HEAD COACH KEN WHISENHUNT

Super Bowl XLIII – Friday, January 30, 2009

QUOTES FROM ARIZONA CARDINALS PRESS CONFERENCE


HEAD COACH KEN WHISENHUNT

(on how the Cardinals were able to come back from a 1-4 record in December to play well in January and make it to the Super Bowl) “Well, the January version of our team is what’s been performing for us the last three weeks. I’m confident that we’re going to see that team. But I think that there was a point after the New England game where our team had enough. They realized that we weren’t getting the job done, and what we needed to do to fix that. To their credit, we re-established our identity on the practice field. That late in the season, a lot of times, that’s not easy to do. We did it with our pads on, we did it in a contact practice. I think that established the mentality that has served us well in the playoffs. It’s a little bit of ‘us against the world,’ which has kind of brought this team together, created a chemistry that is so important, and it’s served us well. I think that we’ll continue with that on Sunday.”


(on the fact that this Super Bowl may feel like a Steelers’ home game in terms of the number of fans in the stadium, and how he addressed that to the team) “I don’t think that we’re under any illusion that there’s going to be a number of Steelers fans here. I’ve seen that. I’ve experienced it on the other side. I know what kind of group of fans that that is. I know how they travel. We’re preparing with that thought in mind. It’s not going to be a lot different for us (than) going into Carolina like we did. I don’t know if it’s going to be that hostile, if there’s going to be that many fans, but … we’ve been able to do that once in the playoffs. We have gone into a situation where there’s been a lot more fans than our fans there, where it was a little bit noisy, but we were able to still keep our focus. That’s something that this team hasn’t always been able to do. So I feel comfortable in the fact that we’re prepared, that we know what it’s going to be like. We’re ready to handle that.”


(on what his time with the Steelers meant to him and how it prepared him to be a head coach) “Coach (Bill) Cowher always told me never to reflect while the season is going on, so I’m hesitant to do that. All I can say about my time with the Steelers is that it gave me an opportunity to be with a very successful organization, which governs a lot of my thoughts as far as how you handle the team, how you prepare in practice, how you prepare for games. That’s something that’s been invaluable. Obviously, having been to this game before, having been to the Super Bowl, and going through this week has been very helpful for our football team as far as how you prepare, what you can expect and anticipate, and hopefully it’ll help us play well on Sunday.”


(on Troy Polamalu saying that it will be difficult to blitz Kurt Warner and why Warner has been so successful against the blitz this season) “I think we feel kind of the same way about not being able to hold up real long against their blitz. I think what Kurt does very well is he understands what defenses are trying to do. When you talk about an instinctive feel, Kurt definitely has that. I think the biggest thing where we’ve made progress is our team understands now what we need to do in order to be successful against the blitz. I think that’s why we’ve had success that way this year. Our offensive line, as far as communication, identification, the ability to make those adjustments, to pick up the blitz, to save hits on Kurt, has done a very good job, as well as our backs and our tight ends when they’ve been involved in that area. But I think that where we’ve made great progress, too, is with our receivers understanding that. A lot of times, when you are getting blitzed, when they’re bringing one more than you can block, it really comes down to your receivers and your quarterback being on the same page. Kurt has always had the ability to get the ball out quick, and make that play. A lot of times, you have to have that same type of anticipation with your receivers. That’s where we’ve made great progress. I understand that Pittsburgh will come after us, and we know that. But I think that our receivers and our group have done a very good job of handling that, and hopefully we’ll continue with that on Sunday.”


(on whether he’s been sleeping and if he worries that fatigue will affect his decision-making) “This week is not so much as bad as a normal game plan week because a lot of things that we’ve installed for the game plan, we did last week. So all the extra demands that you have this week with the media (and) with other things that are going on down here, they just fill the spots that normally you would be in there during a normal game plan-type week. So, as far as that goes, it’s not really that much more demanding on you. Now, the idea of playing in this game, on this stage, is something that, as the week goes, it gets a little bit more of a pressure-type cooker, but I don’t have any questions about my fatigue or our staff’s fatigue because the excitement, the adrenaline for being here and being involved in this certainly will help get you through that.”


(on what the schedule will be on Saturday) "Saturday will be a normal Saturday for us with the morning meetings and a walk through. They'll have time in the afternoon to spend time with their family and take care of those things that they normally do, and then we’ll have our normal Saturday night meetings, our normal Saturday night routine. We’ll have a meal, we’ll have a special teams meeting, and we’ll have an offense and defense meeting. I think the biggest thing that you have to do is you have to keep a sense of normalcy with your players. By and large, players in the NFL are creatures of habit and if you can keep that as normal as possible, there’s a comfort level that goes with that. We'll treat it much like a road game for us as far as Saturday night and what we do on Sunday morning before the game, and then obviously the game itself is a whole different set of issues because of the time and everything. You are there longer and you have more delays in this game, and those are things that we’ve talked about. But hopefully, once again, we’ll have that same normal Saturday night feel and the same Sunday feel, and we’ll play good.”


(on what he thought his chances of winning were when he first came to the Cardinals) “I felt coming out of Pittsburgh that we had something that was good. There are a lot of ways to be successful in the NFL, and the way that we have done it is not the only way. It is something that we felt worked because we had gotten to the Super Bowl and we had won. I felt that we would be successful in Arizona. I felt there were a number of pieces that were in place there, from talent to a new stadium to an ownership that was committed to doing some of those things to win. And I’ve said this before, I was naïve enough to think that we could win in our first year there. What I’ve learned is that it’s a process you’ve got to go through and the biggest thing is getting your players and your team to believe in what you are doing. My first year, we had a little bit of success – we got to an 8-8 record, winning our last two games, and that helped provide the impetus for this season. This season was a little bit up and down for us, but at some point you get into a situation where you either get it as a football team or you don’t. I think after the New England game, our guys got it. Obviously having success in the playoffs has really further cemented that, and our guys are confident now in how we prepare, what it means for us to play Cardinals football, and that’s a big thing.”


(on Bill Cowher's Saturday night motivational meetings and if he has something up his sleeve for this Saturday) “I hope I have something up my sleeve, at least something that will help. I learned from Jeff Van Note as a player in the league. Seventeen years he was a player and he took notes in every meeting he was in. For myself, when Coach Cowher used to stand up and talk, I wrote all of that down. I told Coach Cowher that I have notebooks with little tabs in there from when he spoke before the Championship game, when he spoke before the Super Bowl, when he spoke at the mini camp meeting, all of those things. I’d go back and look at those things and get ideas of where he was and what he was thinking about. I’ve been around Coach Cowher, Coach [Joe] Gibbs, Coach [Dan] Henning. I’ve been in situations that I’ve learned from, and when we get into this type of situation, I use those things to help me get an idea of what direction I am going. I also think about our football team and where we’ve come from and what we’ve accomplished, and that governs it too. Our guys are ready to play. I don’t know that I have to say anything to get them ready to go. But I do believe that I’ve had a lot of help, some very good mentors, and that’s kind of where I derive a lot of what I say.”


(on how prepared he thinks his guys are at this stage and if there is any worry about them maintaining that until the game) “Well, I think we feel very good about where we are right now. We had two good days of practice. We practiced yesterday in the rain without letting it distract us. I think (the biggest thing is) when you have a good feeling like we’ve had the last three weeks about the preparation of our team. You see it on the field, you see it in the way they interact with each other and the way they work. The biggest issues that I have, or that anybody has, is after today’s practice – when there is some downtime and you are not in your normal routine at home and you are away, there’s a lot of family here and a lot of excitement – losing that focus in that time is always a concern. I think because we have had a couple of games this year when we have lost our focus and it didn’t work out very well for us, that it puts us a little more on edge to keep that focus. We’ve talked about that, our leaders understand that, and we recognize where we are and what we’ve done to get here. Everyone wants to make sure that we don’t let anything like that detract us from playing our best game Sunday.”


(on how important it has been to have Kurt Warner and Matt Leinart on the same page) “I think they’ve always had a very good relationship, at least in my tenure there. The one thing that I’ve seen happen in the past is when you have a younger player who has a very good career in front of them and you have a veteran player who has had a lot of success, that dynamic – much like the Jerome Bettis/Willie Parker dynamic that I saw in Pittsburgh grow so well – is what helps a younger player become better. I think that is a credit to both Matt and Kurt and their relationship. I know that the competition this past offseason and through training camp made both of our players better and I think that it forged a bond between those two, and it also put Matt in a situation where he’s learned a great deal from Kurt and he’s very confident about when he gets his opportunity, that he’s going to perform. That’s all you can hope for when you have two players like that.”


(on if he’s installed a Pittsburgh system in Arizona, and what the Cardinals “got” after the New England loss) “I would hope that somebody coming into our organization from the Pittsburgh Steelers would say there are a lot of similarities, because that’s an organization that has been very successful. Hopefully we can do a lot of things that that organization has done from a standpoint of winning games, number one, from a mentality, and from a belief in how you are successful. So if that’s the case, then yeah, I’d be pleased with that. And when I talk about ‘they got it,’ I mean that from a standpoint of what you have to do to be consistently successful in this league, and it’s not just about Xs and Os. It’s about being a football team, believing in each other, doing your job and trusting that the guy next to you is going to do his job. And I think the biggest improvement we made, especially defensively where we’ve had a number of turnovers, has been – guys going out there earlier in the season were trying to make plays, and a lot of times they got out of their responsibilities because they were trying to make plays. What we realized, or a big part of what we got, was that ‘if I do my job, and if I do it the right way – if I use the proper technique, if I step with the right foot, if I use my hands, if I go to the right depth,’ that we have good enough players that those plays will come to us. And I think we saw a little bit of that in the first playoff games where we got some turnovers defensively, where we made some big plays offensively and special teams, and I think we built off of that. So when I say, ‘Our team got it,’ I mean from the standpoint of believing in each other, believing in how we prepare, how we practice, what it takes for us to be successful, and what we have to do to maintain that focus. And that’s the biggest thing you can hope from a group of men like we have.”


(on how his civil engineering background manifests itself in his coaching style) “I think, to me, being a civil engineer, or getting through Georgia Tech which was quite a struggle in itself, is about finding creative solutions to problems. That, to me, is what civil engineering is all about. I know trying to get through those exams, boy I had to be pretty creative to try and find some solutions to those. But I think in a lot of things that’s very similar to football. You’re going to face different defenses, you’re going to face different offenses, and you have to be creative in how you attack them and how you’re successful against this. So it all really comes down to solving problems. And I think I got great experience from that in my engineering time at Georgia Tech in learning about how to solve problems, and it’s helped me in football, I have no doubts about that. Even though there’s not a lot of mathematical equations in football, there are a lot of problems that you’re going to have to try to solve.”


(on the offensive line’s growth and consistency) “Offensive line play is a lot about chemistry, it’s a lot about trust. We’re fortunate that our group has been together the whole season, and I think whenever you talk about identification, understanding what defenses are doing, being able to change things on the fly and be on the same page, that’s what protections all about, that’s what combinations in the run game are all about, and that’s where you have to make progress as a unit and have confidence that you can do that in order to be successful. I think that we have made great progress with that, just from the standpoint that our guys and their level of play. We have done a very good job in protecting Kurt Warner this year. The number of sacks for him is very low for a team that’s thrown the ball as much as we have. And the thing that I’m really excited about is that we’ve become a much better run team, especially later in the season. And that’s all about trusting in each other, a mental toughness that this group has developed and a chemistry that they have.”