BB: Good morning. I don't really have
much. I think I said it all yesterday.
Q: Last week we talked about the
execution in terms of the running game. How much of a factor was the speedy
linebacker play of Denver?
BB: They're fast. They're a good
pursuing team. I still think it's not any one thing, any one guy, [or] any
one defender. It's just more of an overall team execution.
Q: Are the Bengals' speed at
linebacker comparable to Denver's?
BB: I think they have a little
different scheme. Each player is different. Denver's linebackers are
probably faster than anybody's in the league. I don't know if anybody has
any…not many. Not many. I'd put them certainly in the upper 10 to 15 percent
in terms of team speed at linebacker.
Q: How have they adapted and picked
up Marvin [Lewis'] schemes?
BB: They're obviously a turnover
driven defense and they've been very good at that since Marvin has
got there and they improved last year. They led the league in turnovers,
turnover differential, [Deltha] O'Neal with 10 interceptions,
I don't know, [they were] +20-something, Marvin's record there has been
pretty good when they've been in the plus turnover category. They're a high
turnover team on defense and they're a big play team on offense. That's a
pretty lethal combination and they're a very explosive team, so they could
score a lot of points in a hurry with a score on offense, a then a turnover
on defense and a big play on offense and then it's another turnover. They
can rack up 14, 21, 17 points in a couple of minutes easily. Really it's
dangerous to play against a team like that because you can make just a
couple of mistakes, but it could be 20 points.
Q: Do you game plan that at all,
knowing that they could create those turnovers at any point?
BB: I think you have to protect it on
every play. There is no one play that I think is any more targeted than
another. Whether it's the quarterback throwing it, the receivers running
with it, the runners carrying it, it doesn't really matter who has it. They
have a lot of guys that are looking for it. They're breaking on the ball.
They're raking it out. Sometimes they're not really so much as trying to
tackle a man. A lot of times they try to tackle the ball. I think it's
something you have to have a real awareness for. I don't think you can
predict that it's going to happen on this play or that play. It kind of
depends on what position the defender is in, what kind of situation or
opportunity he has as to how aggressively he's going to play it. When you
watch the film you keep seeing it over and over again. I'm not saying you
see it on every play, but you see it repeatedly. There are a lot of guys
that do it. It's not just like sometimes it's just one or two guys. In this
case, it's just about everybody on the team you see doing it.
Q: What is it? Is there some common
thread there?
BB: It's just the way they play. They
are covering one guy, but they're watching the quarterback and the ball is
over here and a lot of times they really drop their guy or their coverage
and go where the ball is. Like I said, the guy is running with the ball, and
a lot of guys would come in and make the tackle, and they kind of go in and
try to tackle the ball. I'm saying that you see a lot of it. It's not every
single play, but you see a lot of that.
Q: Do they disguise coverages well?
BB: Well, they have a good coverage
package. They are more of a zone team than a man team. Again, if you're a
zone team, that gives you a chance to watch the quarterback more than being
a man team. They do both. They have a nice mixture of zone, man, pressure.
They stunt their front. They keep them stationary. They give you a lot of
things to work on. It's not like you can count on, 'Well, this is what
they're going to do,' because they have enough variety to keep you honest.
Q: What did you think of Chad
Johnson's comments yesterday?
BB: Which comments were those?
Q: Well, he's going to knock off Rodney [Harrison's] helmet. He's going to flip Asante [Samuel]
upside down.
BB: Is he? Chad is a good guy.
He's a good guy. I've spent some time with him. He's really an entertaining
kid. He has a good sense of humor. It sounds like he was poking fun at us.
That's okay.
Q: What do you think would motivate
him to say things like that?
BB: I think he's just a playful kind
of guy. I think that's the way he is.
Q: What if he played for you? How
would he fit in here?
BB: I think he'd be productive for
any team in the league. I can't imagine that he wouldn't be. When I went and
worked him out, he was working out in LA, so I worked him out on the USC campus. Of course he came up there with his car and he had his Oregon
State magnetic flag on his car on the USC campus. That kind of stuff.
He's a good kid. I've spent time with him a couple of times in the
offseason. He's a good guy to be around. I'm sure he meant all of those
things real seriously.
Q: Why were you with him during the
offseason?
BB: We were at a couple of events
together and just from time-to-time we bumped into each other. Stuff like
that. It wasn't anything scheduled. It just worked out that way. But like I
said, we go back to Keyshawn [Johnson] and when he came out,
what was that, five years ago? Whatever it was. I can't remember. We played
him here a few times. Some players you just end up bumping into more than
others. There's, I don't know, however many players in the league, almost
2,000. Some guys you end up, for one reason or another, bumping into a
little more than others. He's one of those that our paths have crossed a few
times. It's been fun.
Q: Why does no one ever take offense
to the things he says? Why don't more teams take that seriously?
BB: It's Chad being Chad.
That's just Chad.
Q: Is it more acceptable because he
can back it up?
BB: He's not even serious. I could
throw the same stuff back at him if that's really what we wanted to do.
Q: Could you do that? We want you to.
[Laughter]
BB: [Laughter] Tell him we'd cover
him one-on-one all the time, but he pushes off more than any receiver in the
league. He must be paying off the officials not to call it. We're going to
have to double cover him some, not that he can get open…
[Laughter]
BB: Just as much as he pushes off, we
have to do something to protect ourselves. No, he's a great player. We know
that.
Q: How difficult is it during the
course of a season to upgrade your team or to make trades? Why is that such
a difficult thing to do in this league?
BB: Because the further you go into
the season, the more valuable the players are to your team. They've been
with you through, however long they've been with you, but at least through
training camp and preseason games and each game in the regular season. That
all just adds up. It mounts up, so each succeeding week they add more value
to your team. The time when the most players are available in the National
Football League is at the 53-man roster cut down. That's when the most
players are available. So if you want the maximum exposure to the personnel
in the National Football League, that's the day to do it. All the players on
the practice squad, none of them have committed to practice squads yet, so
they can all be claimed. Everybody is down to 53, and once you're at 53, the
first thing that happens is you sign those eight players to your practice
squad, which makes them less available to the other teams in the league. Not
that you can't get them, but it's harder to get them and there's more of a
commitment to get them. Then every time a team loses a player, puts a guy on
injured/reserve, then they bring another player in to replace him, so that
takes one guy off of the list of players that is available. So it just
dwindles from there. Then at the end of the season, every team has a lot of
players on their team. Usually somewhere between, if you re-sign your
practice squad players – maybe not all of them,
but at least some of them, then your roster is probably somewhere between 60
and 70 players, and whatever free agents you have. But there's a few players
there that become available, but still the bulk of your players are...you're
usually well into the 50's and a lot of times into the 60's numbers wise. If
you are looking for players, the best day to look for them is the day of the
53-man roster cut down. That's the best day. But that's also a hard day
because every time you take one, then you would have to take one off of your
roster. It's not like going out and signing a player when you're at an
80-man limit, because you just have more spots. But in terms of the total
number of players that are out there, that's the day.
Q: Do you generally go with the
approach that what you start with is pretty much what you have minus a few?
BB: No, I've never said that. I've
never said that. I think basically, that on average, through the course of
the year, you're playing with about 60 players. A couple of years ago when
the roster cut was 60 and not 75 like it was this year, but when the roster
cut was 60, or 65, on that final cut, by and large, most of those players
played in the National Football League that year. Either at some point the
team that they were with had an injury or had some situation that they
brought those players back or there was another team in the league that had
a personnel situation and they needed to take a player from another team
that was at that 60 cut. So I would say generally speaking those guys that
didn't necessarily make the 53-man roster, but made the 60 to 65 man roster,
the majority of those players ended up playing in the National Football
League at some point that year, as a general rule. So that's why I think
it's important in the NFL, you have to know where your next guys coming
from. Is he coming from your practice squad? Is he coming from somebody
else's practice squad and you would try to sign the guy if you had an injury
in that position? Is he coming from what we call the street list, players
that are unattached, who are not part of any team? Who are those guys? Who
is your next guard? Who is your next tackle? Who is your next tight end? Who
is your next inside linebacker? Who is your next outside linebacker? Who are
they? You want to know that. Who is your next special teams player? Who is
your next special teams safety? Who is your next special teams linebacker?
That's what the personnel department does, is they keep up on that list of
people. It's a very fluid list because the guys that are on your list are
probably on a lot of other teams list too and if they get signed by somebody
else, then you go to the next guy.
Q: Was that the case with the
safeties that you worked out last week?
BB: We have an emergency list for
every position. You don't know what position you're going to need. Some
players you know. There are players that were in our training camp that were
with us that aren't with another team right now that we released. Hank
Poteat. We know Hank. He was with us all of camp, so we know what kind
of condition he was in physically and we know what he was able to do in our
system. There are other players at other positions that we don't have that
kind of familiarity with. So that's just part of what you do, especially at
this time of year. You bring them in. You work them out. You give them a
physical. You kind of see where you would have them on your emergency list
of players. You have to do that at every position.
Q: Do you make a concerted effort to
maintain those relationships?
BB: That's what the pro personnel
department does. Scott [Pioli] and Nick Caserio.
That's what those guys too. They evaluate players. They work them out. They
keep them on the emergency list. They keep in touch with them. They stay on
top of them. Again, there are a trickling of players that become available
from other teams, that get released or they have an injury in training camp
but now it's three, four, six weeks later. They're healthy now and that type
of thing. That comeback on to that list, but for the most part you're just
deleting players. You're not adding too many to it. Again, there are few
that are circumstantial, but for the most part you need more than one guy on
that list. If you just have one guard and then somebody signs him when they
lose a guard, now okay who is our next guard? You kind of need to be better
prepared than that because that's probably what's going to happen.
Q: Do you have many occasions where
you've regretted decisions you've made?
BB: Look, every decision that we make
is what we think is in the best interest of the football team. Do we make
mistakes? Yes, of course. I don't think we have a perfect record. I don't
think I have one. I don't think anybody has one. We've all made mistakes on
personnel. We've made coaching and strategical mistakes. So, yeah,
absolutely. But, whatever decisions that you made, you try to make with
information that you have at that time. That's why you make them.
Q: What makes Rudi Johnson so
effective?
BB: He's a really good back. He's a
powerful runner. He's strong. He has good body lean. He has good in-line
quickness and good vision. He runs very well behind his pads, so he's a hard
guy to tackle and he hardly ever fumbles because his body lean is good so
you can't really ever get to the ball. His shoulder pads are ahead of the
ball. Again, he's a powerful guy, so he falls forward for a lot of yards on
contact. He's a great complement to that offense. He's a very good inside
runner. They have a very good perimeter passing attack. It's hard to defend
both. If you want to get up there and stop Johnson, you might be able
to do that, but you're giving up a lot of exposure outside. If you want to
commit all of your defenders to covering their perimeter receivers, you
might be pretty competitive with that, but now you have a lot of problems
with the inside running game with Rudi and the offensive line and the
schemes that they use. Obviously they have a really good quarterback there.
They're a hard team to defend. The receivers and the running back and the
quarterback and the line, they all benefit from the other people around them
because of their balance. The receivers help the running game. The running
back helps the receivers. It's a good complementary group of players in a
good system that's well coached and well orchestrated and well run by the
quarterback. It all ties in nicely together. They've done a good job. |
