BB: We're on to Denver and as usual the Broncos look pretty good. They're
pretty strong in every area of the game. They're playing really good
defense. Nobody has scored a touchdown on them this year. They have a lot of
good players there. Of course, Champ Bailey, Al Wilson, I
don't think anybody plays their position any better than those guys do.
They're strong all the way across the board, and as usual, they have a good
running game, they have a couple of runners. Both of them made a lot of big
plays. [They have] good receivers. [They] can throw the ball. [They have]
good tight ends. They're good on special teams. They're a very fast team.
They have a lot of team speed. They blitz well. They pursue well, both on
defense and in the kicking game, and you all know how I feel about [Mike] Shanahan. They're well coached. They have a good football team.
They've done a pretty good job against us. They beat us twice last year.
We're going to have to play better. We're going to have to coach better.
We're just going to have to do a better job if we want to be competitive
with them. They were one game away from the championship last year, so we
know what kind of football team they have and what they're capable of. We're
going to have to play to that level. When we don't, then we know what that
looks like, too. A big week for us.
Q: Would you say historically Denver is always tough against the Patriots?
BB: I don't know. They were 13-3 last year. They were tough against everybody.
They're a good football team. I don't think anybody has an easy time with Denver, certainly not us. They're pretty good against everybody. You
don't see too many teams do very well against them too often.
Q: They seem to be pretty adept at
pulling off the big play. What is the secret to that?
BB: They're just good. They're well
balanced. They can run. They can throw it. They have a good play action
game. They have good receivers, good tight ends, their fast, a good line.
Good everything. They just keep chipping away there and it's hard to stop
everybody. It's hard to stop all of their threats. Sooner or later they get
you somewhere, where you are a little bit out of position or you get a bad
matchup and they take advantage of it and they hit it. It's not like every
play is an 80 yard touchdown, but they stay after you and if there's a soft
spot in there, they can take advantage of it and they have the players that
can turn a five or 10 yard gain into a 40-yarder.
Q: How much has [Javon] Walker added to their big-play ability?
BB: Quite a bit. He made a couple of
big plays last week to set up the tying field goal. Then in overtime, they
hit him on a double move and that kind of put them in position for the
winning field goal. He's a good player. With [Rod] Smith they
have two outstanding receivers, good tight ends, their backs and linemen,
you can pretty much start at any position. There's a lot of talent there.
They have a lot of good football players and they know what they're doing.
Q: I think they led the league in
takeaways last year. Is there something that makes them really good at
creating turnovers?
BB: Well they're fast, so they have a
fast team. They're fast at linebacker. They're fast in the secondary. They
have good edge rushers. Anytime you have a fast team, that's part of it. You
can cause a big disruption and cause negative plays and get in the backfield
and get in long yardage situations and rush the passer. Knock the ball out.
Chase guys down from behind. That's where a lot of strips come from, when
guys are tackling players from behind, whatever position they play. They're
fast in the secondary. They're athletic. Those guys have good ball skills. [Nick] Ferguson, [John] Lynch, Champ Bailey, [Darrent] Williams, [Domonique] Foxworth, they all catch the
ball. Their linebackers, it's like having a couple more strong safeties out
there really. The way [Ian] Gold and [D.J.] Williams run, and Al Wilson, he gets his hands on a bunch of balls too. He
almost intercepted one against us last year down there inside the 10-yard
line. They're a very athletic group and they have good ball skills. If you
make a mistake they're going to make you pay for it.
Q: How much can you get from two game
tapes from last year?
BB: I don't know, it's the same two
teams that we're going to be playing this week, so certainly there are some
things to be learned there. We've looked at them quite a bit. We looked at
them in the offseason. I already looked at them several times this week.
Some of the matchups are the same. Some matchups have changed. We'll try to
understand the schemes and how they play us and more importantly how we need
to play them. I think there's certainly something to gained from those
games. That's not the full story, but there is some significant information
there.
Q: What do you think [Jake] Plummer's problems have been?
BB: What problems?
Q: 50 percent passing. Five
turnovers.
BB: That's the same thing they said
about him last year when they were 1-1 and they go 13-3. What did he throw,
almost 300 passes without an interception?
Q: Did their offense become much more
conservative last week than they were in week one?
BB: No, I wouldn't say so. They run
their offense. They run it pretty well.
Q: What has given them so much
success on their red area defense?
BB: They're a good defensive team
period. You just have less space to work in down there and the holes are
tighter. Their coverage is good. They're hard to run against because they're
big up front and they're fast. The red area defense has been good. They've
kept people out of the end zone, but it's been hard to move the ball up the
field too. They've gotten their turnovers. They're a very disruptive
defense. They stunt a lot. They blitz. The hit you on one of those plays and
it's second-and-13, second-and-15, third-and-12, those kinds of situations.
They're hard to pick up against them.
Q: Why don't more teams have a 1-2
running back style?
BB: It's not just the running game,
it's the whole commitment to that offensive style. It's like Houston committed to it. They hired the offensive coordinator and make him their
head coach, so I imagine that's what they're going to run. There's a lot of
different ways to be successful. There's a lot of good offenses in this
league. A lot of good defenses. They're not all the same. They are what
those coaches and those teams believe in. Denver does what they do
and they do it very well. They have a good scheme and a good system. They're
as productive on offense as anybody. Why other teams don't do it, there's
other ways to be productive as well. I think you have to have a certain
commitment to it and Denver has and they've been very good at it.
Q: What type of challenges does a
blocking scheme like that present?
BB: Like any other good running game,
they attack the entire field. They can go outside. They can go inside. They
have misdirection plays, so you have to defend everywhere. The backs are
good. The backs are fast. They can get outside and they can cut back and
they can go the distance if they get a little hole there. Anytime you have
to defend everything, it makes it harder.
Q: You mentioned how fast they are on
defense. What is the best way to counter that offensively?
BB: Get on them and not let them run,
not play a space game with them and try to get somebody on them so that
they're not running free. They try to protect them by stunting and doing
things like that to make it hard. It's easier said than done, but they try
to protect them and they do a pretty good job of it.
Q: Is this an easier game than most
because your team knows the history with this particular opponent?
BB: Well, the history is pretty bad,
so I think we all understand that. They beat us four of the last five times.
Even the game that we won, they were ahead for most of the game. We had to
make a few plays there in the last couple of minutes. They've done well
against us and we need to coach better and we need to play better. We just
need to do a better job than what we've done against them the last few
times. I think we all understand that challenge and they're a good football
team. The only way we're going to win is to do better than we've done. We
know we're going to have to play our best game, coach well, make good
decisions, execute well. That's what it's going to come down to, that's what
we're going to have to do.
Q: Are there any common threads
schematically? The schemes they run just seem to have success against the
schemes you run.
BB: I don't know. They were 13-3 last
year. They were pretty good against a lot of teams.
Q: From a coaching standpoint, when
you are so familiar with the opponent, how does that change the coaching
dynamic?
BB: We've had a couple of opponents
like that who were borderline division games, teams like Indianapolis and Denver, that it seems that we play them every year and sometimes
twice a year, even though they're not in our division. That's just kind of
the way that those have fallen. Pittsburgh is another team that it
seems like they're on our schedule once and then we end up against them
another time, at least we have a few times. Those teams, you're a little
more familiar with in your conference, relative to some other teams just
because of the way that things work out. You take it for what it is. They're
not division games but there's been a lot of games against teams like that,
just the way the schedule have fallen.
Q: From your standpoint, is it kind
of, 'He's seen a ton of what I've done. I've seen a ton of what he's done?'
BB: Again, I would just compare it to
the division games. It's like playing Buffalo, Miami and the Jets twice a year. You know those teams well. They know you well,
that changes the dynamics a little bit from when you play an NFC team that
you're only playing once every three years. You still have the same
preparations every week and there's things that they know you so well that
there's ways they can take advantage and set up certain things that maybe
other teams that aren't as familiar can do that. I think it just takes the
preparations to maybe a little bit more of a sophisticated level because
everybody knows each other pretty well and then there are always new people
in the mix. This year a good example with them at tight end and the receiver
situation.
Q: You've talked about Mike
Shanahan in the past being a guy that changes things up from week to
week. Is there a common thread in how they want to attack you that maybe
they've been successful with?
BB: Yeah, there have been certain
things that they've done that you can see there's a certain element of where
they want to attack us. Denver's offense is like a lot of other good
offenses. They basically run the same plays every week. It's not like
there's a lot of new plays. There are very few new plays. They change the
looks up on them and it's hard to identify how they're going to attack you,
how they're going to attack the run force, what personnel group it's going
to be out of, how they're going to get the different formations, what
adjustments you have to make, depending on what call you have made
defensively. Then they end up doing the things that they know how to do and
they do them very well. That's what most good offenses and most good
defenses do, is the kind of change the looks so it's not that obvious and
the other team can key in on it, try to do what they do and do it well. The
things that they have the most confidence in and they execute it the best
and that's what Denver does. They have certain elements of their game,
whether you see the same plays every single week, but how they build them,
how they get to them, how they disguise them, that's what Shanahan really does a good job of and he creates a lot of pressure on your
particular defensive schemes as to how he sets those plays up. I don't think
it's ever a question of which plays are they going to run. I think it's more
of a question of how are they going to get to them and how are they going to
build them. I think that's what good teams do. That's what good offenses do.
They run plays that they know how to run and make it hard for you to figure
out exactly how they're getting to it. That's the tough part.
Q: When you look at the interception
from last year with Champ Bailey, in the final analysis was that a
tremendous defensive play or was it something that should not have been done
the way it was done offensively?
BB: It definitely should not have
been done the way it was done offensively. We had a runaway rusher coming in
there, there were a lot of things that didn't go well with that play.
Obviously they made a good play and we didn't. There were a lot of elements
of the play that weren't good on our side.
Q: Tom [Brady] talked
about it this week, about how it was the same blitz that the Jets ran, that sack on Sunday, so he knew there was one guy free and he knew it
was his job to get rid of the ball as fast as he could. Was it the same
blitz that the Jets ran?
BB: Yeah, it was an 11-up blitz. They
had 11 guys on the line of scrimmage and they were in man-to-man coverage on
the extended receivers and they had the tight receivers and they
hugged-blitzed them when they blocked. It's an 11-up blitz. Just about
anybody that runs it, that's how they run it. You have the quarterback with
the ball, so no matter how many you keep in…it's the same thing Dallas did extensively. That's the scheme that some teams use. They bring one more
than you can block. Teams that we saw it against, Washington. Arizona ran it some.
Q: Why did you show the team the Denver playoff game in this past Monday's meetings?
BB: Well, we hadn't seen that game.
No. The season was over. We hadn't seen that game. Usually we'd watch…if
it's a game from Sunday, we'd watch it when we come in on Monday or
sometimes on Tuesday depending on what the schedule is. As a team we hadn't
seen that game.
Q: That 11-up blitz, is that becoming
more prevalent in recent years?
BB: I don't know. Some teams do it
more than others. Just about everybody if they do it, then they have a way
to go up there and show it and back out of it, which Denver does that
too. We've seen it, I don't know, two or three times this year. There are
other times we've seen it, in other words seen the team run it against
somebody else and then we've prepared for it, whether they don't necessarily
do it against you. It's not something that you usually see a lot every game.
A lot of teams will get it, they'll run it, they'll get out of it and make
you work on it and spring it some other time.
Q: What kind of kicker was Morten
Andersen when he first came into the league?
BB: A big leg. Accurate. Good height.
He was a [darn] good kicker. No real weak points.
Q: From your angle what is it that
makes kickers so dependable and recyclable and able to continue to be
brought back?
BB: I think that's it. You kind of
feel like you know what you have with players who have done it for a long
time and maybe they don't have quite the leg, quite the distance they had
when they were younger, but the big thing about a kicker is making the
kicks. Kickoffs are one thing, but you don't have to kickoff if you don't
make the field goal, so that problem is really secondary. The most important
thing is to get the ball through the uprights and take advantage of your
scoring opportunities with points on the board. I think that's always going
to be a higher priority for a coach over kickoffs. Not that kickoffs aren't
important. I'm not saying that. Like is said, if you don't make the kick,
you don't have to worry about kicking off.
Q: Did you coach against [George] Blanda?
BB: [Laughter] No. I've never coached
against Blanda.
Q: With the caveat that you always
make that everyone can improve their performance, how would say that Tom [Brady] has played so far this season?
BB: I think he can improve. I think
we can all improve. It's the second game of the year. I'd like to think that
any player after the second game of the year if he keeps practicing and he
keeps playing, he's going to play better in a month, he's going to play
better in two months than he's playing now and collectively because it is a
team sport. Sometimes people seem to lose sight of that. The combination of
people playing together and functioning together as a unit, that also has a
chance to improve, in fact I'm sure it will improve on almost every team
over time and over repetitions. Two teams are practicing the same amount of
times, playing the same amount of games, they're both improving, but they
could be going at different rates, so the rate of improvement, it's
relative. It's not just getting from here to here, but how you're doing
competitively with your opponents in terms of improving. That's the way I
look at it with everybody. I'm not going to walk in there and tell
everybody, 'Okay fellas, I think everybody just can't get any better. We're
at the top of our game. We should just sit back and relax because it can't
possibly get any better. I don't know how anybody can possibly look at it
that way. Look at Tiger Woods. The guy goes out and wins five
straight golf tournaments and he'll be on the practice tee at six in the
morning. Why do you think he's out there practicing? Because that is how you
get better. No matter how good you are and no matter what score you shoot or
how many games you've won, or whatever you've done, how many individual
accolades you've achieved, you can still get better and you still need to
improve if you're competing in the sport. There are other people out there
looking to try to catch up to you.
Q: Tiger's sport is an
individual sport.
BB: I'm talking about an athlete
improving their performance regardless of whether it is an individual sport
or a team sport. It still comes down to there's always things that you can
do to make yourself a better player, a better coach, make better decisions,
improve physically. There are 100 things that you can do to improve and I've
put everybody in that category. I wouldn't exclude one person in this
organization from that. We can all do better.
Q: I realize it's impossible, nor
would you ever put a percentage on it, I'm just wondering do you have a
sense of how much of Tom's statistics not being quite as good as just
being the newcomers in the receiving corps and problems on the offensive
line.
BB: I don't know. Like you said, I
wouldn't put a percentage on it. I couldn't put one on it even if I wanted
to, so I'm not going to even try. I'll let you pick one out and throw it on
there.
Q: Is points allowed a good measuring
stick for defense?
BB: The most important one. Wins and
losses, but it comes down to points. There's nothing more important on
defense than how many points you give up.
Q: Where do turnovers rank?
BB: Right up there, because not only
does that prevent points, but a lot of times it establishes field position
opportunities for the offense. Being on the positive end of the turnovers,
of course taking advantage of those opportunities, goes along with that and
keeping the other team off the board or minimizing the number of points that
they score, that's how you win games right there. You talk about all the
defensive stats that you want to, sacks and yards and first downs and all of
that, at the end of the game they're just tallying up how many points are on
the board. They don't have very many, then you're doing something right on
defense. If they have a lot, then I don't care what the stats are, it's hard
to win when you give up a lot of points.
Q: Can a team's lack of turnovers be
attributed to the offense not making mistakes?
BB: Of course. A lot of turnovers are
a result of poor execution on the other side of the ball. If the offense
scores, sometimes it's a result of poor execution on the defensive side of
the ball. It's not all great plays. There are a lot of those. There's also a
lot of plays that are just football by one side or the other and the other
team is able to take advantage of it. A lot of turnovers are forced. A lot
of them aren't. They're just really bad decisions or miscommunication or
ball handling or whatever. We've all seen a lot of those, and I'd say it's
probably depending on the team, but league wide, I think it's probably
pretty close to 50/50. At the same time, you see a lot of defensive players
get their hands on the ball for potential turnovers and interceptions and
they don't catch them. A lot of times those could very easily be two, three,
four turnover games and they end up being none because they're not able to
take advantage of the opportunities. Part of it is the opportunities, then
part of it is capitalizing on them and part of is having an awareness to be
able to get the ball out and create those and force them and not just wait
for the offense to get a ball tipped or fumble a snap or whatever. It's a
combination.
Q: When you're not as familiar with
another team does it become more about individual matchups and maybe a
little less of about scheming a team and planning for them?
BB: No, I don't think so. I think
they're all a part of it. There's enough things going on, enough schemes
going on. It's not like you just have to stop one play. There's a lot of
things that you have to defend. But when you're throwing a pass, you're
throwing it against 10 different coverages, different combination blitzes,
different man coverage, two different looks zone coverages, then trying to
make one coverage look one way and disguising it and then going into
something else and vice versa. I think we have a pretty good understanding
of their schemes. I think they have a pretty good understanding of ours, but
how they match up play-to-play throughout the course of the game and then
plus there's a new wrinkle or two in there somewhere along the line, I think
that's as much of a part of it. Sometimes you can't even get the matchup
that you were trying to create because they're not really where you think
they're going to be. They have enough ways to move guys around and change up
their look so that they're just not sitting ducks from mismatches. They try
to play into your strengths or you're trying to play into their weaknesses,
it doesn't always matchup quite the way you would hope it would. There's a
lot of that. |
