PRESS CONFERENCE COLTS - HEAD COACH JIM CALDWELL - Ingles

Super Bowl XLIV – Friday, February 5, 2010

QUOTES FROM INDIANAPOLIS COLTS PRESS CONFERENCE

HEAD COACH JIM CALDWELL

(opening statement) “Good morning. I’d like to say greetings on behalf of the Indianapolis Colts. It’s a real pleasure for me to have an opportunity to stand before you and represent our team and our organization. Before I get started I’d like to first of all thank the local Super Bowl committee and organization for the great hospitality that you’ve shown us. We’ve had an absolutely tremendous time and I know that it takes a lot of planning and dedication that goes into this whole process. Uniquely, I’m familiar with a couple guys that have kind of moved down to the area and used to help with the organizational process through the NFL. Jim Steeg, an old Wake Forest guy that I got to know. Michael Kelly, Reid Sigmon. So I know exactly what Frank Supovitz had to go through in order to get everything done and I certainly want to say thanks him. I want to thank the NFL for the guidance and direction they’ve given us all week. It’s been very smooth. We have not had any glitches whatsoever and we’re certainly appreciative of how they put things together and made it possible for us to come and function extremely well. I’d like to thank also the local and federal law enforcement just in terms of the things they’ve been able to do for us in providing security. Not only security but also our transportation to and from our practice facilities and other events. They have been absolutely outstanding. I want to thank Marriot Harbor Beach for their hospitality. It’s great when you have a chance to go back to avenue that you’re familiar with and they’ve done, once again, a great job of hosting us. We certainly appreciate that and they’ve done everything in a first class manner. Thank the Miami Dolphins for giving us a chance to practice in their fine facility. It’s a great venue. It’s been outstanding for our players and our coaches to have fine fields and weight room facility we can utilize and a training facility they’ve opened up to us. We certainly appreciate that. Also like to say congratulations to the New Orleans Saints and coach Sean Payton. They are certainly an outstanding team. Gifted with a lot of outstanding players and a tremendous organization. We want to just say that we are looking forward to the ball game on Sunday. It’s going to be a great competitive game and we certainly appreciate having an opportunity to compete against them. Thanks to the fans in this country that have certainly made this sport so popular. Made this particular event so popular, made it a global event. We certainly appreciate the interest. We certainly appreciate the time spent in terms of articles written through the media and also the televisions and radio. It’s just been outstanding in terms of the coverage. I know our players and everyone in our franchise appreciates that. To give you a quick update, we’ve had a great week of work thus far. I think our guys have been extremely attentive. They’ve focused in, I think on the little things the last couple of days and so we need a couple more days of good focus. But everything has gone well and we’re looking forward to the next few days in preparation for the ball game. I will open it up for any questions.”

(on the journey to getting to the Super Bowl and a OG Ryan Lilja update) “I am assuming you’re speaking of Ryan Lilja, yes I’ll answer those. Number one, that’s one of the things when you start, we started March 16, I think we all got together and had an opportunity to visit shortly with the team. We talked about what it was going to take to get here. One of the things that we had promised them all along was that we wanted to certainly develop a team that first of all, that had an atmosphere that was conducive to success. We do believe that we were able to get that accomplished. It made it a lot easier, obviously when you have a number of guys that understand what winning is all about. We have a real solid group of core veterans that made that journey a lot easier. It starts in the off season and the off season is really not an off season. You have to work and work extremely hard in order to get yourself in position to be able to compete in the fall. The thing I had promised them was that we would have a hungry, a fresh and a well prepared team. I think we did start that way in terms of the regular season and I do believe we started that way also in terms of the playoffs. Now my mission and goal is to have that same type of fire and enthusiasm, obviously for Sunday’s game, but that won’t take a whole lot of prodding. I think the guys are ready to play and they’re certainly focused. In regard of Ryan Lilja, we anticipate that he’s going to play. We do not foresee a problem.”

(on keeping players focused leading up to the Super Bowl and if he is doing anything different than last time) “Well in terms of our schedule, we haven’t deviated much from what we had done previously. I don’t believe in changing things, just for the sake of change. I always make the statement, that I think I heard it somewhere along the line, be careful of the person that says they’ll change nothing or the person that wants to change everything and I think we’re somewhere right down the middle for the most part. No we haven’t done anything any differently. We’ve talked about focus and we’ve talked about the little things in terms of trying to keep distractions out of the way and particularly out of our preparation. I think our guys have done a great job with that.”

(on the schedule leading up to the Super Bowl) “Our schedule is such where we are just going to, on Friday, we are doing exactly the same as we would do an ordinary Friday. Nothing changes in terms of our meeting, the amount of time we spend in our meeting, etcetera. Often times I think, this game is so big. It’s gotten so much attention obviously that you can sometimes get out of whack and think you have to do some things differently. A little extra time and things of that nature. We don’t believe that’s required. We try to keep things as close to normal as we possibly can. Our Friday won’t be any different. They will have Friday afternoon off after we complete practice this afternoon. Tomorrow morning we’ll get up. We have our meetings, we’ll do our walk-through and after our walk-through we’ll come over and eat lunch, take a break until we go to the hideaway hotel. So it really isn’t anything any different than we would normally do on a game weekend.

(on if it is a long wait leading up to the game) “It really isn’t to be honest with you. One of the things that we wanted to make a point of, was we told them we want you to do exactly what you would do normally. As a matter of fact, if a guy ate pizza on Thursday night, then he should’ve eaten pizza. If a guy relaxes and takes a nap on Friday afternoon then he ought to take a nap. When we have a night game and we have Saturday preparation, whatever you do that afternoon, that’s what you should do and probably shouldn’t do anything out of the ordinary in that regard. So we try to stay as close as we possibly can. It’s not a long wait. Certainly I think guys are going to be anxious because they haven’t had a chance to play in a couple of weeks. But nevertheless I think that they’ll be able to manage it and I think we all will. Coaches as well will be able to manage that time and use it productively.”

(on if younger guys on the team took advice on minimizing distractions and if the team will switch hotels) “Yes. The answer is yes to that last question. In regard to the veterans, we have obviously like you mentioned, we have 25 guys, that’s including our 53 and then also our injured reserve that were actually in this game a few years back. One of the things that we did, and I think that’s the value of experience, we had a few guys stand up and just talk about their experience here. Reggie Wayne did a great job for us. Adam Vinatieri did a tremendous job for us. Then John Teerlinck, also who is our defensive line coach, who has been involved in I think this is his fourth Super Bowl actually. We had them reflect and just talk about a few things. I think they were able to hear it from someone else besides me. I think it was effective. I think you saw a number of guys in the room that felt a little comfort level in a sense that they had someone to follow, someone to emulate who knew how to handle this type of environment successfully.”

(on coming back in games when trailing and DE Dwight Freeney update) “One of the things that I think has been kind of the hallmark of our franchise through the years, even prior to my taking over, I think Tony (Dungy) had done a tremendous job with making sure this was understood and I think he reflected it also in his demeanor on the sideline and that’s to never panic. He talked about poise quite often and I think our guys bought into it. They bought into it because he embodied that kind of poise and that kind of confidence and I think it was kind of a trickledown effect. Then plus, we have guys that have been through a lot of battles and certainly understand that the game is not over until that final whistle blows. Peyton (Manning) has been in a lot of ballgames and Jeff Saturday. They’ve been around. Reggie Wayne, Gary Brackett, Dwight Freeney. All those guys have certainly been involved in a number of big games. They do understand that simply because of the fact that someone returns a kickoff on you on the first play, that that’s not the end of the contest. There’s still obviously four quarters to play in this ballgame. One of the things that I think we talk about, and we try to emphasize is that we travel with, when we leave home, things that are going to be important to us in terms of being effective during the ballgame, that’s poise, that’s passion, that’s confidence. Those things are extremely important to us and I think our guys do a great job following through on those things. In regard to Dwight Freeney, he’s treading in the right direction. He’s getting better but we’ll see. It’s still a day to day situation; we’ll see how he is at the end of the day.”

(on DB Jerraud Powers status) “Well he feels really good. He feels that he’ll be able to play. That’s just kind of up to the doctors and ourselves obviously as we look at him and see what type of movement skills that he has. That he’s able to run and run without any inhibitions whatsoever. I think that obviously he’s moving along and moving well and we’ll see, we’ll see how that goes. But he feels great about it so if he feels good that makes me feel even better.”