Postgame Transcript – PS1 NYG – Patriots QB Brian Hoyer

POSTGAME PRESS CONFERENCE

August 11, 2022

BH: I want to start off first and just congratulate James White on an outstanding career. We’re going miss him. For me, having known James since all the way back to 2017, I can honestly say the most dependable teammate I’ve ever had. You never questioned James’ work ethic, his leadership, even though he was a little quiet. We all loved him, and I want to wish him well in the next chapter and just say how much I respect him and how fortunate I feel to have played with him. He’s truly a special player.

Q: We saw the difference in play callers; it looked like Joe Judge and Matt Patricia were sort of switching between quarterbacks on the night. How did the communication process go with the offensive play callers and how was that communicated to the team?

BH: I mean, I just listened to my helmet and called the play that’s said to me, so whether it’s Matt or Joe or whoever it might be, I’m not really concerned about – I’m worried about what defense they’re running, how we’re going to execute the play.

Q: Brian, you got rhythm tonight from the get-go. The fun thing to watch, you guys go vertical. Points of emphasis, not only you but Bailey Zappe when he got in there. How good was that to hit some of those deep things, especially some of the young guys who haven’t played that much?

BH: For sure, and something we work on constantly is, especially for those young guys, just teaching them how to get vertically into the defense, and when they do it you have to reward them and throw them the ball. I know I underthrew the one to Tyquan [Thornton] a little bit, but came right back and hit K-Dub [Kristian Wilkerson], and obviously we continued to do it over the night. Tre [Nixon] obviously had some great catches, some back shoulders. Zappe threw some good balls. Look, in the preseason it usually ends up being man coverage, and you want to give those guys opportunities to see if they can make those plays.

Q: Brian, a lot of the front guys, front line guys as we say did not play tonight, but one guy that was in with you to your left was Cole Strange. First action obviously against another team from where he came from. From the press box it looked like he held his own, but you were right in back of him. What’s your thoughts on Cole Strange and what you saw from him tonight?

BH: Yeah, I mean, I came out clean, so that’s all I know. They did a great job protecting me and kind of hard for me to see how he’s doing, but all I know is I didn’t get hit very much, so that’s always a good sign.

Q: You mentioned Bailey making some throws tonight. What were your thoughts on his performance? Pretty big workload tonight, and throughout the night had a lot of ups and downs but finished with the big drive at the end with the touchdown to Lil’Jordan Humphrey. What were your thoughts on his performance overall?

BH: Showed a lot of grit. That’s not easy to go in in your first NFL experience, especially with what they were throwing at us defensively, a lot of blitz zero, a lot of tight man coverage, some overload blitzes, so some stuff that we haven’t seen, and he hung in there, made some great throws.

Q: Brian, it was fun to watch you go downfield; how important is it to have speed in a guy like Thornton that can separate?

BH: Yeah, I mean, you look at our receiver crew, we aren’t lacking for speed, and like I said to Zo, you get a chance, someone presses one of your guys and you know he’s fast, you’re going to give him a chance. For the most part we hit a lot of those tonight, something we’ve been working on against our defense out here when we do one-on-ones. Look, you’re never going to have to tell me to throw the ball deep. I always am looking for those opportunities.

Transcripts are provided by the Patriots media relations department as a courtesy to the media and are edited for readability. All press conferences are posted and archived in their entirety on patriots.com. The duplication or posting of this transcript in its entirety as original content is prohibited. Media are encouraged to link to the complete transcript on patriots.com when sharing full quotes with their audiences.

–PATRIOTS–