Super Bowl XLVI – Wednesday, February 1, 2012(on this season) “It’s been a long ride. It’s been an up and down season for us and we’re just excited to be here and just blessed with the opportunity to still be playing ball. We’re all excited for that. We’re just enjoying the experience, but most importantly we just want to go out there and get something good out of our practices and make sure we prepare for the Giants, which is the most important thing that we’re here for.”
(on who he is most happy will be watching him play in the Super Bowl) “There are so many people. Just not one person, but it starts with my grandmother and my mother and my father and my grandfather, my whole support system that I had growing up. My family first. I’m just thankful that God gave me this opportunity to be playing. A lot of people sacrificed a lot for me to get here. Starting with my family and my friends, I wasn’t able to spend as much time with them as I would like, but it’s all for a good cause.”
(on the most difficult hardship he’s been through and words of support for Japan) “I don’t know exactly what Japan is going through, but I went through something similar with Hurricane Katrina and I would have to say that has probably been the most devastating thing in my life. Just to have everything gone that you grew up with and no pictures and no trophies. No birth certificate, no social security card, anything that shows you’re an American citizen. I know exactly how they feel because I’ve lost everything I have from socks to drawers, to t-shirts, everything, so my heart goes out to those guys.”
(on making his name in Ind. in his true freshman season and coming back to play the biggest game of his life here) “I don’t know. Like the names and all of the stuff like that, I just try to go out and play ball. It is interesting that I started here as a true freshman. At 17 I had no facial hair or anything and now I’m coming back more like a grown man. Once in a while I started and my family used to drive 12 hours to Ind. to see these games and stuff and now they are making that same trip back again to see me play on a much larger stage is great. It’s just like unreal.”
(on if he takes it personally that all the focus is on the Patriots passing game) “No sir. We have an excellent passing game and rightly so that they’re getting all the credit that they deserve. They put us in a position to be where we are today and they do a great job of knowing what everybody has to do, what they have to do and that’s a part of our job as a team. We go out there to score points. It doesn’t matter whether we’re passing or running. We just want to go out there and score points and win games.”
(on what it means to have his mom at his games) “It’s a good support system to know that she’s always behind me. We’ve kind of been separated since she moved up to Minn. when I was in third grade, so for her to always fly back to catch my high school games and all of my college games, it meant a lot to me.”
(on his grandparents influence on him) “My grandparents raised me. My grandmother and my grandfather they raised me. Everything that you see today is because of those guys.”
(on the key to beating the Giants defensive front) “We just have to go out and be assignment sound and execute. That’s about it. It’s nothing that difficult, we just have to go out and be able to really execute on all cylinders and make sure we can handle whatever they throw.”
(on how his role will change with TE Rob Gronkowski not being 100-percent) “I’m not sure if he’s going to be 100- percent or not. Today is only Wednesday. I’m not sure where he is today. I’m not sure where he’s going to be come Sunday. We’re just taking it day by day and whatever our situation is, it is.”
(on if the passing game will be more prominent than the running game) “Hopefully whatever it takes for us to win. That’s what we’re focused on. Not what whether we’re running or passing. We’re doing whatever it takes to win. That’s all we’re focused on is getting a ‘W’.”
(on what they can expect from hiM this game) “You just can expect all that I have. It’s the last game of the season, it’s the Super Bowl. You’re going to get 110 percent of whatever I have.”
(on his production being down this season but still playing in the Super Bowl) “That once again comes back to show you how much football is a team sport. It doesn’t matter how much one guy does or two guys do, you need a whole team to get to this point. I think that’s the thing that you will see from both teams. It’s really been a team effort. Offense, defense and special teams have both been coming through for both teams that are here to this point. That’s one of the things you can take from that.”
(on the Giants linebackers) “Their linebackers are real good. You’ve got (Mathias) Kiwanuka, you have (Michael) Boley, you have (Chase) Blackburn, all those guys. They have different styles. That’s the thing that’s all different about their linebackers. You have some guys that are speed guys. You have some guys that are big, physical guys. You have different styles that you always have to adjust to. For a running back, you put a different running back in there with a different style. You may be quicker, you may be smaller, you may be faster, you may be bigger. It’s kind of the same thing with their linebackers. They have kind of different linebackers in there.”
(on Coach Belichick) “Coach doesn’t let too much get by him. That’s one of the things; he’s always even keel about things and he’s always business first and that’s what makes him. I can’t say because I haven’t played for any other coaches since I’ve been in the NFL, but I can say from the difference I’ve had from other coaches in high school and college that Coach doesn’t let anything slide. We practice situations and go through everything and he’s hard on us. He makes practice hard on us, so therefore when we get in games it’s just like practice. It becomes game reality.”
(on stories of Coach Belichick not letting things slide) “Coach is very hard on all of us players together, but something like you may think you had a good game or something and you might sit down with Coach and he’ll say, ‘Well I think you could got more here.’ Then you really look at the film and you’ll be like, ‘Yeah, you know, you’re right.’ Sometimes you have to be your own worst critic and that’s something that he instills in his players because he’s so hard on us that now you’re becoming your own worst critic because you don’t want Coach to have to get on you, you want to have to get on yourself.”
(on what he heard about Coach Belichick before he got to New England) “That he was a hard coach to play for and the ‘hooded monster’ and all the stuff like that. When I got here I realized in our first meeting , he let it all out on the line right there. You are what you are when you get here. That was it. He let it all hang.”
(on what the first thing Coach Belichick told him was) “We need to learn all our teammates. First day, we need to learn everybody. There’s 80 guys on the team and we have to learn and know everybody by name. That was one of the things that I knew he wasn’t playing and if we didn’t know we were up early doing extra laps and stuff. The funny thing about it is me, Jerod (Mayo), Gary Guyton, we came in together and I was a running back and of course they were linebackers and he would have us working every day after practice. Even when guys were inside, we would still be working on our one-on-one routes and blitz pick up and stuff like that and you think about it four years later, all that stuff comes into play now that we need it. Running routes and picking up blitzes, we didn’t really understand when we were rookies that we had to do it every day and everybody else would be going in from practice and we would be the only three guys out there still working on stuff. So that’s why he is hard on us, so we do things in our first couple years so later on down the line, year four, year five and stuff like that, it just becomes second nature to us.”
(on if he is now one of the guys that gets to go inside) “Yeah, but he still finds something for us to do, still.”
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