Redskins Park: Quotes - Mike Shanahan

[Mark The Homer]

November 29, 2010

Redskins Park

Executive Vice President/Head Coach Mike Shanahan

On if he thought it was a mistake having the final 15 plays being passes in a tight game:

“I think we had 21 plays in the second half and we were behind 17-7 starting the fourth quarter. We did what we had to do and unfortunately we didn’t keep a lot of drives going.”

On if he believes that the team can be effective in the run game with the running backs they have:

“Yeah, I believe we can be effective with who we’ve got.”

On if he knows who is going to start at running back on Sunday:

“Not for sure, relative to the injury situations right now. We’ll get a better feel for that on Wednesday.”

On Ryan Torain’s progress:

“I really don’t know if he’s had any progress. He’s been working with rehab. Until we actually go full speed, it’s really too early to tell. He’s been getting a lot of treatment. Hopefully he’s better. [He’s] definitely not full speed yet.”

On why Keiland Williams went from 29 touches last week to 7 this week:

“Number one, we had the ball 54 snaps compared to 90. So, there’s a difference there. If you do the math, there’s a pretty good indication why a lot of people had less carries or less touches. For us to be effective, we’ve got to get first downs and move the ball a lot better than we did. When you have 20 plays in the second half, good things aren’t going to happen.”

On if it was the plan to have James Davis get more carries than Williams:

“Yeah, we wanted to take look at James and how he carried the ball. Unfortunately, he didn’t get as many as we would have liked.”

On if LaRon Landry could be placed on IR or if he is getting better:

“Right now he’s got his leg in a boot. That’s what the doctors thought was in his best interest to get him back and ready to go. I can’t tell you for sure until he gets out of the boot. They’re going to look at him and evaluate him day by day. We’d like him back as soon as we could, but obviously, they’re not going to take him out of that boot until they feel the Achilles has made some strides. Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t know for sure until the doctors take a look at him.”

On if there is something that he wasn’t seeing in Williams that he was hoping to see from James Davis:

“I like both guys. I’ve seen some good things in practice with James as well as Keiland. Keiland has done a good job on third down. He’s also done a good job carrying the football on first and second downs. [it was] more of an evaluation of another [running] back after having some pretty good practices. I’ve got confidence in both guys.”

On if he is going to rotate Davis and Williams throughout the week:

“Yeah, we’ll do some rotations and a lot depends on Ryan Torain and if he’s ready to go. So, we’ve got some questions right now.”

On the players saying they need to string together wins:

“First of all, I don’t think you look at the string. You look at one football game. We’re playing a football team that’s very talented. We’re playing them at their place so our focus should be on the Giants, not putting the string together. Not only playing the Giants, but playing them well. You want to make sure that you do play your best football in the second half of the season. Obviously, we didn’t do that yesterday. If you don’t start playing well, even if you do get into the playoffs, you’re not going to do anything once you get there. As I told our football team earlier today, what we have to do is play much better in different areas and hopefully we can do that on Sunday.”

On if he will address Perry Riley directly about the illegal block in the back:

“After a loss, we come in here and we watch special teams for about 45 minutes. I thought we had some great effort on special teams and I was really pleased with Riley’s effort. He’s going to learn as time goes on, but that effort he gave [was] his full speed. You make some mistakes, especially when you’re young. His mistake was full speed and that’s part of the NFL. That’s part of the growing experience. That’s what we have to do. Everybody’s got to take a look at themselves and hopefully play a much better game and eliminate some of those mistakes.”

On why the Redskins were unable to force interceptions against Brett Favre:

“I think we had maybe one or two [chances]. I thought they did a good job of not making mistakes. That’s what you have to do to win. We made a mistake down there on the five yard line. It’s the difference in winning and losing a football game. You’ve got to eliminate those mistakes if you’re going to win. That’s why we stress turnovers all the time as well as they do. The difference between this year and last year for them [Vikings] has been turnovers.”

On Casey Rabach and Artis Hicks’ injury statuses:

“I think he’s [Artis Hicks] doing good. I think Artis will be full speed this week. I think he’s made some strides from last week. Relative to Casey, I can’t tell you that he’s 100 percent, but he made it through the game alright and hopefully there’s no setback.”

On if his decision to release Joey Galloway had anything to do with Terrance Austin’s performance and wanting to look at younger players:

“Anytime you make a decision like that with Joey [Galloway], you’re looking at a number of things. The first thing you’re looking at is, who is your second receiver and third receiver? Anytime you lose a number of players due to injuries like we did to injuries—a couple on IR—how do you help your special teams? How do guys get on special teams and make contributions? So, it was a combination of him as a wide receiver as well as helping on special teams. Joey, obviously, couldn’t help us in that area.”

On if he needs to worry about Brandon Banks’ durability due to his stature:

“I think right now with Brandon, coming back as quickly as he did off of his surgery, we’ve been very careful about practicing Brandon as a wide receiver. So, his reps have been limited. We want to make sure he can punt return and kickoff return and obviously help us in those areas. But, he is a threat as a wide receiver as well. We’ve got to be really careful and limit his reps. But hopefully as the season goes on and he’s feeling better, we can give him some more reps.”

On if he thinks Will Montgomery going in for Hicks is a permanent change:

“You’ll have to wait and see. We don’t announce who is going to start and who is not going to start. You’ll get a chance to see on Sunday. We’re going to go out there and evaluate all of our positions and see who is healthy and put in who gives us the best chance to win. And obviously, that’s the direction we’re going to go.”

On what he thinks about the younger guys that have stepped up due to the amount of injured players:

“You always take a look at the opportunities for young guys. We don’t know for sure. A guy like Carlos [Rogers] goes down and [Kevin] Barnes comes in and makes some plays on defense and made a couple of nice plays on special teams. Terrance Austin, you really don’t know. He hasn’t gotten an opportunity yet. He’s a football player and he’s going to make some plays. He’s going to help us as a wide receiver, maybe inside slot receiver, maybe outside slot receiver. He’s got the mindset to help us on special teams. He can be a punt returner, kickoff returner. He’s also got the toughness to help us on cover teams and return teams. So, he brings a lot to the table. You never know with some of your young guys. [brandon] Banks, we talked about a long time ago. Can he help us? A lot of people were laughing. We brought him in and they saw a guy that’s 5”6 and 150 pounds. Can he actually help in the National Football League? Now every time he touches the ball, you feel like he’s got a chance to go the distance. A lot of these young guys are stepping up. You look forward to these guys take advantage of their opportunities and hopefully they keep on doing it. A lot of these guys will give themselves a chance to do something special in the future.”

On if he feels that home field advantage is overrated in the NFL:

“I really don’t know. You’d like to start a streak going. Unfortunately we haven’t done that. I’ve always looked at home football games as an advantage in the National Football League as an advantage because of crowd noise. And yet, we haven’t take advantage of that.”

On what changed after the first drive with the play calling and overall offense:

“It’s a combination of those things that we’ve been talking about since day one. You’re six-for-nine in the first half and one-for-seven in the second half on third downs and that’s a big difference. A lot of things that go into it, we’ve talked before. We’re working hard on it and hopefully we keep on improving.”

On if Clinton Portis had his surgery yet and what his timetable is:

“I believe he’s going to have it tomorrow some time. Exactly how long it is, I’m not really sure at this time, but it’s at least a couple of months.”

[PalmettoRedskin]

Thanks, MTH. I honestly believe these are the best threads on eXtremeskins...free of all nonsensical clutter from our "resident experts". I appreciate it.

[HigSkin]

Hmmm....Terrance Austin maybe at inside slot. Moss better start catching everything thrown at him.

[joeknows]

Thanks, MTH. I honestly believe these are the best threads on eXtremeskins...free of all nonsensical clutter from our "resident experts". I appreciate it.

resident expert here chiming in.....

why the hell would we "EVALUATE" an unsigned freeagent in gametime, especially when KW has played well?

[NewCliche21]

Thanks, MTH. I honestly believe these are the best threads on eXtremeskins...free of all nonsensical clutter from our "resident experts". I appreciate it.

Absolutely agreed. Loving when you and TK do these threads!

[SAP_Pete]

"Relative to Casey, I can’t tell you that he’s 100 percent, but he made it through the game alright and hopefully there’s no setback.”

Casey making it through the game pretty much IS a setback. Why not give last week's pieced together line another shot ?

[SKIN4WAHOOZ]

resident expert here chiming in.....

why the hell would we "EVALUATE" an unsigned freeagent in gametime, especially when KW has played well?

game film is better then practice film. we are rebuildning right? i dont have a problem with it. i think all the young guys should start seeing more PT. we arent making the playoffs fellas and probably wudnt had we beaten the vikes. lets "evaluate" what we have, what we can TRADE and what we can part with. I like the direction.

[jflow78]

Gametime and practice time are two completely different beasts, ask Taylor Jacobs. If they liked what Davis offered, why not take a look at him in a game. Besides, it wasn't his 7 touches that cost the Skins the game.

I really enjoy listening to Mike's interviews, if people could stop ******** and whining about every little thing, they would actually see that the HC is doing a good job of rebuilding this team and getting us closer to where we want to be.

It's those who actually thought we were headed to a SB that keep throwing tantrums and miss the point.

[Drew_Fl]

thanks for the informative post