| |
BB: It's been a pretty interesting couple of days watching these Bears.
It might actually be fun if we didn't have to play them. They're really an
exciting team to watch. They're extremely good at everything. I don't see
any weaknesses at all in this team. On top of it all [is] their skill and their
athleticism and their playmaking ability. They're tough. They're a very
physical team. I think [Bears' GM] Jerry Angelo and Lovie [Smith] have obviously done a
tremendous job putting together this group of talented players, the staff,
and everything else. They play extremely well together. They're really
pretty good in everything. Defensively, they pretty much set the standard in
the league. They don't give up many points, they're so far ahead of
everybody else on third down, it's really not even competitive. They're good
against the run. They turn the ball over. They make a lot of big plays.
They're a good blitzing team. They're a good coverage team. They play man, they play zone. They pretty much do it all and do it well. But the big thing
they do is turn the ball over and produce points on the defensive side of
the ball, which also carries into the special teams – they've had returns
for touchdowns, they've recovered three or four fumbles on the coverage
teams. They basically lead the league in special teams. They're very good
there. [Brad] Maynard does an excellent job, hardly any of his punts get
returned, and the ones that do don't go very far. They cover well. They
return well. Robbie [Gould] hasn't missed a field goal or extra point kick
this year, so they're pretty solid there. Offensively, they have a really
good offensive line, two good running backs, the quarterback has had I think
probably as many 100-rating days as any quarterback we've faced, other than
[Peyton] Manning. The receivers are very skilled. They have a bunch of them.
The tight end is a very talented player. So they're really good across the
board. They do a good job with their offensive scheme, the running game,
play-action. Third down, they spread you. They can tighten it down, they can
spread you out. They can throw it, they can run it, they can throw it deep.
So they're obviously one of the top teams in the league and they deserve to
be. They're very good at every single thing they do. We're just
going to have to do a good job this week in all three phases of the game.
It's going to have to be a good complementary game. I don't think this is a
team where you can take one thing away or just concentrate on one thing; they're just too good at everything. We're going to need a total team
effort. Everybody is going to really have to be on top of everything
against this football team. They're very good.
Q: Rex Grossman has been a little up and down. Is that maybe part of the
process of a young quarterback and the maturation process?
BB: Well, I think they have a lot of talent on offense and he's made a
lot of big plays for them. He's thrown a lot of long passes and a lot of big
plays into tight coverage. They move him around a little bit. He has a great
corps of receivers. I think he certainly has made a lot more good ones than
bad ones like everybody else that plays. There's always going to be plays
that could be better, but he has a lot of good ones.
Q: I know he maybe has that gunslinger mentality a little bit, but does a
young quarterback have to guard against that sometimes?
BB: I'm sure that is something that Ron [Turner] and Lovie talked to him
about, not taking unnecessary chances. At the same time, you don't want to
take away from the quarterback's aggressiveness, but you don't want to turn
the ball over. I think he's done a really good job for them. He's done a
good job of getting the ball to all of his different receivers, all of the
receivers have been productive. The tight ends. The backs. I think he does a
good job of spreading it around and has made some very accurate throws.
Q: On defense, do you have to key in on [Brian] Urlacher in terms of
their defense or does it go way beyond that?
BB: It goes way beyond that, but you certainly have to be aware of him.
He's a tremendous player. A lot of speed in there at middle linebacker,
which we've seen before. I think the thing that is a little bit unique to Brian is his size and his range. We've played against some really good
players like [London] Fletcher, [Bryan] Thomas and [Jonathan] Vilma, just in
this division. Start with them. [Nick] Barnett, a real athletic guy last
week. Urlacher is so big and he's so rangy. He gets his hands on a lot of
balls. He's a really good interceptor. He's a good blitzer. He makes plays
sideline to sideline like Fletcher does, but he's just a bigger man. He has
a lot more range and he's much harder to throw around in the inside part of
the defense. He takes up a lot of space and he's a big threat to blitz. You
definitely have to know where he is. You have to block the other 10 guys,
too. You have to deal with them whatever their role is. He's a major force
in there and he's a very instinctive guy. I think a lot of plays that he
makes are plays where he, I don't want to say he doesn't take care of his
responsibility, he does his responsibility, but then he's able to see that
he's able to make the play and still maybe let that responsibility go. He's
close enough to the action to make a play and he'll drop his guy and just go
in there and sack the quarterback or drop his guy and get in the passing
lane and make a play on the ball somewhere else. He's a very instinctive
football player as well.
Q: Who else plays like him in the league?
BB: Not too many. I think he has a pretty unique style of play. Again,
he's so big and rangy that he makes so many plays in the passing game. I
think that's what really differentiates him. There's a lot of middle
linebackers that make a lot of tackles in the run, some of the ones I just
mentioned, but I think that in the passing game his range and his speed and
his ability to not only cover but also blitz, really puts a lot of pressure
offensively to handle him.
Q: Would you say that in a cover-two you need a linebacker with those
types of abilities to make it work exceptionally well? One that can rush and
cover?
BB: Well, I don't know about a cover-two scheme. I don't really think
they play that much of it. They mix it in there a little bit, but it's not
that big of a thing. I think if you have a good football player, you try to
run things that at least give him an opportunity to be productive as a
playmaker, whatever that consists of. I think that they've done a good job
with that. They mix in some cover-two. I'm not saying they don't play it,
but I wouldn't say that they just sit in it either. Far from it. Far from
it. Anytime you're strong down the middle, which they are, with Tank [Johnson], and [Tommie] Harris and Urlacher, it's hard. It's hard to get all
three of them. If you miss one, then you're dead and that guy makes the
play. You can't run away from them. If you run inside, you're running at
them. If you run outside, they're fast enough to track you down. You have to
get somebody reached. It's hard. The ends are good. [Alex] Brown and [Adewale] Ogunleye do a good job out there, too. They put pressure on the edge of the
pocket and they chase down the running plays. They have a very good pursuing
team. That's one thing that's really impressive about the Bears on film is a
lot of times you see at the end of the play they have eight or nine guys
standing right there in the picture. They're all there. It's not one guy
making the play, it's just the guy that gets there first because all the
rest of them are going to be there too. They pursue very well. They have
real good team speed and of course the middle linebacker, that's a big part
of it.
Q: You talked about Urlacher's instincts in the passing game. Watching
the Jets throw the interception last week on the goal line, is that an
example of that?
BB: Yes it was. They tried to run a little out and up move by the tight
end, by [Chris] Baker, and it looked like he was going to come open inside
of the safety and Urlacher had the presence to get over and get in the
passing lane and made a nice play on the ball. He extended his hands. Again,
I don't know if other middle linebackers had read that play would've had the
range and the length that he had to have actually made the interception and
then run it back to almost midfield. It was a very instinctive play. He had
another one where he was blitzing, he reached out with one hand and batted
the ball up in the air and then ran and dove five yards behind the line of
scrimmage and caught it. Those are the kinds of plays that you could watch
some guys play their whole career and they wouldn't make those. I'm talking
about good players.
Q: How much of his great sense in the passing game is due to the fact
that he was involved as a safety in college?
BB: I'm sure that helped. Yes, I'm sure that helped him. Again, I don't
have enough personal experience with the player to know exactly some of
those details, but I'm sure that helped him. I think in a lot of respects,
it's easier for a player to go from deeper in the defense to closer to the
line, I think, generally speaking. It's harder to go from on the line to
back into the defense. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I just think
that's a little bit of a harder transition because the passing game, the
concepts in the passing game, there are a lot more of them and I think
they're, in a way, more difficult than the concepts in the running game. I
think you can teach a guy to play the run a lot quicker than you can teach a
down guy, generally speaking, to play the pass. So I'm sure it did help him,
especially in something like man-to-man coverage. Man-to-man is man-to-man.
When they asked him to do that, he's good at that. But a lot of times he's
just kind of the free guy in there sort of an extra player in a lot of their
man-free coverages and he's very good at reading the quarterback and
breaking on the ball and understanding route concepts and kind of getting to
the guy that the quarterback is most likely to throw to and either take them
away so then the quarterback has to hold the ball and then they get sacked
or making a play.
Q: [Bernard] Berrian's big plays in the passing game, are they sending
him down the field most of the time?
BB: Yes, I'd say most of them are down field throws, although I think
he's good after the catch, too. He's kind of a crafty guy with some speed,
like a Keenan McCardell-type of receiver, he's kind of slick and crafty.
They run a lot of play action, deep throws on play action. He's caught a
bunch of those. He is a double move guy. He got Buffalo on a stop and go
route for about 60. It seems like he has one or two every game, and even if
they miss it, which they don't hit every one of them, but they hit a lot of
them, but even if they miss it, then it really kind of keeps the defense
back, keeps them from getting up there too close and that opens up a lot of
the intermediate and shorter throws. But he's very good, as is [Muhsin] Muhammad, as is [Desmond] Clark. Those guys will all go up and get the ball.
They run well. Justin [Gage] and [Mark] Bradley, those guys have also shown
the ability to make plays down the field or take a short play and break a
tackle and turn it into a long run. They have a stable of receivers that are
all impressive.
Q: How have you seen the defense change since Mike Brown has been out?
BB: Mike was a really good player and a big playmaker for them. He's been
involved in a lot of turnovers there. I still think that they're good at
safety. [Danieal] Manning has done a good job for them. [Todd] Johnson is a
very instinctive player. He's had some big hits. In all honesty, it's hard
to get to the safeties. It's hard to get to them. A lot of times, the play,
it's over two levels before them. I think their whole secondary is good and
Manning comes in as their nickel back, as their third corner. He doesn't
really play that much. He plays in their nickel, which as much if they're
ahead and they're running out the clock in the middle of the second-quarter,
like against Buffalo and San Francisco. They played nickel the whole game.
For a guy who doesn't play even as a starting defensive back, he has a lot
of interceptions and makes a lot of plays. He's a really good player. To
have that kind of depth and bring them in. Same thing on the defensive line.
They have a lot of good defensive lineman and they play them all and they're
all productive. I think it's indicative of the depth of that football team
and then of course it also carries onto special teams. Like I said, they
return them and they cover them as well as anybody in the league and kick
them, I might add. They're very good in that area too. I think again it's a
real testament to their depth of the team, that Jerry and Lovie have put
together.
Q: It seems as if they drafted as well as anybody in the league.
BB: They drafted extremely well, and on top of that they've made a couple
of free agent acquisitions, in one way or another. They're a really good
football team. They're young. They're talented. They're tough. They're fast.
They do a lot of things well.
Q: How is Rosevelt Colvin playing this year? How close is he to being the
player you thought he would be when you signed him a few years ago?
BB: I think he's a good player. I think he's a really good player. I
think he's having a really good year. I think he's done a really good for
us. He does a lot of things well. He rushes well. He covers well. He plays
the run. He's a smart player and hardly makes any mistakes. I think he's a
real solid guy, very professional, well prepared, works well with his
teammates, whether it be the ends or the inside linebackers or the safeties
at times in different combinations or different coverages and that kind of
thing. He's very good and very aware of those things. Again, I didn't really
have a lot of experience with him, but having worked with him, he does a
real good job in all those areas. He has a nice combination, really, of the
coverage background in Chicago and his rush background in college, when he
was basically a defensive end, for a guy to have that kind of experience in
coverage and in the rush, he understands all of the different concepts that
could come up and when they apply. Whereas sometimes some players are a
little heavier in one area or another. He has a good balance and has a
really good understanding of all of the concepts in the game.
Q: Can you compare the state of your linebackers this year to last year?
BB: Well last year Willie [McGinest] was playing more and this year Tully [Banta-Cain] is playing more. Mike [Vrabel], this year he's up and last year
he was back. Junior [Seau] wasn't here. It's kind of the same number of
guys, we've just kind of relocated a little bit. I think the linebackers as
a whole are playing with a good level of consistency. It could always be
better. There's certainly things that they need to work on and improve on,
but I think overall they're doing a pretty solid job. We'll find out this
week. We'll get tested this week in the running game, the passing game, a
good offensive line, pass rush, we'll get tested in every area with these
guys.
Q: Sunday's game against the Packers, you had four fumbles with one lost.
Do you ignore the first number?
BB: No. You sure don't. Not at all. No. This week that would probably
have been four lost. That's probably what it would be. It's poor ball
security. That's definitely going to cost you. I don't think you can keep
laying the ball on the ground and think you're going to get them back.
Penalties. Fumbles. Turnovers. Missed tackles. You might slip by with them
for a while, but not for long. Against a really good football team like the Bears, I don't think hardly anything slips by them. They're like a school of
piranhas, you make one mistake and they pounce on it and they're all over it
and the ball is in the end zone. It's not just a bad play or a turnover.
They'll take advantage of it and put it in the end zone on you.
Q: When a fumble occurs, do you ever say, 'Well, it's just the nature of
the game and those happen every game?'
BB: No. I wouldn't say every game, but I would say that there are some
plays where you can look at those plays and say they were contact fumbles. A
guy gets hits really hard in an area right on the ball where there really
isn't much he can do about it. Maybe he has his back turned or it's the
perfect hit right on the ball and there's a lot of pressure there and it
comes out. And there's a few of those. Maybe the quarterback gets blindsided
and get stripped and just has no chance to protect the ball. There's going
to be a couple of those. But I would say by far the vast majority of them
don't fall into that category. The ones that happen like that, it's hard to
say, 'What can you do to prevent it?' Sometimes it's a really good play on
the other side of the ball. I would say the vast majority of those plays are
not that and it comes down to more of an issue of ball security and
awareness and just fundamentally keeping the three points of contact on the
ball or two hands on the ball if it's a quarterback in the pocket, so that
it would take an absolute maximum pressure hit to knock it out. Like I said,
when that happens, that's one thing. When it doesn't happen, that's usually
not good ball protection by the guy who has it.
Q: How important is predictability from a performance level for a
coaching staff?
BB: I think that's what we're all striving for is to perform at a high
level on a consistent basis. I think pretty much anybody in this league
could go out and flash a couple of good plays here or there somewhere along
the line. It would be hard for me to imagine a player in this league not
having the ability to do that. The good ones are the ones that can do it
consistently and the great ones are the ones that do it almost every time. I
think that's what separates the average guys from the good ones and the good
ones from the great ones – being able to do it on a consistent basis.
Q: Is it absurd to compare this Bears defense with the '85 defense?
BB: What did the Bears give up defensively that year? 160 points or
something like that. I forget what it was. 180. They have only given up 120,
so at the rate they're going I would say…when you talk about stats, I think
that's the main stat, how many points you're giving up. Again, not only have
they not given up very many points, but they're also scoring a bunch of
them. I would consider those scores that they get on punt return really
partially credit it to the defense because they're forcing them to punt and
most of the guys that are probably blocking on that team are on the
defensive side of the ball anyway. Those are really kind of defensive
scores. We'll see how the rest of the year goes, but I think both defenses
are really good. Really good. |
|
