Redskins.com:Quotes From Redskin Park, Nov. 10

[TK]

http://www.redskins.com/story.asp?ContentID=12238

Quotes From Redskin Park, Nov. 10

11/10/2003

HEAD COACH STEVE SPURRIER

On the team’s injuries:

“Matt Bowen had a concussion and he’ll be held out a while this week. We'll try to see if he’s ready to go Sunday. Bryan Johnson also had a little concussion that kept him out late in the game. He’ll be held out of practice [until he's cleared to play]. Other than that, we came out of the game in pretty good shape. Andre Lott sprained his ankle a little bit, but he finished the game. Overall, we didn’t lose anybody. The concussion to Matt Bowen was serious at the time and he was held out the remainder of the game. We’ll check his status before we play Carolina.”

On the referees from Sunday’s game against Seattle:

“After watching the tape from Sunday, we had a lot of good breaks yesterday. The referees did an excellent job yesterday. As coaches, we’re always complaining about the refs, but not yesterday. I admire those guys. I don’t know who they were, but they called as good a game as I’ve ever coached here with the Redskins.”

On the Seattle game overall:

"Obviously we got a wonderful break when Laveranues Coles knocked the ball out of the defensive back when he was about to score and Randy Thomas made a beautiful play to recover the fumble. Sometimes in football we don’t put enough of an emphasis on a little maneuver like covering a fumble. And that’s what Randy did. He sort of dove in there and the ball stuck. Most of the time the O-linemen dive in there and the ball rolls everywhere. So that was obviously a huge play in the game to keep it at 14-3. We made a few plays and I guess we made one more than Seattle to win the game. Hopefully we can build on this and still improve our play. Offensively and defensively, we need to play our assignments a lot better. If we do those things, we have a chance to turn this thing around."

On the injury status of Chad Morton, Ladell Betts and Larry Moore:

“Larry Moore is probably doubtful and Chad I think has a chance to be back this week. No change to Ladell’s status, I believe. He is probably doubtful.”

On how he felt not calling as many plays in a game:

“It felt weird for a while. I was hearing everything that was going in. We’re like a lot of teams—we script up most everything. But play-calling is the ability to make quick decisions and Hue is very good at that. He got the plays in there quickly and along with the assistant coaches got the personnel in there. So that part worked smoothly.”

On whether the team will go with the same play-calling approach next Sunday:

“Certainly we’re going to go with that approach again.”

On who suggested that Hue Jackson call more plays:

“We talked about it early in the week. A suggestion was brought up and Wednesday I said, ‘Let’s do that.’ I called [Denver head coach] Mike Shanahan on Tuesday just to get a sense of how they do their play-calling and so forth.”

On the defense:

“Defensively, we had a pretty good game, but I wouldn’t say a tremendous game. We got fortunate on some dropped passes. We had them backed up in some situations. I think we can play better defensively and we’re going to expect our offense, defense and special teams to improve.”

On Darrell Russell:

“He didn’t play that much. I thought he was going to play more. He only got in about 20 plays. We need to get him more conditioned. Hopefully he can play more than 20 plays [in upcoming games].”

On the pass protection schemes:

“They did not blitz as much as we had anticipated. They did bring some zone blitzes and rushed five guys. They did come free once and hit Patrick Ramsey as he was getting rid of the ball. But the protection was pretty good overall. Seattle is not as good of a pass rush team as Dallas. We’re facing a lot stronger rush this week in Carolina.”

On the 4th and 1 play call:

“I felt like at that point we needed to make six inches to stay on the field to give us a better chance to go score and maybe whittle the clock down. We hit some passes on the way down the field and it worked out. If we don’t make it, they score and kick a field goal, you could say that call lost the game. But if they got it and scored, there was time left for us to hopefully go score, too. So I didn’t think it was a huge gamble for us. I know as a coach that when the other guy punts on fourth and inches, I’m happy because the odds are you make most fourth and inches. Maybe not fourth and twos, but you should make fourth and inches.”

On the QB roll-out plays:

“Patrick threw one or two a little behind. But our guys weren’t as open as we had hoped. Some of those roll-out plays we had, they weren’t blitzing on those plays so it probably wasn’t effective as if everybody was coming.”

On where the team stands right now:

“We stand at 4-5. We’re still struggling right now in some areas. Our kickoff coverage was not very good on Sunday. They must have averaged starting at midfield. At the end, we were almost afraid to kick it off. We tried to line drive it into the wedge guys. They started on the 35 and we were happy about that. That shows you how much confidence we had in our kickoff coverage. We’d been pretty good most of the season in that area, but we need to get better.”

OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR HUE JACKSON

On head coach Steve Spurrier allowing him to make the play calls on offense:

“Like every good coach, you get into situations sometimes and you say, 'Let’s try something different.' I give coach all the credit in the world because the bottom line is he said, ‘Let’s let you take a run at it and see what happens.’ That’s a credit to him because a lot of guys wouldn’t do that. I’m just thankful that I work for a guy who says go take a run at it.”

On his mindset on making the offensive play calls:

“My mindset was to do whatever it takes to win. That’s what the bottom line in this business is, that’s our reality. Our reality is winning and losing and our guys understood that today. We wanted to come out with a different attitude and go play. My goal was for Patrick (Ramsey) to stay healthy throughout the game. I’m not sure if we gave up a sack. I don’t think we did. I know he got hit one time and I was very frustrated about that. Our goal is that he stays clean and the kid played good. I put him in a tough situation down in the red zone one time and we ended up getting an interception. We go as he goes and we go as our offensive line goes and those guys did a great job today.”

CHAMP BAILEY (CB, #24)

On Fred Smoot’s (#21) game-clinching interception against Seattle:

“The play was very big. That what we know Fred Smoot can do. He’s been injured the last couple weeks and is still playing. To see him go out there and do that it’s a real confidence booster.”

On getting past the four-game losing streak:

“It was tough losing four in a row, but we never let it get to us. We knew we had the fight deep down and we do what ever it takes to win and that’s what we did.”

On coming back from a 14-3 deficit: “We never lose confidence. We showed early in the year that we can come back. You hate to get behind, but it happens. The only thing you can do is try to overcome adversity and that’s what we did today.”

On the game-winning pass from Rod Gardner (#87) to Trung Candiate (#30):

“You see them practice it all the time and I always mess with Rod because he used to be a quarterback in high school. He has a good arm, why not run it? They weren’t expecting it of course.”

On the Redskins defense blitzing more against the Seahawks:

“We know that we need to add a little more pressure to get to the quarterback. If we get our frontline a lot of time they can rush anybody. It goes hand and hand, we got to cover and they got to rush. We do both things well at the same time we can’t do anything but win.”

[Leonard Washington]

We hit some passes on the way down the field and it worked out. If we don’t make it, they score and kick a field goal, you could say that call lost the game. But if they got it and scored, there was time left for us to hopefully go score, too. So I didn’t think it was a huge gamble for us.

that was my reasoning too. i thought it was a cagey move.