot of mistakes and it is costing us. We had a situation at the start of the third quarter that the phones started going in and out. We lost communication with our quarterback, which cost us. The communication was also going in and out upstairs. These situations just happen. It did not cost us the game, but it was disconcerting. I think what we need to do is go home, study films and find a way to work ourselves out of this."

On whether he has a backup for communicating with the QB if the phones are down:

"Yes, we do. We went to hand signals. But it costs you."

On the struggles in the running game:

"We are not consistent in there. I think the other thing that hurt us was that in two of the first three drives, we had penalties that put us in bad situations where you cannot keep running the football. I think our guys want to run it and we have to get to a point where we can run it."

On the turnovers:

"We have had a problem with turnovers. The Giant game was a disappointment because of that. I think what you can do is work on it. We set out to spend a lot of time and emphasis on working on it. Until we quit doing that, we are going to be our own worst enemy. We have great players and we have to find ways to protect the football. Some of our best players are involved in this. Hopefully, what this shows is you are not going to win football games doing that. We have to find a way to stop doing that,"

On challenging Clinton Portis's fumble in the third quarter:

"From where I was, there were a lot of bodies. So anything could have happened in there. You are making your best guess with those things. It is not an exact science. You are trying to get a replay upstairs that shows you something else, but a lot of times you do not get it."

On the mood of the team:

"I think we have character players. They're smart. They understand why we are losing football games. We have to find a way to correct this. It is up to us. I am not worried about our players. We're all together. We just have to find a way to work ourselves out of this."

On Mark Brunell's performance:

"I think Mark is fighting hard. I am pleased with his leadership and the best thing for us to do is go home and look at the films, evaluate everything and see if we cannot help ourselves out."

On Browns' quarterback Jeff Garcia:

"First of all, you have a veteran guy. He scrambles around and makes plays. We know that he makes plays. Somehow, we had to find a way to make plays against him. I think we did--just not enough."

On comparing this season's start to the 0-5 start in 1981:

"I don't know. I can't hardly remember that right now. It was a horrible time to go through and this is a horrible time. Other than that, I don't have a real good way of comparing that."

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