BB: It was a short night on this end, as it probably was for a lot of other
people. After looking at the tapes this morning, I thought the game was one
for us where we missed a lot of opportunities. We had a lot of plays where
if we had been able to execute a little bit better, we would have been a lot
better off in all three phases of the game but particularly on offense and
defense. I thought we were pretty solid in the kicking game. Offensively we
left a lot of plays out there, getting touchdowns called back and not taking
advantage of our scoring opportunities. Defensively we were letting the
quarterback run around. We had 12 accepted penalties in the game and that
was a problem for us. It gave them extra opportunities and took away
positive plays that we had. There are a lot of things we have to work on
there. Fortunately we were able to come out of it with a win, which is good.
We still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do. We have a little bit
of extra time this week, and we will try to put that to good use. We know
what it is like going into Buffalo, and we know what happened there last
year. Hopefully we can play a little more competitively than that this time
around. That is pretty much it for me.
Q: On the offensive line and the different combinations that you have
used over the past two games, is that something that we will see a lot of
this year or is that something that you are trying to get different looks to
use later on during the season?
BB: I don't think we are really looking to experiment at this point in the
year. We are trying to put our best people out there and win. I think that
the seven players on the offensive line who are playing, all deserve to
play. They have all played well for us and played well in preseason. There
are some different circumstances regarding the whole situation. Given the
conditions that we expected in Arizona, we rotated people at almost every
position on the field. There would have been a reason for doing that anyway,
but I think that all seven of those guys deserved to play. They have all
played well when they have been in there. I think it builds our depth, and
we will just take it from there. I don't know whether it will be that way or
not be that way going forward. I think that they have all done a good job,
and they have all performed solidly when they have been in the game.
Q: Have you ever been through this in your career, the rotating of
players as liberally?
BB: Well, again, if you go back to preseason and take [Adrian] Klemm as an
example. He has probably been in there more than the other two guys have
because he has been here the whole preseason and it is actually the two
starting tackles [from] last year who are a little bit, for this year, kind
of the new faces in there as opposed to Adrian who didn't play much last
year. We are looking at it as what we have seen and how it has worked
together. I don't think it has really been a problem. I think it has
functioned pretty well. We have good depth, and I think if we can use it to
our advantage then it is an asset for us. Have we done that before? Probably
not quite as liberally as it is going on right now. I would say no.
Q: Have you set a schedule for this week?
BB: No. We got back late last night. We went through the tape this morning,
and we are going to talk about that. The players are off today. They will be
in tomorrow, and we will talk about the rest of the week's schedule going
forward. We didn't really put a lot of time on that before the Arizona game.
We wanted to just concentrate on Arizona and try to do the best we could on
that one, and we will reassess and recalibrate where we are now and figure
out what is the best way to utilize the time this week and next week. We
haven't finalized that at all. No.
Q: Do you clean up things this week with the bye, or do you start on
Buffalo right away?
BB: I think probably a little bit of both. I think there are certainly some
things that need cleaning up. On the other hand, I think we are going into a
little different phase of our schedule now compared to what the first two
weeks were. I think there were some similarities between the Colts and
Arizona, especially defensively. I think there were some similarities
offensively as well. I am not sure that going forward there will be quite as
much carryover on some of the teams that we play coming up, starting with
Buffalo. We might be better off just allocating our resources to what we are
going to see rather than what is in the rear view mirror. I think you have
to be respectful of that because if you don't take care of those problems,
eventually they will resurface sooner or later. Teams will come back and
game plan you and hurt you with the things that you have had trouble with.
Probably a little bit of both.
Q: Can you tell us anymore about Deion Branch?
BB: No. I haven't talked to him this morning. We got back late last night.
Hopefully he will be all right. He sounded pretty good at halftime and after
the game. We will see how it goes.
Q: Did you say that he wanted to go back in the game?
BB: Yes. Given where we were and the situation, I just didn't think that was
the best thing to do. The doctors felt like it would be better to be a
little cautious with it. The adrenaline gets going, and they feel good and
want to go back in there. We will see what happens.
Q: Is it safe to say that it is not a season-ending injury that he has?
BB: Again, I think it is a little too early to evaluate the injury. We will
give it a little bit of time and see how it comes along. Sometimes those
things clear up right away and sometimes they don't.
Q: With your run defense yesterday, there was obviously better
production. Was it just better tackling or was it more scheme?
BB: I think overall our fits were better. Our areas of responsibility were
better. We might have played a little more aggressively. I think our
tackling was better. It was probably a combination of all of those things.
That was something that we spent a lot of time on last week in practice with
our defensive linemen and our linebackers, about their technique. Pepper
[Johnson], Romeo [Crennel] and Dean [Pees] all spent a lot of extra time
with them in terms of going over things to make sure that we could do them
better. Some things that the Colts gave us, they did actually repeat in the
game. I think that some of the Arizona plays were somewhat similar to what
Indianapolis was trying to do. So, we wanted to get that taken care of and
also try to address some of the things we had seen Arizona do. We put a lot
of emphasis on that and I was glad to see us play it better. The tackling
was certainly better. We didn't have nearly as many missed tackles or the
runners falling forward for an extra two or three yards. When it looked like
a two-yard gain, they end up getting five. There was a lot less of that.
Q: How did [Rabih] Abdullah look on special teams yesterday?
BB: Good. I thought he did a really good job of covering kickoffs. He was on
the kickoff team and the punt return team. But he was in on several plays
there on the kickoffs. I thought he did a nice job and showed some
toughness. He showed good speed getting down there. I think we liked what we
saw on that. I thought he had a nice run there at the end of the game to
seal it there when we ran out the clock. His first game, he had a small role
in the game, and I thought he did alright with it.
Q: How would you assess the return game with having Troy Brown back? He
had one return for 22 yards.
BB: Well, that was easily our best return of the season, which isn't saying
much. It was definitely better. The ball wasn't on the ground. We caught it.
We returned the ball back for positive yardage, not always a lot of yardage,
but at least we were heading in the right direction and the ball was in our
hands at the end of the play. Those were all good things. There is still a
lot of room for improvement. A couple of times we had one guy down there
that kind of messed up the return. We had some other people block, but one
guy got down there and kind of made the play or fouled it up. I thought
there were some good signs. We are still looking for more production than
that, though.
Q: Is it possible to lose focus during a bye week? Do you worry about
that at all?
BB: I think we have enough to work on that we should be able find enough
things to keep everybody interested. I think we are a long way from being a
good football team right now. I think we are a little closer than we were
last week, but we still have a long way to go. I would like to think that
the players think that, too. Talking to some of them last night after the
game and on the way back, I think that there is some sentiment there. We all
see a lot of room for improvement, playing, coaching, just overall doing
things better as a team, taking care of the ball better, keeping the
quarterback in the pocket better, punt returns. We can put together a pretty
good list here, penalties. We are averaging 10 penalties a game.
Q: How concerned are you about the penalties? Is it early season
sloppiness?
BB: Well, we have been emphasizing it from the first day of training camp.
We will continue to emphasize it. We don't teach any techniques knowingly
that are violations of the rules. We try to do everything we can to play
within the rules and not get penalized because those are all negative plays
for you. They cost you opportunities and give your opponents extra ones.
They are all important. We want to eliminate every one of them. Some are
really careless. Taking a delay of game penalty down on the two-yard line
when you are trying to draw them offsides, I will accept that one. That was
kind of the situation and that was the play. The other ones, jumping the
snap count, jumping offside, going in motion, jamming the guys too far down
field, all of those things, hitting them out of bounds, it is not
acceptable. It is not good football, and it hurts you. It hurt us in the
game. It hurt us the week before. It will hurt us every week. You just can't
keep doing those things and think that it is not going to catch up with you
because it will.
Q: How do you go about eliminating penalties?
BB: We continue to emphasize it. A lot of those penalties occur when the
player's feet are not in the right position, and he's reaching and grabbing.
Those are called the contact penalties, the holding penalties. Obviously,
getting off and lining up on the ball, that's an alignment thing, and it's a
concentration thing. When you run 60, 70 plays in a game, I'd say 70 plays,
and 68 of them there are no problems on and two of them there are, obviously
those two plays are concentration plays. It's not that we don't know how to
do it. We did it right on all the other ones, but it's a lack on
concentration on those plays. There's room for improvement. It needs to be
corrected.
Q: What about the penalties based on emotion or aggression, the hitting
out of bounds or late hits?
BB: It's very clear-cut. When the whistle blows, the play is over. When a
guy is across the sideline, he's out of bounds. You can't hit him. It
couldn't be any clearer than it is. It's clear-cut. It's judgment, and
players, they have to make that judgment. That's why they are out there.
They are running fast and a lot is happening, but if the guy is down they
have to not hit him. If the guy is out of bounds, they have to not hit him.
Quarterback rules, we all know what that is, the one-step rule, hitting them
in the face, extending your arms and pushing them and all that. We know what
they are. They call it tight. They call it on our quarterback. They call it
on their quarterback. We have to do a good job with that. [It is the] same
thing on the blocking in the back rules, everything. We just have to do a
better job with all of it.
Q: Is there more urgency to bring in a fourth tight end with Benjamin
Watson being out, considering the team runs a two tight end set sometimes?
BB: I think if you look back historically, most of the times we have only
had two tight ends active for games. If you look back a couple of season
ago, there were only two tight ends on the roster, period. So, I think three
tight ends is probably about as many as you could afford to carry. I think
it would be a big luxury to carry another one. Now, if you felt like the
player's role is worthy of it, then I'm not saying we wouldn't do it, but
it's a luxury. Six receivers is a luxury. Four tight ends is a luxury. Ten
linebackers is a luxury. You can't be rich everywhere. If you are over at
some positions, you have to be under at other one in order to balance it
out. Is it a consideration? Yes. Is it a strong one? I would say probably
not.
Q: Ted Johnson was in the starting lineup yesterday. Was that to shore up
the run defense because that is one of his strengths?
BB: I think that Ted missed a little bit of time in preseason and came back,
and had he played more in preseason he might have been a little bit further
along. But he's coming around, and I thought he played pretty well in the
opportunities he had in the Indianapolis game. [It was] not great, but it
was okay. We felt like for this game plan, that the situation would be best
if we gave him a few more snaps. That may or may not be the case next week.
We'll deal with it on a week-by-week basis, but I thought he did a nice job
in there yesterday. He was a big part of a better run defense.
Q: Do you see any progress with Rosevelt Colvin's mobility?
BB: Yes, I think it's fine. I think it's fine. It's going to be pretty
incremental at this point. I think that there still is some [progress], but
I think we've seen all the big jumps and the big gains. Now it's going to be
going from that, whatever it is, 96 to 100 percent or 97 [percent], wherever
it is. It's just going to be little things. Whether that's in a week or a
month or six weeks, who knows, but I think he's functioning pretty well.
Obviously [he is functioning] well enough for us to have confidence in him
out there in any situation. Is he all the way there yet? Probably not quite,
but it's pretty close. I think that it will just come in very small doses,
but it's certainly headed in that direction. I think he's gotten better
every time he has stepped out onto the field this year.
Q: It seems like even when you win, the players themselves are the ones
nitpicking about what they could have done better. Is that something you
established, and how has that changed from the time you got here to now?
BB: I think just in terms of now, players have high expectations, too. They
sit here and go through hours and hours of meetings and a lot of hours on
the practice field, a lot of film study, a lot of preparation time, and
their expectations are to go out there and play well. When you have
opportunities to be productive and, for whatever reason, it just doesn't
happen, that's not satisfying to the player, it's not satisfying to the
coach, it's not satisfying to the team, and there's a certain level of
frustration. I don't think it's overwhelming, but you just like to do
better. Especially when you're a good competitor, you always want to see
things executed better. That goes for me as a coach, too. I'm disappointed
in some of the things that I did last week because I thought they would have
turned out better in the game than they did. I'm going to work harder on
them this week and hope that they turn out better the next time we get an
opportunity to do them. I think that's just the mentality of a competitor,
of a guy who football is important to, that wants to do well, that puts a
lot into it. You want to see good results, and if you feel like you've come
up a little bit short, then there's that motivation to keep doing it better.
Going back to earlier, we had a lot of problems in 2000. I wouldn't really
know where to begin with them, but I think that the mentality that you're
talking about is probably a process that we were much better at being
realistic and being able to take constructive criticism and being
self-critical by the next year, probably by the '01 season. As I've said
many times, I don't know how you can possibly improve if you can't accept
and take criticism. Otherwise, you're just going to go along with the same
old point that you're doing every time, and if it's not good enough then
you're never going to acknowledge that you've come up short and it's never
going to get any better. I think being able to accept constructive criticism
and then take action and do something about it, that's the key to improving.
Without improvement you're really not going too far in this league. I don't
think anybody is playing well enough right now to really be where they need
to be in the long run.
Q: Does it help to have a quarterback who seems to never be satisfied?
BB: Tom [Brady] is great, but we have a lot of players you can put in that
category. I think you can just pretty much go right down the line, the
receivers, the backs, the offensive linemen, the defensive linemen, the
[defensive backs], the linebackers, the kickers. I don't think Adam
[Vinatieri] wants to miss any kicks. I don't think Josh [Miller] wants to
miss [anything]. I don't think Lonie [Paxton] wants to have any bad snaps. I
think that's a mentality of a lot of people on this team, certainly the
veteran people. I can't speak for all the rookies because we just haven't
been through it enough with them, but I like some of the signs that they
have given us so far. But I think our veteran players, like I said, football
is important to them. They are committed. They want to do well. It doesn't
always work out perfectly, so you go back, you try to correct your mistakes
and improve on it the next time. I think that's a decent team attitude that
we have. I don't think it just belongs to a few people, and I think Tom has
a good attitude about that. He's looking to play well, looking for
perfection, and when it's not there he's going to go back and try to work
harder to find it, and that's good.
Q: Is that a fine line? When you get a win in this league is it possible
to suck all the life out of the win? Can that be a difficult process?
BB: I know what you're saying. I think if a team doesn't have confidence it
probably could be. If your team doesn't have a lot of playing confidence,
it's probably not a good idea to take it away. There's probably a balance
there. If you have a confident team you're probably better pulling it back a
little bit, and if you're not a confident team then you probably try to push
it up a little bit to get to that good competitive edge where you're
confident, you're sure of what you're doing, but not to the point where
you're taking it for granted. That's an edge that you always want to be at.
It's hard to get there and hard to stay there. It seems like you're always
dipping a little bit above it or below it, but I think that's the point you
probably want to try to strive for.
Q: The publisher sent out some excerpts from Michael Holley's upcoming
book on the Patriots. Can you just comment on that?
BB: Here's what I have to say about that. Number one, just as you put it,
the publisher has sent out some stuff, and obviously this is to hype the
book. The book is being hyped with the title, with the cover and with a few
selected, random quotes, comments or opinions, whatever they happen to be.
I'm not part of that. I'm not part of hyping the book. I'm not on that hype
program, so I think you could talk to the person who wrote it or talk to the
publicist who sent it out or whatever and see what kind of hype they want to
put out, but that's not really what I'm about and what I'm doing. A lot of
those things took place a year to two years ago. A lot of those stories have
been written and talked about, and I'm here to talk about our team and the
Arizona game and moving forward on this season.
Q: Do you stand by the comments you made about Bill Parcells being a
distraction when you both coached the Jets, or do you regret saying those
things?
BB: I'm not hyping the book. It's old news. All that stuff was talked about.
I can't tell you how many Bill Parcells questions and stories there were
last year in the Dallas game and all that. I'm trying to concentrate on this
season. That's all old news. Pull out all the old stories, and whatever was
said, you got it. Do whatever you want with it.
Q: Earlier you said 'number one' in regards to your comments. Do you have
a second comment about the book?
BB: Well, this is all about hyping the book, and I'm not on the hyping the
book program.
Q: Did you read the book?
BB: No, I had no editorial say whatsoever in the book. I've seen a few of
the excerpts. I have a little bit of information about some of the things
that were written and said. I've seen the cover, but no, I haven't read it
with any degree of thoroughness or completely read it either by any stretch.
Q: Why did you decide to give the access needed to write the book?
BB: Again, I'm not going into the hype of the book. There was a demand and
some questions about what we were doing and how we were doing it and to try
to give somewhat of an accurate opportunity for somebody to write about
that, that's what we did. But to hype this into something that it isn't
really is not…I'm just not into that.
Q: To say that you're not into hyping the book, are you afraid that
people are going to take it that you don't approve of what is written in the
book?
BB: I haven't read the book. We're taking two or three comments here and
saying, 'Well, you know, let's blow this up into a big story.' There is no
story with me. Again, a lot of that took place a long time ago, and whatever
it was it was. I don't think there's too much in there that hasn't been
covered and covered pretty thoroughly in the last few months. |
