Herm Edwards Press Conference - 9/4

Sep 04, 2007, 2:59:05 PM

VIDEO: Windows | Real | Audio

HERM EDWARDS: “At this point, I think we’re done with all our roster moves. We actually went in a little different direction this year in the fact that we left three players from our active roster go and brought in three others guys that we had brought in before the draft. They were drafted players: Thigpin, a quarterback who was with Minnesota, Barksdale, a corner who was with Philadelphia, and Baldwin, a linebacker who was with Detroit. We’ve actually signed those guys now.

“They were all guys that we looked at in the draft and were all drafted by other teams, but we felt like this would upgrade the back end of our roster.

“As far as the Texans go, they’re an improved football team. Offensively they’ve got a new quarterback and Ahman Green, who’s a good football player, good runner. Johnson, the receiver, and Daniels, the tight end, are good. They did some good things in the pre-season. The quarterback does a good job of moving in the pocket. He gets outside on boots and rolls similar to what Denver has done in the past. They were very good in the pre-season in not turning the ball over: plus five in the giveaway-takeaway. That’s always a good sign in the pre-season.

“Defensively, they have very good speed. They drafted [Okoye] out of Louisville who’s going to start for them. We liked him and he was a young kid. Their secondary is very aggressive and plays a lot of bump-and-run. They get in your face. It’ll be a good test for our receivers.

“Their special teams are very, very good. I know their special teams coach, Joe Marciano. He was in Tampa with us. Their return guy Jones has taken two of them back in the pre-season. Their kicker, Kris Brown, is a solid guy who’s long[est kick] has been 42 yards this pre-season. Turk, their punter, was actually with us in New York. Their special teams are very good and create positive yards.

“They have a lot of young guys and some high round draft choices. It’ll be a good test for us going on the road.”

Q: You had some kickers in yesterday. Is it just to get a look in case Justin Medlock doesn’t pan out?

EDWARDS: “It’s to get a look and we generally do that on Tuesdays, or Mondays this week. We bring in different position players and we did that last year. That’s not unusual for us and we’ll continue to do that. We are always looking for guys just in case something happens like a guy gets hurt. It’s a ready list of players who have worked out. “The punt, pass and kick contest was yesterday. There were a bunch of them out there but right now [Justin] Medlock is going to Houston and we anticipate he’s going to kick well for us.”

Q: Could Justin see this as a message maybe?

EDWARDS: “I don’t know if it’s a message so much. He’s going to take it any way he wants. The conversation I had with him was he’s our kicker; we have a lot of confidence in you, that’s why we drafted you. You’ve been good kicker. You’ve missed some kicks you probably should have made. But none of them count. The only ones that are going to count now are when we go to Houston. They need to count. He understands that; he had a good day on Monday going eight-for-eight on all his kicks. Now, we need to get him on the field and get him in field goal range.

“I’ve got to help him, too. I can’t line him up on the first field goal out of the box and ask him to kick a 53-yarder. You can help you kicker at times and put him in range where he’s comfortable and can make it.”

Q: What is his range?

EDWARDS: ‘His range is probably 44 to 48 [yards], somewhere around there. Anytime you take kickers past 50 [yards] it’s always a gray area. It’s very uncomfortable. They end up speeding up their kicks because of the distance. That’s the little I know about kickers. But he’s been a very accurate kicker and made a lot of kicks in college over 50 yards.

“It’s no different than what New England did with their guy last year. He was struggling for a while and coach Belichick got him inside the 25-yard line and wouldn’t let him kick anything over 47 yards I think. He was struggling early and he just kept him within that range and he got confident. At the end of the year he started kicking well. There are a lot of things you can do to help the kicker too. We drafted him. We have a lot of confidence in him. He’s a very talented player. But he’s a rookie. Rookies sometimes struggle whether he be the kicker, the runner, the receiver, it doesn’t matter. You have to live with that.”

Q: How is Dwayne Bowe grasping your offense?

EDWARDS: “He’s a pretty smart guy who we’ve asked to play a lot of different positions. Going into this game we’re going to have a game plan and we’re going to ask him to do certain things along with [Jeff] Webb. They’ll both be involved in our offense at the receiver position which is good. We feel they have the ability to make some plays for us. They bring a different dimension than Parker and Kennison. They’re part of our offense and Bowe is a big physical guy who can block. We’re going to line him up in certain positions where we feel we can take advantage of.”

Q: With the regular season starting on Sunday you had said in training camp that you just can’t suddenly turn it on. So, how do you expect your offense to just turn it on this week?

EDWARDS: “For our offense, it’s a veteran group of guys. They’ve played together a lot. The quarterback is a veteran guy who played eight games for us last year. The two guards and center have played a lot of football, the right tackle, too. Eddie Kennison and Parker have been starting receivers, the tight end has been a starter. They’ve played a lot of games together.

“With the influence of the young guys it’ll help. Larry’s back and he’ll help. A healthy Michael Bennett will help. And a game plan is going to help us, too.

“We’re not going to play the regular season like we played the pre-season. The pre-season was a mix of a lot of different guys, some young guys playing with starters done intentionally to see how they were going to react. Will Svitek was the starting left tackle for most of the pre-season and we needed to see him play left tackle. That was important.

“So, I think when you look at the pre-season you look at it a lot of different ways. We had some ability to win some games. We didn’t do it. Were they high-scoring games? No, they were low-scoring games. We had a chance. Now, our offense will have to gel. Will it be a slow-starting? I don’t know. We haven’t played yet. I’ll answer that after we play. When we score seven points I’ll say we’re slow starting. If we score 21 points, I’ll say, ‘whoa, we scored a lot of points.’ 21 points is a lot, 30 points isn’t a football game. That’s Arena Football. We’re talking about real football.”

Q: Can you explain the chart [on wall]?

EDWARDS: ”[Pointing] Generally you get the ball around 12 possessions [a game] unless you turn the ball over a bunch. Out of those 12 possessions probably five times you’re going to be inside the Gold Zone [inside the opponent’s 30-yard line]. What do you do when you’re there? Do you score touchdowns or kick field goals?

“When you look at us in the pre-season we had the ball an average of 11 times but our problem was we only got in the Gold Zone 2.8 times. That’s not good. You want to average five or six if you can. I have a possession chart I always carry with me on the side so that after eight possessions I kind of know we’re probably only going to get the ball back four more times.

“What you do inside that goal area is very important. Our players are starting to understand that. They need to learn that. That’s a big part of football, something we talk about a lot. Our defense has done a pretty good job in the Gold Zone and hasn’t allowed a lot of touchdowns. We’ve made them kick field goals.

“We kind of structure our practice that way, the way we think. Players have to think like coaches and at the end of the day they have to know you only touch the ball this many times. Just start counting. Within those possessions you get about six plays when you average them all out. You might go on a 12-play drive, but there might be a three-play drive. Generally it’s about six plays for every possession. Know the situations and where you’re at.”

Q: Houston head coach Kubiak knows this team so well from his time coaching in Denver. What kind of advantage is that for him in putting together a game play?

EDWARDS: “They’re going to boot, play-action; they’re going to go run stretch. They were successful doing that. He’s built his team a little bit like that. But that being said we’re a little bit different on defense than the past.”

Q: How are you better prepared to defend that?

EDWARDS: “Knock on wood, we played Denver twice last year. They run Denver’s offense. We have an idea what they’re going to do. Now, can we stop it? I don’t know. But we’ll find out.”

Q: How much stronger does Damon Huard appear to be after his injury?

EDWARDS: “He’s a lot better. Last year in the pre-season he was hurt so he didn’t play a lot. He actually played more in the pre-season this year: he played 23 [sna[s] this pre-season and 18 last pre-season. The good thing about Damon is he’s been in this position before in his career as far as coming off the bench and playing. Now he’s a starter and he hasn’t been in a long time. So, I think he’s excited about having this opportunity. This was part of the deal when he signed with us. He wanted the opportunity to compete to be the starter and we opened the competition up and he ended up being the starter.”

Q: At defensive end what did Jimmy Wilkerson do to win that spot over Turk McBride?

EDWARDS: “Experience and being in the system for two years. He got to the quarterback a lot in the pre-season. He’s a much more mature player now than he was. We drafted him as a junior.

“Now, we’ll go with a seven man rotation [along the defensive line] and when Jared comes back it’ll be eight man. All those guys will play probably 25 to 30 plays, which is good for us. We couldn’t do that last year defensively.

“Basically there are 18 [new] players on our defense since I arrived last year. You talk about 20 new players total from last year and eight more new ones on our practice squad and that’s 28. That’s OK. We have a good mix of veteran guys on offense and some few veterans on defense. More are starting on offense.”

Q: How much having Jason Dunn will help your rushing game?

EDWARDS: “He helps you run it and you have to have a tight end if you’re going to be able to block. That’s what he can do well. Now, he wasn’t involved in the pre-season either. You talk about the pre-season you’re talking about a lot of starters on offense that didn’t participate, similar to what happened to us last year in the pre-season due to injury. That’s what happens to you. You have to make sure if it’s a veteran guy you give him the ability to get well. Now most of those guys are well.”

Q: Do you imagine much of a load for Jason?

EDWARDS: “We’re still going to run the football. He’s going to be involved in the running game. You have to be able to run the football especially if we want to keep our defense fresh. The time of possession needs to be on your side. Generally, if you keep the ball for over 31 minutes, 85% of the time you win the game. That’s another deal we talk about.”

Q: In baseball they have pitch counts, is LJ [Larry Johnson] on a play count?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, and I have an idea. When we’re home I’ve got an idea that I’m going to make these little cards where people – like they do in baseball – can actually mark it. I’m going to try to patent that. [laughs]

“He’s going to be on a little bit of a leash early. He carried the ball two or three times in St. Louis. So he has to get his legs underneath him. Michael Bennett is healthy and that’s good; it gives us another runner. We feel very comfortable with the runners we have. It’s not all on LJ. It’s tough on one guy and he did a yeoman’s job last year.

“When I took this job I didn’t anticipate him carrying the ball that much. But injuries and losing the quarterback…the last time I checked you give the ball to your best player. He was our best player last year.

“It’s kind of ironic. He’s back, signed a big contract, now he’s not going to get the ball as much. The first thing he’s going to do is come to my office after the third game and ask, ‘why am I not getting the ball?’ That’s the question you [media] will be asking after week four: ‘why won’t you give Larry the ball more?’ Oh really, last year you said we gave him the ball too much last year. He’ll get the ball.”

Q: Is it going to be hard keeping him on a leash?

EDWARDS: “He’ll be fine the first two weeks because he knows he can’t do that. It’s about that fourth week. He knows and we’re protecting Larry. That’s important. The kind of guy he is, after week four I know what he’s going to do. He’s going to come up to me and say, ‘I can carry it a few more times if you need me to.”

“Now, it’s 25 [times] and now it’s 30 and I’m answering the question again: are you giving him the ball too much?”

Q: You can talk about it but, like you say, when the game’s on the line it’s hard to do?

EDWARDS: “It’s hard to do. I went through this with Curtis Martin [with the Jets]. Curtis told me, ‘I don’t get warmed up until I carry the ball at least 22 times.’ Now, if I give him 22 and he’s not warmed up yet and the 22 are pretty good, then I say I’ll give him more so he’s really going to do good. We’ll find out.”

Q: Is this team transformed like you wanted since you came here? Are you as young as you’d like?

EDWARDS: “We are younger in some spots. We have some veteran guys on offense that are still very good players. So we have some stability on offense. Now, defensively we have 18 new players since I arrived here last year which is heading in the right direction. We’re going to play a lot of defensive guys. We feel comfortable putting 16 of those guys on our football team that are going to be in some type of rotation. The majority of defensive players – an average of around 21 or 22 players – they have to play special teams and enhance us there. Offensively, the two newer guys are two receivers and a healthy Michael Bennett will help too.”

Q: How is Michael Bennett this year compared to last?

EDWARDS: “He’s got his legs underneath him and now more confident in his offense. We know more about Michael Bennett than we did when he first arrived in training camp and got nicked and couldn’t play a lot. Then he got nicked again and it was one of those deals. I think we saw a little glimpse of him Thanksgiving against Denver last year; you saw what he could bring to the table. He’s been involved in the offense all off-season; he’s gotten a lot of reps due to the fact that Larry wasn’t in training camp. All of a sudden you’ve got some guys who have played in the system more.”

| Do You See Red? | More news… | Roster
Chiefs.TV RSS | Subscribe to Chiefs.TV in iTunes