LaMont Jordan Team Quotations

I would hate for us to sit here at the end of the year and say we were the most underachieving team in the NFL because if we don't make it to the playoffs, we will be the most underachieving team in the league. And quite frankly, it will be an embarrassment.

I'm always going to come off the field feeling like if we don't do well running the ball that it's my fault. That's just it. The team trusts me with the ball in my hands and to go out and make plays, and it's my job to go out there and make plays.

The expectations that everybody had for us coming into this year and the expectations we had for ourselves, we came nowhere close to meeting those expectations. Some people might disagree with me, but we did underachieve this year. ... Our defense has played well enough for us to be in the playoffs right now. There's no doubt about that. Offensively, we've done nothing but let our defense down and let our team down. What we have to do is come back and reload.

When you get on top of a team, you have to finish them off. I guarantee you that a team like the Patriots or Colts, if they got out in front like we did, they probably would have put up 40 or 50 points and held them, and it wouldn't have even been a game. If we want to be considered an elite team, when we've got a team down like that, we've got to finish them early.

We just keep getting penalty after penalty. ... If we can minimize those things, then I don't see a team out there that can stop us. That's why I say it's really all about us.

Are we going to get out of this hole and get back to being the team that people expect us to be? Or are we going to continue to dig deep and come Week 9 or 10, we're making plans for the holidays? I don't plan on doing that.

That's one thing I'm not used to coming from New York. I got news for the rest of the league. That team (the Patriots) is not changing. If the league thinks that team is changing because it lost two coordinators, it isn't. They minimize mistakes. That's something we've got to do.

In that locker room, if you were in there, you got a sense of how the team was hurt. You get a sense that we are not giving up, and that's something big. I think that is something the fans really need to know ? that we might have lost this game and things aren't looking too bright for us right now, but we're not giving up and that's just pretty much the mind-set of the team right now.