Q&A with HERM EDWARDS - 1/4

Jan 04, 2007, 2:56:13 PM

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HERM EDWARDS: “Trent (Green) practiced the whole time, took all the reps.”

Q: How did he look?

EDWARDS: “Mahvalous, he looked mahvalous.”

Q: If he had to play today would he play?

EDWARDS: “Starting tomorrow, I mean starting Saturday. I don’t have to play today. He’s fine, he’s good.”

Q: Do you think confidence and chemistry trumps everything else?

EDWARDS: “I think confidence trumps everything. Not so much confident in what everyone else is doing but confident in your job, trusting that the guy next to you is going to do his job. I think if you have a team that plays like that you obviously have a great chance of winning. If you’re concerned about a teammate or two, then your confidence is not going to be that good. You have to trust that everyone is preparing like you are and that’s all you can control. I think this week guys have done a good job of that.”

Q: So you’re happy in where you guys are in that department right now?

EDWARDS: “Yeah. Obviously when we got in here Monday everyone’s kind of figuring it out. By Tuesday they got some time off and I think what happened was they realized that this is really real. They came in Wednesday and today I thought was really a good day. I really believe that. I thought the coaches had a great plan of how we were going to prepare and then the players executed it on the field. They were very good in the classroom.

“It’s a different kind of mindset now for everyone. I think the players are buying into that.”

Q: Was it tough getting everyone back in a football mindset because a lot of them were already gone or making reservations to go?

EDWARDS: “We say that and we always say ‘a lot of guys’ but there are 60 something guys and what’s a lot of guys.”

Q: But it’s a human nature to check out? Larry Johnson was in New York.

EDWARDS: “Yeah, but I knew he was going there. But that doesn’t mean he checked out. That doesn’t mean that at all. The guys knew some things had to happen and no one lost hope and it worked out for us.

“It’s important for this program that we’re getting to play Saturday, for the start of this program. Coaches and players have taken a great step in hanging in there and persevering through a long season. It just goes to show you the first game is important, but so is the last game. They’re all important. We were able to get in by the way you should get in: winning.”

Q: The Colts have to focus on Larry Johnson but doesn’t that give you an advantage when teams do that?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, but Tony’s a smart coach. He’s just not going to focus on Larry Johnson. He’s been in too many of these rodeos. He’s going to focus on what they need to do to be successful on defense against us and that’s creating negative yards for us and putting us in passing situations.”

Q: In six years Tony has never closed practice until this year. Do you think your old buddy has got something for you, tinkering behind closed doors?

EDWARDS: “Never know. That’s what good friends do. They don’t tell everything. It’ll be kind of fun.”

Q: I’ve been hearing all week you go into the playoffs 0-0 and whatever anybody did during the season really doesn’t matter. How could that be? If you’re not good at one thing what makes anybody think they’re going to be better at it in one game?

EDWARDS: “Your record gets you in there but you know if you win you can continue to play. It doesn’t matter if you have 13 wins.”

Q: I’m talking about stats, if a team is good at one thing or bad in another. I’m talking in general. How is that thrown out the window?

EDWARDS: “It’s not thrown out the window. But I don’t think you go on stats, you go on trying to attack them a certain way and people are going to try and defend that. There are ways they’re going to try and defend that with their offense and some with their defense. That’s what you understand when you go play a game like this.

“You never know what someone’s going to do all of a sudden. They could change. You don’t know that. But Tony’s pretty basic. He’s going to stay with what got his team in the playoffs and what got his team in the playoffs the last five years. He’s not going to change that. It’s been good enough.

“People are making a big deal out of their run defense but they’re 12-4. They’re still pretty good. You can’t lose sight of that.”

Q: Everybody in the world is saying it’s going to be Larry to the left, Larry to the right, Larry up the middle. Might that make it tempting to run a Statue of Liberty play or something on the first play?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, a reverse, Statue of Liberty, all these good things. Then when you do them and you lose the game you as the head coach have to stand at the microphone and answer why did you get out of your game plan. Why did you do this? Why didn’t you do that? Everybody’s already playing the game for both teams. You know that.

“They’re playing the game for Tony saying how are you going to stop the run, how you gonna stop the run, you guys have to stay on the field and got to slow them down. Everyone’s telling Tony what to do and everyone’s telling me what to do. We’re not paying attention to anybody. We know what we’re going to do. Then when the game’s over everybody can criticize what we didn’t do or what we did do right.”

Q: Is the Statue of Liberty in your playbook?

EDWARDS: “You mean the one that Boise State ran. Yeah, that’s coming out of moth balls now.”

Q: How important is a quick start against this team?

EDWARDS: “Very, very. You don’t want to go three downs and out. That’s not good. Never on the road. You don’t want three plays and out because the problem you have when you do that is if they get the ball back and score, all of a sudden, you’re playing to catch up. You really don’t want to play to catch up a whole lot against these guys, especially if you get down two scores because now you’ve got problems.

“You can say, ‘yeah, but you can run the ball.’ Yeah, but the problem is when you run the ball it takes a lot more time off the clock so you’re playing into their hands too. Running the ball and scoring and you’re two scores down they get the ball back and score again and it takes another seven minutes off the clock and you’re really beating yourself. At the end you don’t have enough time to catch them. You don’t want to get down a bunch of scores, on the road, and the crowd gets in the game early, especially in playoff games. The speed of the game is very fast.”

Q: How much is the absence of Jason Dunn going to limit what you might try to do?”

EDWARDS: “You lose a good player but Jason Dunn didn’t play last week. We ran the ball, I thought. Did we run the ball last week?”

Q: Yeah.

EDWARDS: “Now, I’m not taking anything away from Jason Dunn. I’d like all my good players to be here. But this season has kind of been like that. We’ve lost a player here, lost a player there, lost a guy there. I don’t worry about that. The next guy is going to go in and play. We’ve done a good enough job that I think this team understands when you lose a player for some reason – and we’ve lost a bunch of them – we’ve continued to play.”

Q: You’ve been to the playoffs many times. With what this team has been through all year has that toughened them for the playoffs?

EDWARDS: “I think it helps when you’re a mentally tough football team and a physically tough football team. I think the thing is we are that. Now we’ve got to go play. For me it’s going to be very enjoyable to watch us play because this is another step in this program. I want to see where we’re at. We’ve gotten this far so let’s go play.

“At the end of the day it’s a game. It’s the same game you played during the regular season except there’s only 12 teams in the tournament not 32. That’s what makes it special. All the pressures come to play. Everything is magnified. Every little play you run will be magnified 100 times. You know that. That’s part of it and part of the process of growing up and learning how to be a playoff team – a consistent playoff team, a team that understands the mentality.”

Q: Are you ahead of where you thought you’d be with this team?

EDWARDS: “No. Little bit behind.”

Q: So you were thinking about 10-6 this year?

EDWARDS: “No, I wanted to win the division. That was one of my goals. I had some other short-term goals. We fell short there but we got into the playoffs.”

Q: Isn’t that hard to do when you’re in your first year?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, but I got spoiled because I did it in New York. I figured that’s what you do. I told our team we’re going to the playoffs – the first thing I told them. We’re going to the playoffs. You’d better get that straight. I don’t know of these guys believed me but this has got to be a part of this program.

“The guy who taught me that is the guy we’re playing against this weekend. That’s how we felt when we were in Tampa. We wanted to become a team that was always in the playoffs. Every year you wanted to be one of those teams. I had that mindset when I went to New York and we pulled it off a couple of times. When I got here it was my mindset. Now, you might fall short, but you’ve got to have a goal. You’ve got to go about doing things and how you prepare to be that.

“The whole structure of this program was built that way – to do this. When we got to game 10 and 11 we were in a playoff mode, practicing to be in the playoffs. That way it’s not a shock to you. We’ve been preparing to do this for the last three or four weeks. This week is nothing unusual for us. You’ve got to take steps to do that. You just can’t say at the end of the day that we’re a playoff team. You’ve got to prepare them to be one.”

Q: As you build you program, how important is it that you got to the playoffs this year, this important is this experience?

EDWARDS: “Very valuable because of the fact there are young players involved. A lot of the old players who haven’t been in a lot of playoffs it’s good for them too. It’s really for a young nucleus of players. It’s no different than in New York and we had that young draft class. James Reed was involved. Reed has been to a lot of these rodeos. He understands the mindset and what coach does. You get your young class understanding that and the guys that follow them that are drafted know how this is how we did it here. It helps you with the young guys because we have only maybe eight guys on our roster who have been in more than two playoff games.”