Fox Q&A

Here's the transcript from coach John Fox's Monday news conference following the Panthers' 27-3 loss against the Bucs:

Q. Why did Jake play so poorly?

Some of it's protection, some of it's supporting cast. In a nutshell, we just didn't execute very well offensively. Overall, whether it's the run game, passing game, a lot of things we deem being important going into that game because they have a very good defense. It can be any of those.

Q. Was it out of character for him?

I don't know about out of character.He or we didn't perform well offensively as we have. if you want to say that's out of character, you can.

Q. Is there any common problem in the three blocked punts this season?

The most common thing is we've had changes in games, personnel wise. That never makes anything easy, that's not an excuse. But some of our problems offensively were because we didn't have two starters in the game. Things in the game get influenced by injuries. Two of those punt blocks, I'd say not. One was at the start of the game, then the dropped (snap). Even the other day was the first punt, so I don't think that had a whole lot to do with it. But they do during the week in preparation and they have caused some changes as far as personnel goes during games. That changes who you're next to and those types of things.

Q. How do you treat a bad game like Sunday -- whether you should learn from it or not make too much of it?

The message doesnt' change very much from my perspective. When we win, it's pretty much X, and when we lose it's pretty much X. The sky' s not falling and it's not the end of the world. In this league they don't keep style points. Whether it's four or 40, it's still a loss. I don't think anybody in that locker room was pleased with the way we performed yesterday. It's not much of a different feeling than it was against Minnesota. We've played well enough to win four of them and not in the other two.

Q. Muhsin Muhammad said this team doesn't seem to recover from one bad play on the road, like the blocked punt yesterday and the sack/fumble against Minnesota. Your thoughts on that?

I don't know that that's true, you'll have to ask Moose. We had some bad plays against Chicago and we were down 17-3 in the third quarter. But that one turned out a little different. Again, this isn't a history lesson because I like to keep it simple. I don't know that it's a real important trait at this point,or a substantial one.

Q. Do you have an idea of how many points you need each game to give you a good chance to win? Don Shula used to say 17.

More than three would be fair. (Seventeen) is usually on most goal charts. I'm not a real stat guy, other than the W and the L. So I'm sure it's somewhere on the board offensively. But I know it's more than three and 10. But sometimes those are enough. I've been in them.

Q. Why did you use Mark Jones as a kick returner after Jonathan Stewart returned the first one?

For an instant...Jonathan got hit hard. That's part of the game, but I don't think he was ready for the next one. As we went on I think Mark did a real good job and we left him in there. We've relied on him all season (on punt returns) and he just hasn't had a lot of reps. So we spread the wealth a little and felt comfortable enough to stay with him. We'll evaluate it and it'll be a game-time decision (for next week).

Q. Was Stewart hit pretty hard?

I know it got his attention. But we didn't (change) because we were trying to protect him. He got a little dazed and wasn't ready for the next one. We kind of liked what we saw in Mark and stayed with him.

Q. You're undefeated at home and have two straight coming up here. Are you a confident team at home?

I don't spend a lot of time looking at our records on that road, or records at home. The reality is our focus is on performing well against the Saints, it's a division game. What happened yesterday and what happens tomorrow, we'll plan for what happens tomorrow and learn from what happened yesterday. It's kind of fun when they're cheering for you, rather than booing. But at the end of the day, you have to perform.

Q. Were the Bucs daring you to throw by stacking 8 men on the line of scrimmage?

We didn't run well whether there was 8 or 7. We didn't execute in the run game nearly as well as we have or needed to.

Q. Do you have a sense of the status of Jeff Otah and Ryan Kalil for Sunday?

They're both day to day.

Q. Jeff practiced late in the week, was there something that happened to worsen the injury?

We wanted to see if he was ready and we deemed he wasn't.

Q. What specifically happened on the blocked punt?

It was a mistake by our left side and the protection failed.

Q. Who makes the protection call?

Our personal protector. The call was fine, but we we had two guys not be on the same page. I'm not going to mention their names, you know that, but that's what happened.

Q. How do you coach when adversity hits during a game?

They have to go on to the next play. You have to have a short memory and have to get on to the next play. I dont' think we've been 100 percent around here, won a lot of games around here, as far as falling apart every time something bad happens. I don't agree with that notion. Sometimes they're harder to recover from. You can't spot a good football team 14 points like yesterday, it changes the way they play the rest of the game and it's a hard thing to ovecome against good football teams. We didn't deal with it mentally. It was 14 points and that's not easy to overcome for any football team, not just ours.

Q. Do players have a trait that helps them push through situations like that?

You see during the season, we won 2 games, lost one, then came back and won 2 and lost one. Losing those games is adversity. I don't think our guys are any stranger to adversity if that's what you're insinuating. I don't feel like in games, when theings go bad, our guys crawl up in a hole somewhere. I don't think we've done that. We had an interception on a third down that we scored on but had a penalty call it back and it was a first down (against Kansas City). We came back. That's adversity. That's what football is. You're dealing with both of those, dealing with adversity as well as prosperity. Sometimes prosperity is hard to deal with.

Q. Do you sense a change on the sideline when things turn like that?

They did against Chicago, they did against Atlanta. We had a blocked punt in that game, too. I thought we rebounded from that pretty good. It happens every game. I don't know your point. We deal with it every game.