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Sean Payton on falling to the Cincinnati Bengals

“We are just finding ourselves in this up-and-down swing we seem to be in. Credit Cincinnati, but we didn’t do much of anything today.

(on Cincinnati defense) “They play a lot of zone to begin with. We had a few shot opportunities and yet they did a real good job of trying to stay on top. We were obviously going to have to move the ball underneath and do it with some balance. I thought in the first half, with how many possessions we had (three), the time of possession seemed pretty good. Then it becomes one dimensional at some point when you’re looking up and trying to figure out how you’re going to get 17 points.”

(on going for it on fourth-and-goal) “There’s two things that go through your mind there: You’re going to have a chance to get it and if not you’re going to leave them at the 1 (yard line). There’s a sequence that takes place: you’re unable to get the one before, we come back and throw it, they stop it, then they go (94) yards and (kick a field goal). That’s a pretty significant swing. We’ll see on film if we had any goal line defense. We kind of felt going in we were going to run a sequence there: certain run then come back to a pass. They defended it well and we weren’t able to get anything.”

(on emotional energy) “Each week we have to figure out and I have to look closely at these. Hey, I’m obviously not doing a very good job if we keep swinging up and down like this. You have to be able to shake those in the same way you have to do the wins. We weren’t able to do that today. They clearly outplayed us in every area.”

(on starting Keenan Lewis) “We were just going to dress five corners today, so we were going to be smart and try to limit his snaps. To his credit, he came back toward the end of the week and got some reps. We felt like he could go X number of plays.”

(on giving up big plays) “Our third down defense was awful. Honestly, the long yardage situations that we’ve been in; whether it's 18 or 10 (yards to go), we have to be better in that area, more consistent at least.”

(on being too conservative to eliminate turnovers) “I don’t think we went in with a conservative game plan. Once again, there weren’t a lot of snaps in the first half; I think possession-wise there were three. All of a sudden, the clock’s running and you’re playing a game that’s going quicker and you’re not getting the same possessions. But our plan was to carry out a bunch of plays. We wanted to be down the field. Drew did a good job of getting us to some of those plays, getting to the check points. We still wanted to have our balance. Those possessions in that type of game become that much more valuable.”

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