Read the full transcript from HC Jeff Hafley 's media availability on September 28, 2026.

We know so often it's the next man up in this league, but what do you feel for De'Von Achane, the human, at this time?

Jeff Hafley: Yeah, my heart breaks for the guy. You talk about him as a great player, but since I've gotten to know him, watching him grow and develop, earning the captain role, becoming a leader of a team, becoming such great energy, such a great teammate. I mean, I love his energy, I love his enthusiasm, I love his positivity. The growth from him as a person, I think all his teammates felt it and I felt it. And I'm not only going to miss him being around all the time on the field, I'm going to miss him being around because I really love the guy and enjoy him. He adds so much to our team and what he means to me. So my heart breaks for him, but at the same time, I know that he'll be back and he'll be back strong. And he's got a really, really, really bright future because I know how he'll work at this thing.

What was it like in the room when you announced it to the team?

Jeff Hafley: I really didn't get a, everybody kind of found out. I didn't have a whole announcement, everybody kind of knew before I had to stand in front and talk about it to the team. A lot of guys have talked to me about it individually, and I'm sure there'll be more conversations.

What does this mean for the backfield now with Jaylen and Ollie and I guess Jarquez, Carlos Washington?

Jeff Hafley: I think in general it just, it's everybody has got to step up, right? This year there's a lot of adversity and I think we're going to have to be a resilient group, and I think our guys have embraced that. That's going to be our o-line. It's going to be our receivers and certainly all the other running backs are going to have to step up and have bigger roles, and they're going to have great opportunities. You saw it yesterday, Ollie, I thought he did a really nice job coming in. I thought he ran really hard, he was physical. And Malik Washington, I told you guys yesterday that's a role that Bobby's had plays in for him and he did a nice job stepping up. And then DJ Herman did a really good job in third down, coming in as a one back and I thought he was really solid on his protection. This is a resilient group that everybody will have to jump in and pick it up.

How much do you think the offense changes without Achane?

Jeff Hafley: I'm not going to get in the schemes. I think any time you lose one of the best players in this league, you're going to have to change a little bit. Maybe there's something some of the guys do that he didn't. Maybe there's some similarities and we'll keep working through it, but we'll see as we go.

What's the outlook for Jaylen Wright this week as he entered doubtful and was held out?

Jeff Hafley: He'll be day-to-day. So we'll see how he feels tomorrow and see if we can get him going in practice on Wednesday.

I heard what you just said there, but philosophically, you want to be a run-first team. Does that philosophy remain or is that affected by personnel?

Jeff Hafley: That philosophy remains. I want to run the football. That's important and we have the offensive line to do it. I'll be honest, I have a lot of confidence in those backs, so this isn't like we can't run the ball anymore. I mean these are NFL players. You guys watched that game yesterday, I thought we ran the ball really well on a really good defense, really well. And that was Ollie Gordon and it was Malik Washington and it will continue to be anybody that we put back there, but we have a really good offensive line. I think Zach and those guys are coaching them up and we've gotten better every week. Yeah, I am going to miss De'Von big time, but at the same time, I have total confidence in those guys that we're going to be able to run the football.

Do you envision having some sort of competition for the RB1 role or do you plan to do running back by committee?

Jeff Hafley: I think they're all going to have their roles. I mean to me it's whether the guy goes in on the first play of the game, or he's in on the fifth play of the game, and one guy might get eight touches, one guy might get 10 touches, and one game it might be different. But I'm going to rely on all those guys and maybe one week it's one guy out there first and the next it's a different. But as we go, maybe that will change, but my mindset right now is we're going to use those guys and play ball.

I know it's early, but has surgery already been scheduled?

Jeff Hafley: We should know more of that tomorrow. I don't have a definitive date for you yet.

Will the team plan on making an outside signing and if so, would it be an active roster caliber player immediately or someone who would come in on the back end of the practice squad as others get elevated?

Jeff Hafley: I mean, those are questions that Sully and I will have to talk about, and we'll probably do that today and tomorrow. But I like the guys that we have in that room right now, both on the 53 and on the practice squad.

You talk about offensive line, we didn't hear Chris Jones's name much yesterday. Was that players? Was that scheme? Why is that?

Jeff Hafley: I think it was both. I thought Bobby had a really good plan, and I thought our offensive line played really well. I mean, watching Brew and just showing the clips of him in the team meeting, how aggressive he was, and the same thing with Proctor and Pat. I thought Jonah played his best game of the year, and I thought Austin took a step. I was really proud of the way those guys played yesterday. The protection was solid and that's one of the best interior d-linemen in the NFL and we moved the ball. I mean, if you look at the time of the possession, we controlled the game and we controlled the clock because our offensive line was getting after yesterday. So hopefully that will continue.

On the other side, what did you see in Jordan Phillips and in particular his growth from Game 1 to Game 3?

Jeff Hafley: I thought Jordan was outstanding yesterday. Again, that offense was the No. 1 offense in the NFL with yards. I think it was close to well over 400, close to 450 and the leading rusher in the NFL. And they ran the ball for I think 70-something yards and the yards per carry were down pretty low and Jordan Phillips was a huge part of that. The way he was setting the edge and knocking back and setting the line of scrimmage. I'm glad you brought him up. I think he's one of the most untalked about underrated players on our roster right now.

Have you decided the safety situation with Trader and Taaffe?

Jeff Hafley: We felt good yesterday the way Trader was playing, the way Taaffe was playing to keep them rolling. I think the way those guys practiced last week and the communication between those two and having the same two out there constantly communicating and talking and practicing with one another, we just felt like that was the best way to kind of try to get the communication where we needed to be and I thought they did a really good job. I thought Trader played a good game yesterday. He was very physical. Taaffe was around the ball quite a bit. So I was pleased with those guys.

And you're still looking in the nickel package?

Jeff Hafley: We had Chris in there and then we also put Wood in there for a little bit. He was more of a getting a bigger body in there at times to try to give him a role and see what he could do, just kind of getting to know him and getting a feel for him, but he's a physical guy. I liked what I saw in practice with him the last couple weeks and wanted to give him an opportunity to get in there and get a couple plays.

There were a few instances yesterday where you chose to go for it in the near midfield, even with Mahomes on the other sideline. Was that a concerted effort going in or just you having a feel for the flow of the game?

Jeff Hafley: That was a concerted effort yesterday. I think sometimes when you go up against certain opponents with certain caliber players like that, you got to have a specific game plan to try to win the game, and ours was to try to control the time of possession and keep the ball in our hands on offense. We thought we had some really good play calls up in those D&Ds (down and distance) that we could be successful if we got them right, regardless of where we were on the field to some degree. But that was the game plan. That was part of our plan to win. We wanted to be aggressive and keep the ball in our hands.

I'm curious what you saw in film in regards to the Chop Robinson play?

Jeff Hafley: Probably watched it a million times. I mean, I thought we had a really good chance with the call. We ran a tex game, sent the nickel. I thought the tex game was clean. I thought Zach did a great job running it and Chop came free, just like we thought. The back stepped up and picked up our nickel, so we had the clear entry to the quarterback. I thought he hit him solid, square on, and I thought he tried to do his best to raise up his hands and get out of the way. They saw it as a foul and they called the foul.

Is that an example of something you would send to the league, knowing the game can't be overturned or the call can't be overturned, but just to get clarification for you, for Chop, and maybe for the rest of the league, because everybody plays by the same rules?

Jeff Hafley: Yeah, I'm not going to go into detail what I'm going to send to the league and talk about those things. We just got to keep watching it and learn how to coach it better.

With Malik, it seemed like there was so much good on the tape, but obviously some drives that don't finish the way you'd like them to. What's your coaching point for the quarterback when there are so many good moments, but the end results are maybe stunted by a couple of mistakes here and there?

Jeff Hafley: You watch the film and you correct them, and you do everything you can to fix them and get better.

Will Caleb Douglas practice this week?

Jeff Hafley: I would say, like I said earlier, it will be day-to-day with him. We'll see how he feels tomorrow, tomorrow is Tuesday and see if he can go on Wednesday.

What do you do about the penalties? One negates a touchdown, the Chop and Zach Sieler thing, another one negates a sack. Do you hammer the players about this? Do you leave it to the position coaches?

Jeff Hafley: No, I address them in front of the team. You got to coach – each one is individually different. When we had the walk-in touchdown, that would have made the score 14 to 14, which is a huge play. We had momentum, we stop them. A young player, he's going to learn from it. He wasn't set, and then the clock was running down, so we had two guys in motion. There's got to be urgency. You got to know where you line up initially. And that's going to happen, I mean, we're going to have some – we got a lot of young guys playing. They're going to learn. We need to coach them. We need to coach them through those moments. right? And during the game, I feel a little bit differently. It's "hey, next play, let's go," but when you get time to really watch the film, you coach them. We had another one where they called us for illegal contact on Taaffe that was a third down stop sack that that's a four-point play, and I thought Taaffe was in really good position. It's how can I coach him to be even better than that so he doesn't give the refs any chance to throw the flag? I mean those are the things that we have to teach these guys so that they don't come up and we already talked about the Chop, but you're talking about three calls that that's a ton of points right there and I'd rather not think about those right now.

Defensively, how do you guys get off to a faster starts and don't let them score on their opening drive?

Jeff Hafley: It took us a while yesterday to settle in. It was like first drive, they came out and it was kind of a weird play by them because we flushed him out, he rolled out, it kind of looked like a boot so the guy that was supposed to be there thought it was as boot because he got flushed out and then made a Michael Jordan throw type throw across his body to the field. I mean it happened and then they scored. And then they came out, eventually when we got going, had the third-and-1 stop, the fourth-and-1 stop and it's like all right, there we go. And then we got off the field again and again and again and again. We just take a deep breath, focus on doing our job, our one-eleventh and locking in from the start. Whether we practice it to try and get them somehow starting faster and feeling that energy of the game to start, but we have to work on that.

You said yesterday, when you were talking about Malik's play that he kept fighting, he didn't slide, he took another big shot. What's your philosophy on the quarterback sliding or taking hits? Is it situational? Do you try to defer to Bobby and those guys? How do you view that?

Jeff Hafley: We all talk about it and a lot of it is situational. If he's got a chance to get the first down in a key situation in the game by going forward, I think we'd all want him to go forward. If it's just in the middle of the field and he's about to take a shot, then slide. If he can get out of bounds to avoid any hits and he's got the yards he needs, get out of bounds. It's situationally. We don't want to take any unwanted shots.

What did you think of Malik's decision making yesterday? I know the one where Ollie pitched it back to him, he looked like he threw it out of bounds because nobody was open. He seemed to make good decisions, what did you think?

Jeff Hafley: He got better. I thought he made better decisions than he did and that's a step forward for him. I thought the ball came out a lot on time. I thought the ball came out quicker. We took a couple shots down the field that we'll continue to work through, and I told the team we'll keep taking them and we'll start hitting those. I thought overall he got better at his decision-making process, and I think that will continue to improve.

The fumble, the ball just slipped out of his hand?

Jeff Hafley: We got to hold on to the football. I mean, those are things that we talk about all the time, and it's a position where in practice, he's not getting hit and he's not getting thudded up as much as the other guys, so we got to continue to work ball security at the quarterback position, especially with a guy like him who's going to run the ball.

Kickoff returns without Jaylen Wright, did they get you in good field position?

Jeff Hafley: Yeah, I thought so. We had the one hold that got us the penalty where we were backed up, where it was actually a heck of a return. I thought Coleman hit it good and we had great field positions. I thought those guys overall, they did a pretty good job.