Q&A with HERM EDWARDS - 8/21

Aug 21, 2006, 1:56:31 PM

Herm Edwards Video - Real

TRAINING CAMP
HERM EDWARDS: “We did a little bit of conditioning and some seven-on-seven (team drills). This afternoon we’ll put the pads on and get back at it again. We’ll do this again tomorrow.

“Like I’ve said, we’ve got to play how we practice. We practice good, had a good training camp, a physical training camp, and we’ve got to understand when we play this weekend that we’ve got to play a lot better. I think the players understand that and now it’s just a matter of transferring what we’ve done on the field for the last month to a game.”

Q: Ty Law wasn’t here today.

EDWARDS: “He and Jimmy Wilkerson. Wilkerson’s wife had a baby early, so he’s dealing with that. Ty will be here this afternoon.”

Q: Any more prognosis on Will Shields?

EDWARDS: “He’s not going to play this week for sure.”

Q: Do you know how long he’s going to be out?

EDWARDS: “No, I really don’t.”

Q: I haven’t asked you about Priest Holmes for a while. Where does he stand?

EDWARDS: “Right there on PUP (physically unable to perform).”

Q: That’s where he’s going to be the first six weeks of the season?

EDWARDS: “That’s what it looks like right now. That’s kind of our mind-set.”

Q: You’re 0-2 in the preseason and if you win but you don’t play well….there’s a big difference.

EDWARDS: “You can look at it any way you want. Like I’ve said before, I’m in the habit of winning them. We won a lot of them up in New York (Jets). Did that make our season go better? I don’t know if it did or not. We were 15-6 in five years.

“You want your starters to get a sense of playing well so they have some confidence when the season starts. That’s important that those guys click, especially on offense, where we can get some drives going. We haven’t had any drives. That’s been the problem. We’ve gone two games in a row now: three plays and out six times. You can’t do that when you only possess the ball 10 or 11 times.

“And we haven’t done a good enough job holding them on first down defensively to make it difficult on second (down.) The time of possession is all out of whack. We have 93 plays in two games, that’s about 40 some plays a game.”

Q: Are you disappointed in the young guys that haven’t stepped up?

EDWARDS: “No, because we’re giving them a lot. They’re playing a lot. When you don’t get things going offensively – and I know it looks like we’re struggling and we’re struggling on getting first downs. We’re not on the field a lot and our defense has been on the field too much. The last two weeks our defense has been on the field over 30 something minutes. That’s way too much. Now, they can get off the field, too. On third downs they’ve got to get off the field, so it’s a little bit of their problem, too.

“When you get behind like we have – first game they ran it 41 times, last game they ran it 36 times. They’re going to get some yards running because of the fact your behind. They’re doing exactly what I like to try and do: get a lead, give it Larry Johnson and see if they can catch us. That’s tough to do.

“So, this week we have to have a better focus on what we’re going to do. We’ve been practicing well; practicing is not a problem. If we weren’t practicing well I’d be a little bit disappointed. I’m disappointed that they haven’t carried it from the practice field to the game. They work so hard and they’ve got to enjoy what they’ve done on the practice field and apply it to the game.”

Q: Have you figured out why they haven’t been able to do it?

EDWARDS: “Nah, I can’t figure that out. You’d go crazy trying to figure that out. I’ll let everyone else around here do that. We’ve got three weeks before the opener and that’s what you always look out for. You look at the opening day and what the roster is going to look like, who are the players that will be healthy and you hope you can go into the opening game with all your starters healthy. You want that for sure and you want them to improve the next two weeks.”

Q: Speaking of your defense, you said you haven’t had any big plays from them the last two weeks but you’ve also been pretty vanilla. Isn’t part of you going to say to Gunther to turn it loose this week?

EDWARDS: “A little bit, but you want to work on fundamentals. You’re playing a little bit vanilla and people know what we’re in: we’re in ‘Over-2” and we’re playing (Cover) “2.” Big deal. So, people can sit there and game plan all they want.

“We’re trying to implement some things and see if players can play it. That’s very important. Believe me, Gunther has a bag of blitzes. We can blitz. We know how to do that and we can put pressure on the quarterback if we need to do that. But we want to get some basic defenses down first, some principles down. That’s important.”

Q: You’ve talked about that sense of urgency this week. But isn’t that sense of urgency making some of those plays?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, we’ve got to make some plays. We really do because we’ve only taken the ball away once and that’s been on a fumbled punt. We’ve had some opportunities but we didn’t get the ball. So we’ve got to get the ball.”

Q: You’re going to do that out of what you’re trying to do rather than…..

EDWARDS: “Weeeeeell, we’ll just see. We’ll just wait till Saturday night.”

Q: Is all your system in defensively as well as offensively?

EDWARDS: “For the most part. Now, we’re not doing everything we do offensively, but that’s part of it. I always tell coaches this: in the pre-season games after your (starters) leave it’s who can coach the ‘two’s’ and the ‘three’s’ best because that’s who plays in the pre-season for the most part. Your starters play certain series’ and then they get ‘em out. Can your ‘two’s’ and ‘three’s’ score some points or hold some people? We’ve got to do a better job than that.”

Q: You’re going to get some guys back to play this week. Are you excited about seeing some of them? Does (Brodie) Croyle have a chance to play some?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, and (Michael) Bennett and Tamba (Hali) which is good. Lenny (Walls), too. Maybe even Brian (Waters), but we’ll see where he’s at. It’s good to get some of those guys back and especially some of those young guys ‘cause we haven’t seen them yet. We want to see Brodie and it’s kind of important to see him play this week and next week. That’s kind of important and obviously Tamba has to get in the game because he hasn’t been in a game yet. Neither has Lenny and that’s going to help us. Those guys need to get a sense of having played in a game before the season starts.”

Q: Is Croyle going to be your second quarterback in the game Saturday?

EDWARDS: “We haven’t discussed how we’re going to do it but I know he’s going to play. He needs to play this game and next game.”