Coach Pat Shurmur assesses Giants’ loss to Cleveland Browns

One day after the New York Giants lost to the Cleveland Browns, 20-10, in their preseason opener, head coach Pat Shurmur assessed the game by telling reporters that he told players “that if each guy cleans up one mistake, then we end up being on the winning end of a game like that.”

Here are some of the takeaways from Shurmur’s day-after-game conference call.

On the play of rookie quarterback Kyle Lauletta ...

“He’s very calm, and I think he finds a way to make plays. He had a nice deep ball down the sideline to Amba [Etta-Tawo] that ended up being a [pass interference]. ... I [think] he’s got a calm presence about him. I think he lost control of the clock once, we got the ball snapped, but those are all things you learn when you’re playing. So, it wasn’t a bad performance to start out for him.”

On whether the Giants got any clarity at free safety ..

“Curtis [Riley] wasn’t out there and then [Darian Thompson] hurt himself on one of the special teams and was out of the game with a hamstring. Probably no. In terms of the clarity, no. There were guys that were out there performing well, but in terms of saying this is the guy, I would say no.”

On the sideline operation for a new coaching staff ...

“I thought it was much smoother than I had anticipated. Typically, for a staff that’s worked together for years, you would have a communication breakdown or two that you need to work through, but I thought we were able to communicate pretty effectively. We already debriefed it. There are a couple things that we’ll keep private that we’ll do a little bit differently, but for the most part I thought the exchange of information was good. We really didn’t have substitution errors. That usually shows up in preseason games, to speak of. Again, we need to keep building on that. You have to constantly work at communicating, and certainly being able to do that on the sideline can help the players play better.”

On the play of Davis Webb ...

“He is so prepared and he wants to do well, that’s just his personality, and he does get amped up a little bit but that’s not a bad thing. Wanting to do well is a good thing. I think we as coaches can just help him with that.”

On the clock mismanagement at the end of the first half ...

“There’s nothing other than the fact that we have to get out of bounds on that play. We called a route to get out of bounds and the throw was thrown inside, and it makes it almost impossible for the receiver to continue out of bounds. We knew we had to use the sideline because we didn’t have any timeouts. We had that communicated effectively, it just didn’t get done.”

On upcoming joint practices with the Detroit Lions ...

“My experience against practicing against one another is both teams need to be smart. Both teams need to understand the tempo of every drill. We’re out there competing, but this certainly isn’t the first time teams have practiced against one another. When Matt [Patricia] was the defensive coordinator at New England, I did it twice when I was with Philadelphia. I’ve worked with Matt before. We’ve got a good feel of the tempo and how we want to do it. We kind of set the ground rules ahead of time, and try to get good work.”