Read the full transcript from S Michael Taaffe's media availability on October 8, 2026.
On taking pride in communication on the field…
Michael Taaffe: My thought process has always been this, if I can get 10 guys around me playing free and playing fast and physical and playing at their best without thinking, then put the responsibility on me. That's always how I thought. No coach has ever told me you have to do that. That's just kind of how I've always thought because I want everybody else to go play free and I like that responsibility of taking that communication, pride, responsibility that I have. Obviously, if there's any communication errors, then I'm going to be the first one to say, that's my bad. How can I do better first before anybody else points fingers? I want to point it at myself.
Obviously, there's always urgency for any week in the NFL, but is there any added heightened urgency as it's the last game before the bye trying to get your first win?
Michael Taaffe: Obviously, everybody in this locker room wants to win. So the urgency is let's win. Let's go 1-0 every single week. Let's go 1-0 in practice. So I don't think anybody's looking at that bye, I think the urgency is, we got to win. And it's not no more, "oh, we got so close." Let's learn how to finish and let's do it right now. I don't care that we're young, I don't care that we just had a new coach. Nobody in this locker room wants to give excuses for each other. We're all in the same mindset of let's find a way to win on Sunday, win this practice and then go win on Sunday and be urgent about winning and win now. So at the end of the day, the fans show up to watch people win and watch a good show. You pay to be entertained and the most entertaining thing to do is to go win. So that's our plan and that's what we try to do every single day.
I wanted to write a story about Chris Johnson. What's something that you've learned about Chris since you guys became teammates?
Michael Taaffe: Chris is one of my best friends on this team. I think everybody in this locker room knows how close me and Chris are. We do a lot of a lot together. We see eye to eye on a lot of things. I would say y'all should write about how competitive Chris is. If you watch when he gets off blocks, I don't know what he says, but he has a little fight to him. He's competitive. That's what I've always loved about him is the competitiveness that Chris has. Obviously off the field, he's so chill. Me and him are cool and he showed me a little bit about his R&B. So I'm taking a page or two out of his book on his R&B stuff, that's the music that he likes. But on the field, the coolest thing that I respect about Chris is how competitive he is, the second he steps on, whether it's a walkthrough, whether it's a game.
