Press Conference – Monday – 9/12/11 Opening statement:“Obviously we were very happy to get out of that game with a win yesterday. It’s much easier to correct your mistakes after a win. There are a number of areas we can play much better. This was our first real game together, 60 minutes, and we made more than our share of mistakes. But I was pleased with the way our guys responded and continued to fight and found a way to win. That’s important and something we weren’t able to do last year. I think what I said after the game yesterday, and with watching the tape, it still holds true, we had a number of different guys make big plays for us during the course of the game. If that can continue and we can clean up our mistakes, we’ll have a chance to be a pretty good football team. So there are some positives from that standpoint.”
On the status of LB Daryl Washington:“We got an MRI on him, but I haven’t gotten the results back yet.”
On Daryl Washington’s performance:“He started playing a lot better later in the season last year. As soon as he got more comfortable, as it is with young players once they get more playing time under their belt, they play better, and it carried over into this year for him. Even without the offseason, I’ve been impressed with Daryl and what he did in training camp. He played very well yesterday.”
On CB Patrick Peterson:“He’s a very good football player. He’s a young player. He has not had the benefit of an offseason, so there are probably a thousand snaps or reps he would have gotten between OTA’s and mini-camps, and he’s missing those. The thing I like about Patrick is that he is aware of what he is seeing on the field. He can communicate it when he comes to the sideline and I think, with that being said, that means some of the technique errors that he made yesterday we will be able to clean up. Get his eyes right so he’s not looking at the wrong thing, which will certainly help him be in the right position. But I’m not worried about that. I think he will continue to grow and get better. It’s very typical, what he did on the punt return. He’s an outstanding football player and it showed up for us at a critical time. I think it will be the case defensively as he continues to grow into that position.”
On Patrick Peterson’s confidence:“He’s confident, but it’s not a blusterous confidence. He really believes in what he is seeing. He has confidence in what he can do physically. He’s not just trying to make you believe he’s confident. Let’s not forget he’s a young player. That was his first action against a good receiver, and he’ll learn form that and he’ll be better this week and he’ll be better as the season progresses. I’m, once again, very pleased we have Patrick on our team. He obviously made a play for us that was critical to our win yesterday and I think he’s going to get better and better as the season goes.”
On CB A.J. Jefferson’s first regular season start:“He looked like a young player out there making his first NFL start. A lot of the things he had been working on being consistent in training camp, which we talked about before being the big thing I wanted to see from him. He struggled with that a little bit yesterday, but that was his first game. Once again, I’m not down on A.J. by any stretch of the imagination. He’s a talented young player and he’ll continue to get better. I said that I think we’re going to be a team that is going to get stronger as the season goes on. I think if we can get these two young guys to keep improving and getting more time in these games, we’re going to be okay.”
On the defense’s overall performance:“Too many mistakes is really what the problem was. We gave up too many big plays. Those were mistakes. We can’t do those. But we got four pressures and four sacks on this quarterback. We had two interceptions, obviously one of them was called back, and we didn’t allow them to run the football. So there were some good things, from that standpoint, but we gave up too much yardage yesterday. That’s one of the things we have to get better at. That was not so much about effort, but more about mistakes. Not playing it the right way. And that’s something I’m disappointed in because I felt like we’d made progress on that in the preseason. But once again, these guys haven’t been together doing this defense for that long. I’m certain that we’ll improve as we go forward.”
On if it will take until October for the defense to get it right:“I hope not. But you know what, as long as we can keep winning games and it takes until October, then I could live with that. But our guys have a lot of pride and we have a lot of good leadership on that side of the ball, and I think they’ll be accountable for what we did. Whenever you go into a first game, you’re not sure what you’re going to see, you’re not sure about your preparation during the week, and it really falls back on playing more your scheme and being disciplined in your scheme. We didn’t do a good enough job on that and that’s where we have to get better.”
On putting pressure on Panthers QB Cam Newton:“Well we got pressure. But we had a tough time getting that quarterback down, which we said going in. He’s a big guy. We got to him a lot. We just can’t give up the plays down the field when we’re coming after him and we don’t get to him or he runs around. We have to do a better job of sticking with our guys and playing smart in our zones or in our man coverage techniques in order not to allow some of the easy plays they made. You have to give those guys credit. Kerry (Rhodes) was in good position on the one and their player made a good catch, jumped up in the air and caught it over him. Steve Smith on Patrick Peterson on the one in the end zone. Those guys get paid too, as I’ve said, but there were a number of times when we would have been better had we played the scheme of our defense correctly. That’s something we’ll have to work through as we get more reps.”
On if the Cardinals’ defensive errors contributed to Cam Newton’s success:“Obviously, [that happened on] the big play. We’re supposed to roll to Steve Smith and have somebody over the top, and we didn’t get that done. and that’s 70 yards. We had too many plays like that down the field where we made mistakes, playing outside of a guy when we’re supposed to be playing inside. It’s things like that we have to get corrected. When you’re not preparing for set formations or certain types of things, you really have to be disciplined in how you play your scheme. We don’t have a lot of reps playing our scheme. We have to grow up fast and learn what we have to do and we have to execute it better.”
On who would replace Daryl Washington if he is injured:“Stewart (Bradley) will figure into that, but we’ll see how it goes during the week. It depends on our plan as we go to prepare for Washington and how we’ll do that. But, the great thing about Paris (Lenon) is he’s flexible. He can play either position. I was really impressed with how Reggie (Walker) played yesterday. We’ll see if that’s the case.”
On if Stewart Bradley is struggling to pick up the system:“Once again, I don’t know if I would say struggling is the right word, I just think he needs more reps and that’s what it’s going to take. You don’t want to belabor the point, but when you don’t have OTA’s, when you don’t have mini-camp, when you don’t have that time to get reps, I don’t know how a lot of people are, but there’s quite a few guys who can’t just look at a book and enact what they see on the book. A lot of guys have to go out and actually experience it. They have to get the reps or they have to walk through it. We have not had enough reps to get everybody reps in every situation, so it’s going to be a little bit of a learning process. That’s a little bit of what Stewart’s struggling with. He’s been a 4-3 backer and now we’re asking him to play an inside 3-4 backer. It’s a big difference, as far as adjustments, where your eyes have to be, what you’re looking at, calls you have to make, what gaps you fit. All those kinds of things take time. We knew that coming in. We had 51 new guys starting out, out of 90. Over half our team was new and learning what we’re trying to do. I’m not trying to make an excuse, let’s be very clear about this. We did not play well enough yesterday on any front, but the thing that we did is we got good enough guys that we found a way to win, and that’s important.”
On QB Kevin Kolb’s performance:“I think Kevin did a good job. There are some things we have to clean up with Kevin as well. There are some things he missed. There were some checks he missed, there was a sight adjustment he missed, but he compensated a couple times being able to move and get out of the pocket. There were a couple of times when he should have stayed in the pocket and made a throw. Once again, that’s getting the feel for his teammates and those live situations. They brought a number of different pressures and they brought a couple of different defenses that you don’t prepare for because they hadn’t shown them. Like I said, there are things that came up in that game that we’ll learn from and that we’ll have a chance to adjust and be better. I’ll give you a perfect example. The third-down play, late in the game, where we tried to throw the pass off our two-tight end set. There’s a check that we can go to that checks it to a run when they play Cover 2. We haven’t had that. That’s one of those things that came up yesterday for the first time and the next time we face that, we’ll be better prepared to handle that. Those are things you have to work through.”
On Kevin Kolb spreading the ball around:“Well it was pretty obvious their plan was to make sure Larry (Fitzgerald) didn’t get a lot of opportunities, because they double-covered him a lot in that game and they always made sure someone was over the top of him. So I was happy with the way Kevin went through his reads and found the correct guys, and he made some good throws. We had some big plays. The sight adjustment he threw to Early (Doucet) or the quick throw on the hot (route) that went for the long touchdown was as good as it gets. That’s what you have to do when teams try to do that against you. We executed that very well, so I was pleased with what he did yesterday.”
On Kolb fitting in with this offense:“I thought maybe one of his best throws was the one late in the game when he threw the fade to Larry (Fitzgerald). He stood in there and he made a great throw. Larry beat his defender one-on-one and he kept it away from the safety. He made some really good throws yesterday and he made some that he missed. But I’m very pleased with how he handled himself, how he’s able to run the huddle and be effective that way. I’m excited about what we can offensively going forward.”
On Kolb’s mobility:“The one pass to Jeff King was a perfect example of that. It was an all-out blitz and they obviously didn’t cover Jeff (King) because they were trying to bring the extra guy when they saw Jeff initially block. It was a great job of him avoiding and getting out and making the throw. It was a big play. That’s one perfect example of it right there.”
On Kolb’s demeanor during the game:“Most of the time, if he makes a mistake, he knows ahead of time what he did, and he’ll come to the sideline and he’ll be upset with himself. It’s very easy to communicate with him. He’s very levelheaded. He’s emotional and wants to do well, but he doesn’t necessarily always show it. You can see the passion in his eyes, but I think the thing that’s most impressive is how he handles the teammates. He’s always talking to his guys. In fact, there’s a couple times where we’re talking in a time-out huddle and he goes, ‘ok I got it, give it to me, let me go in there because I want to talk to the guys.’ To me, that’s a very good quality.”
On WRs Early Doucet and Andre Roberts:“Both of them did really good things at different times. Andre got dinged a little bit early in the game when he got rolled up on a block on his leg, but he finished the game and there wasn’t really any issues with it, so that was good to see. But Early made some big plays for us. Both those guys made some catches. We didn’t get to see Andre down the field like we maybe had an opportunity to, except on that one pass where he caught the play action, came back out and made a big play. If you’re going to spread the ball around, you have to have guys to get it to, and I thought both of those guys made plays for us, Early especially.”
On the performance of RB Beanie Wells:“Beanie ran well. Obviously we can’t drop the ball. That’s a walk-in touchdown. If we don’t give up those points twice down in there tight, it’s a different ball game, and that’s on us. We have to correct that.”
On the referee calling a penalty on the crack-back block by Roberts:“It’s probably a fine line. I’m going to call and ask because I thought he squared the defender up before he cut him, and if you do that, I believe you could do that. I could be wrong. We’ll just make sure that we don’t do that. We’ll get clarification from the league on that and make sure if it’s close that we don’t do that going forward.”
On K Jay Feely missing a kick:“Well good, he got it out of the way early. Now he won’t miss another one, so we’ll be good with that.”
On T Levi Brown struggling early and then improving through the game:“Feeling out the defender. That’s something we have to work through. Levi has to be better about trusting his technique. The one time he gave up pressure, he overset the guy. When you talk bout being smart and understanding technique, if the guy beat him on that play, it was a quick throw, if that guy beats him outside, he’s not going be a factor on the play. But Levi was trying to make sure he got a good punch and he set out and the defender came up and under and he gave him a clear lane. That’s just something you have to be smarter about and that’s where Levi has to get better earlier in the game.”
On S Adrian Wilson’s performance:“It looked like he hadn’t played in the preseason. It looked like he hadn’t played in a while. There were a number of things where we weren’t playing them correctly. I’m not pointing a finger at Adrian, but he was definitely part of that. There were a lot of those guys, especially in the back end, that were not playing our coverages the correct way or not making the correct adjustments. Part of it is having young guys outside and part of it is just not getting it done well enough. That’s what we have to work on. Like I said, I’d much rather work on it after a win.”
On the Cardinals’ defensive reserves who played:“I didn’t have an issue with those guys. I thought Richard (Marshall) played a solid game and did a nice job for us. He was one of those guys who did a much better job of playing his technique, and it shows because he’s a veteran. David (Carter) obviously was in rotation and did fine, as did O’Brien (Schofield). Once again, a couple of things you’d like to see better, not necessarily form those guys, but from all of them. There’s a lot things we can learn from this tape and I believe that the feeling I got from our guys afterward was they’re committed to working on that. But those guys were fine on their rotations.”
On Richard Marshall’s penalty on Cam Newton:“That’s something I need to get clarification on because I asked them what it was called for. Was it a hit to the head? I didn’t get clarification from and that’s one of those things I need to get clarification on from the league on, because I think he tried to do it the right way. He certainly didn’t lead with his head. The league does a great job of communicating with us, and I’m sure we’ll get that straight and make sure we’re clear about that.”
On it being easier to correct mistakes after a win:“Whether you win or you lose, you can point to very specific things and show why a play did work or didn’t work. I just think they’re in a better state of mind to take the corrections. This is a very difficult sport. You’re competing in a tough arena with a lot of people who have opinions about what you do. You don’t get to this level if you don’t have pride or if you don’t have an ego. When you don’t make the play or play it the correct way, and you get corrected on it, it’s very easy to get upset. When you win the game, it’s a lot easier to take the criticism. I know it’s a lot easier to take criticism from you guys, for me, when we win. That’s for sure.”
On if Richard Marshall could move up the depth chart:“I think it’s premature to even talk about anything like that.”
On the status of RB Larod Stephens-Howling:“I don’t know yet. We were getting him checked out. Both the bicep and the hand. Just checking to see his hands, see what’s going on there, and the bicep. I’m sorry I don’t know. I’m not going to speculate because every time I do, it usually goes the other way.”
On getting RB Chester Taylor more involved in practice this week:“Absolutely. That was the plan all along. I talked to him before the game and just said, ‘you know, you’re not at the point right now where we feel comfortable with you understanding. It’s only been three days.’ And he said, ‘Coach, I’ll be ready to go next week.”’
September 14, 2011
