Getting an opportunity to play after Cam went down, not the way you wanted it
BRANDON ALLEN: Yeah, it obviously didn't go well. It's been a long time between some live reps. It felt good to get back out there, get hit a little bit, but just as far as overall offensive performance after Cam (Titans quarterback Cam Ward) went down, it wasn't good enough, obviously. We had a bunch of three-and-outs. We didn't move the ball. I didn't make some completions. Pick six was brutal. I think I was playing a little sped up in my head when we first got back out there and didn't allow them to sit down, so that one's on me. But yeah, overall, you want to play better. You want to put on a good performance when you get a good opportunity, and I can't feel like I did that, and it always starts with the quarterback. The offense is going to move based on how the quarterback plays, and I didn't play well enough to get us moving down the field.
You don't want anybody to get hurt, but how did it feel to play in week 19? BRANDON ALLEN: Yeah, it's brutal for him. I don't know the severity of it or any of that yet, so he's in good spirits, so I think he's optimistic about it, and he'll be fine coming back.
Why do you think it snowballed so badly?
BRANDON ALLEN: You know, it was really one thing after another. When you get a couple three-and-outs in a row, it's tough for momentum to build, and then when you get a 1st down -- we had a decent drive going there, I think late second quarter maybe, and penalty brings us back. So I think we killed ourselves as far as getting down the field, just momentum-wise. I thought I didn't do a good enough job just getting completions, and there were a couple of throws there I definitely could have made, and give them credit, too, they had a good defense and they had a good front, and they did a good job defensively, but there were definitely some plays to be made out there that we didn't, and I think if you can make some of those plays you get a little momentum and that kind of just gets the offense rolling a little bit.
How do you feel Mike McCoy has done since taking over? Obviously the wins didn't happen, but other ways.
BRANDON ALLEN: This is the second time in 10 years I've been a part of this, with an interim, but it can't be an easy situation to step into, and he's been nothing but optimistic for the guys in the locker room and getting us ready to play each and every week. I thought he did a really good job just in terms of the total circumstance of everything. Like I said, it's not easy for him to step in and just start taking over a team and be the head coach and be that guy, but he'd done it before, and I think he knew how to communicate with the guys in the locker room and how to get us ready to play each week. In terms of that, I thought he did a great job.
Whether you're back in Nashville next year, what do you see as the future trajectory of this franchise?
BRANDON ALLEN: Yeah, I think there's a lot of young guys on this team, and I think people forget that sometimes. There's a lot of young receivers, obviously there's a young quarterback, some young guys playing on defense, and you have to build on those guys, and I think they have a lot of talent. It's not easy for a bunch of rookies to immediately go in and start playing significant snaps right away, but that was the situation we're kind of in right now, and I thought the maturity level and the growth that those guys showed over the course of the season was fantastic, and it got better each and every week. I think it's only up from here, obviously. It was a rough season, but there's a lot of young guys that are doing a lot of playing, and they're going to keep getting better banking all those reps that they're getting this year.
Is there anything you can think of that the Titans need moving forward, whether it's in terms of coaching style or players or anything like that?
BRANDON ALLEN: I don't think that's for me to say really. I think that there's a lot of good core guys in the locker room, and I think you build off the things you had success on. I think that's for any team really. You build on the success and you look to make improvements where you think you need improvements, and I think that's what they're going to do.
