Herm Edwards Press Conference - 12/18

Dec 18, 2007, 5:27:27 PM

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EDWARDS: “As far as Detroit, at one time they were a 6-2 football team playing pretty well and they’ve hit a skid similar to ours at this point and time. They have lost six in a row, turned the ball over a lot and that’s kind of what happens to you. That’s what we’ve done; we’ve turned the ball over in the second half.

“They are a team that when you watch them offensively, they throw the ball about 67% of the time. So they throw the ball a lot and their team is built for that offensively. They play in a dome, they throw it and they have some gifted receivers that are very talented. They are kind of where we are at; their coach Rod Marinelli was with me in Tampa Bay. It’s a tough atmosphere to play in, it is generally loud in that dome and I’ve been up there a couple times before to play so we anticipate one of those games. They are going to come out very fast and hopefully we can slow them down.

“We have to get off the field and offensively we have to stay on the field. I thought we did a good job of that last week on our third downs. We were very good on third downs last week; probably the best that we’ve been all year and the quarterback didn’t get sacked last week. We did a pretty good job of protecting and did a few things different, so that helped us. A lot of the young players played fairly well. I think that DTs Tank Tyler and Turk McBride got better. It doesn’t show up a lot of times when you are on defense, but they played pretty well. CB Dimitri Patterson, a young guy that we brought in here played 20-25 plays, so that’s good. We need to see him some and we are going to continue to play these young guys. I think that is important for us and we have another opportunity to prepare to win a football game in Detroit this weekend.”

Q: What’s your feedback been on the statement you made last week: “Get over it.” It seems like some fans might have missed your point?

EDWARDS: “Well they probably did and the way that the fans took it, in my opinion, was probably wrong. I think our fans are great. They have a lot of passion and they have a lot invested in this football team, which we all do. I just think that when you are going through tough times you have to get over that part of it and get ready to go and prepare to win a game. That’s what we’re trying to do. If it was misinterpreted I apologize. The fans are a big part of the game and I know that as a former player and as a coach. Without the fans you have no one there to watch you play and that’s the enjoyment of it, especially when you are in a venue like this where this is one of the better venues to play in where the fans are very important. They were good this week, they were really good. They came out when it was cold, they were cheering us and they were loud. That was good. We just couldn’t pull it off in the second half. We got behind and never had enough ability offensively and defensively we didn’t take the ball away, and we couldn’t score any points. That’s been a little bit of how we’ve played in the games we’ve lost. We turned the ball over way too many times. We are now at a minus 11 in giveaway/takeaways and when we were winning we were plus four. So that’s kind of been where we are at right now. We are struggling that way and we have to get out of that. That’s kind of where that’s at.”

Q: There were some fans that were not happy on Sunday. Is that just part of the deal or do you think most of it is just people frustrated with the season?

EDWARDS: “That’s not indicative of our fans. There are going to be some people who have their opinions and that’s what’s great about what we do. Everyone has a voice and has a right to their opinion. If you pay your money you can come to the games and I always say that as long as it’s not the Roman days where they get to throw stuff at you and turn the lions at you. People are going to say things and you can’t be sensitive to that. I think people are all disappointed in how the outcome of this season has taken place this far and they have the right to be because fans are emotional. That’s why you come to the ballpark, to let your emotions out. I’d rather them let their emotions out on the football team then to take it home and do something crazy at home. That’s what sports are about, to let your emotions out. I think in the long run it’s the way that it is. When you are losing it’s no fun for anybody. It’s no fun for the coaches or the players either. We don’t like this, it’s not a lot of fun, but we know that you can’t have the mindset and you have to move on and prepare for the next week. That’s probably the most important thing mentally. These things happen. If you play ball long enough or coach long enough it’s going to happen, it’s just a matter or when it shows up on your doorstep. It’s happening to this team right now, but I think the great thing is not worrying about what is happening, but how you are going to fix it and how you are not going to let this continue to happen. This is one season, it’s not the culmination of a bunch of seasons. It’s one season right now and we’ll have the opportunity to get it going in the right direction and that’s what we are going to do when the season ends.”

Q: How does this situation compare to what you experience with the Jets in 2005? I’m talking about everything, the fans and the media reactions.

EDWARDS: “The same thing. It’s everywhere. Wherever you are losing at it’s in all of the stadiums and you understand that and that’s part of it. You don’t take it personal because it’s part of the game that goes along when you’re not winning and you have to be strong enough to understand that.”

Q: Is it a good thing or a bad thing that you’ve gone through this before?

EDWARDS: “You have to learn how to deal with it if you are in this profession. I learned how to deal with it in Philadelphia as a player. Our seasons weren’t always great in Philadelphia, we started off bad there a couple times and they were booing Santa Claus. Santa Claus is a pretty good guy last time I thought. He generally gives out gifts, but they were booing Santa. So when you learn how to deal with that as a player in your rookie year you go, ‘wow, I’ve never been in a place like this.’ It’s part of it, but that’s what makes the fans so good. They’re passionate and you’re their team. That’s their team, that’s what they feel and that’s okay. That’s a good thing, that’s not a bad thing, that’s a good thing and you take it for what it’s worth. You go, ‘okay, this is where it’s at right now, I understand that,’ but then when it turns all good again they will be out there cheering. That’s what’s great, they will be out there cheering. It will be okay and I’m not going to get mad. That’s part of it and you know it when you are a player or a coach, but the key is how you fix it. That’s the key. How are we going to get this thing fixed and how are we going to get it going back in the right direction. That’s the whole process that we’re going through right now as an organization. That’s something that we are going to address when the season is over with, we are going to get it right and we are going to start going again in the right direction.”

Q: Something else that might have been a misinterpretation last week was when you said that losing has never happened here before. There were a lot of tough times here from ‘75-88. A lot of fans thought you were just dismissing that as though their suffering in those years didn’t matter.

EDWARDS: “Every organization goes through it. Like I always tell players, ‘pick your words,’ and I didn’t use the right choice of words, obviously, and that’s my fault. That’s on me and I’m willing to accept that. This organization went through that in the early times, there is no doubt about it and in ‘88 it wasn’t very good, and in ‘89 I was here when Carl Peterson and Marty Schottenheimer were here for the turnaround. I was a part of that, I was here and I understand.”

Q: A lot of things are the same here. Does it feel like it did back then?

EDWARDS: “When you are the head guy it’s a little different than being an assistant that gets to stand over to the side and not have to answer any of the questions. The thing that I learned watching head coaches is that you have to take the brunt of it because you are the head guy. That doesn’t always mean that it’s something you agree with, but it’s part of the process of being the head coach. It’s like a parent, a parent protects family. That’s what you do, you protect your children and that’s what I learned. That’s how you do it. It’s something that when you go to the playoffs last year and everyone is excited, you come back this season and things aren’t going the way that you anticipate them and there are some reasons for that. When the season was over with we knew what type of team we were and we knew some things would have to go the right way for us to have a chance to do that again and it didn’t happen, so now we’re suffering for it. Now we have to find a way to get it right and we will.”

Q: What do you take from that experience and apply it towards the team that you want this organization to be?

EDWARDS: “Well, I think you have to have patience. You can’t panic and you can’t have emotional decisions. If you have a plan, you have to start orchestrating the plan. It has to be well thought out, which it has been and it is in this organization. It is in this organization and it will all come to fruition, and you know that. We’ve got two games to try to win and we’ve got a game this weekend to play in Detroit. It all kind of takes care of itself when you are organized and you know what to do. It’s almost like in life when people always want to know. It’s like when you look at the weather man and he says that today is Monday. Well you are not concerned about Monday, you want the weather all the way until Friday. Today is Monday, the sun is going to come out and it is 80 degrees, but nobody ever worries about Monday. You look at Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, that’s the day I want to know about, but it’s Monday. It’s the same way here, everyone wants to know what we are going to do, but that’s down the road, that’s Friday, but we’re dealing with Monday right now. Today is the day where we are preparing to play Detroit and that’s what we have to do. When the season is over with we will deal with that. That’s our society and that’s how we think. That’s okay to think that way, but no day is given to you. You deal with the day at hand and the day at hand is this day. This is the day to prepare for Detroit, that’s what we are going to do and we’ll have a good plan and we’ll go up there and try to win a road game.”

Q: Talk about how WR Dwayne Bowe has come around. He obviously has had some ups and downs.

EDWARDS: “He hit the wall a little bit about three weeks ago. A bunch of those young guys hit the wall and you anticipate that. I think he’s starting to bounce back. He lost a little bit of his energy and a little bit of his legs because of the stress of the season and that’s any young player who has to start. He’s basically been starting since day one. He’s played a lot of snaps and he’s improved. Is he going to drop a ball or two? Yeah, but his overall success has been very, very good for us. When you think of all the receivers that were drafted in the first round, Dwayne and WR Calvin Johnson in Detroit are the two kids that are playing a lot. They are both having pretty good years and that’s good to see, but most young receivers in this league don’t play a lot. Dwayne has been good enough to get into the starting lineup and he’s been a good player for us, he really has, and he’s going to continue to grow and be a good player. Those are the bright things you see, there are a lot of young guys playing. RB Kolby Smith is another young guy that everyone was wondering what kind of guy he was going to be. Well, we found out that he’s a pretty good football player. As I said, our two young defensive tackles played pretty well and that’s a good sign. There are a bunch of young guys playing that we drafted and some are free agents that we have signed. We’ll know more about them when the season is over, so when we get ready to go and do what we need to do to get this going in the right direction we will have information. That’s what you have to have. You have to have information on the football team to make sure you are making the correct decisions in the off-season as far as players go.”

Q: What has he shown you this year that suggests he might be the number one guy down the road?

EDWARDS: “I just think that the game is not too big for him. He’s played against some very good defenses and corners. Does he need to improve? Yeah, I think his stamina needs to improve as far as going through a season and his speed of how he plays, but that’s just part of going through it. He will be much better next year, but I just think his ability to make plays and the fact that the game is never too big for him. He’s never overwhelmed when he’s on the field because we are playing this team or that team. He just goes out there and plays football, which is a good thing for us.”

Q: You mentioned RB Larry Johnson being questionable, which is an upgrade. What chance do you think that he might have of playing this week?

EDWARDS: “I don’t know that. I think the more that he goes through individual drills will put him in a more strenuous situation. Through the whole week we’ll see if he has soreness after every day. He has gone through one or two days, but he’s never gone through a full week. So we have to find out where that is at and whichever decision is made will be best for the player’s purpose, to make sure he’s okay. That’s how you make these types of decisions and we don’t have to make that right now. We’ll find out where he is at on Thursday and Friday and then we will decide.”

Q: Is it your hope now that he will be able to take on a full load of practice?

EDWARDS: “You would hope. I don’t know if it is going to be a full load of practice, but it will be more than he has done in the previous couple of times he’s gone out. He’s done individual, but he really hasn’t gotten involved in practices yet, so we’ll see where he’s at.”

Q: Is he pretty eager to get going?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, he’s very eager. He feels a lot better then he felt four weeks ago, so that’s a good sign.”

Q: He’s going to tell you that he wants to play.

EDWARDS: “There is no doubt about it, there you go. Players will always tell you that they want to play.”

Q: That may not be best for him.

EDWARDS: “It may not be best for him at the end, you’re exactly right.”

Q: You said that you knew what kind of team you were going to have this year at the end of last year. What does that mean?

EDWARDS: “I thought some things had to fall right for us to be in the playoffs and for us to be a playoff team. You had to have a pretty dominant defense to do that, I felt. Your offense had to be one that was consistent, which it hasn’t been. We haven’t had a very good running game, which doesn’t help you and we haven’t been very consistent. We’ve turned the ball over way too many times, which really hurts you. Defensively we were playing pretty well up until about game 10 and then we’ve hit a little bit of a bad road of not taking the ball away. That’s a culmination of how you play. You know all of those things have to play together for you to have a real good shot to be one of those top teams and it didn’t work out. We’re suffering for it right now and that’s okay, because we kind of anticipated that it could go either way. It was really no different from my first year here, it was the same situation. It really hasn’t changed a whole lot, we were drafting defensive players because there was a reason for that. We found some ways to win games, got going and got in. We got in because we won. We won some games that we needed to win in the end and some other teams didn’t win those games, and we won those games. That’s how we got in and it was a credit to the players to continue to play after a three game losing streak. We won our last two, that’s what we need to do to get in and the other teams didn’t do that. So that’s kind of where that’s at.”

Q: Do you think that maybe your team thought they could just flip a switch and make it happen again this year?

EDWARDS: “I don’t know that. I just think that we were in some games where if you would have won them you would have gained more confidence and you might be sitting in a better place than you are right now. I think there are five teams right now, including a Super Bowl team, that were in the playoffs last year that aren’t going to make it this year. Generally there are six teams that don’t make it a year after going to the playoffs and that’s half of the teams. Why? I don’t know what the problems with all of those other teams are, but I know the problems here. We have some and that’s okay as long as you know the problems, then you can go get it fixed. If you don’t know the problems, then it’s not good.”

Q: T Chris Terry was cut last weekend. What’s the story there?

EDWARDS: “It was for the best interest of the team that we let him go and I’ll leave it at that. It was to the betterment of the football team and to the player.”

Q: Knowing what you know now, do you think it was a mistake for the Chiefs to be the subject of Hark Knocks?

EDWARDS: “Our fans have been distracted coming to games because of the parking lots and the building of the new stadium, but that’s part of it. I grew up in a family where my Dad taught me something when I was very young. He said, ‘son, successful people deal with inconvenience and life is about inconvenience. The people that are going to be successful can deal with inconvenience in their life.’ I’m answering your question by saying, was it inconvenient? Yeah, but it’s good for them and it’s good for all of us. When all of those cameras are around, eventually you want them around after 16 games and then they’re still following. Then it really becomes inconvenient and those are the teams that are in the championship games and in that big game. You need to learn to deal with all of that and prioritize how you go to work and how you think. If we learned anything from that is that there is going to be inconvenience. You can’t plan everything and put this team in a room where you are locked in and no one can bother you. No, you want to deal with that. We learned about that in New York when we were successful. I think it is good for you because if you can learn about that collectively as a football team you are going to be successful. That’s just part of the process about learning how to be successful, so that’s where I stand on it.”