Highlights

Q: What’s Jon McGraw’s status?

HERM EDWARDS: “We’re just resting him. His shoulder is a little sore but he’ll be fine.”

Q: Dorsey’s status. Is he still day-to-day?

EDWARDS: “Day-to-day. He did a little bit more today but he’s better.”

Q: What exactly did he do today?

EDWARDS: “He did the drills. He did most of the individual drills. We’ll see.”

Q: Are you seeing the sort of progress you want out of him?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, he’s coming along but we don’t have to rush the guy. We have a long time before the opener. We’re not going to rush this kid at all. He’ll be fine.

“He’s a powerful man. There’s no doubt about that. He’s got a lot to learn. He has pretty good instincts on the run. He’s going to have to improve his pass rush but they all do when they’re young.”

Q: Are you liking Turk McBride on that left side?

EDWARDS: “He’s done a good job. He’s practicing well. It’ll be interesting to see how he practices this week against Brian (Waters). He’s been good and did some good things in the game, too.

“He’s a lot more confident compared to last year.”

Q: Do you think he and Tank Tyler believe they have something to prove?

EDWARDS: “Sure they do, they both do. They were fairly high ranked picks. We bring in another guy (Dorsey) that was a really high pick. They have to help us in the rotation because we want to rotate those defensive linemen. We’d like to dress seven or eight of them depending on special teams.

“They both have improved and have a lot of confidence now.”

Q: Did you like what you saw today?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, they came back good. I anticipated that. Now tomorrow, the next three days, will be pads. That’s good and by Thursday we’ll be back in spiders (pads) and be ready to play.

“The thing about these guys is they generally rally when you ask them to do it in practice. Like I said before we started camp, I didn’t know most of these guys. I didn’t know how they’d react. You have to figure out if you have a tough football team or not. That’s why we did what we did. Most teams are in one-a-days now. You have to be careful. You only have 80 players and you don’t want them to get hurt.”

Q: Why bring Shackleford back?

EDWARDS: “We need another guy. Stallings, we don’t know where he’s out. We’re thin and we needed to get some guys in there, especially in the pre-season since you can’t play your starters so much. Your young guys have to play. He was here in the spring and the numbers games got him.”

Q: Does this 80 man roster thing cause you problems?

EDWARDS: “It’s not so much a problem but when a couple of guys get nicked you don’t have the luxury of having 85 or 86 guys like you previously did with the World League exemptions. The big thing is the quarterback situation – only bringing in three quarterbacks. You used to bring in four and some extra legs at receiver. We’ve been pretty good so far; we’ve held up with nine receivers in double days. Going one-a-days is going to help.”

Q: You ran the fake spike today and the young guy, Brandon Carr, didn’t fall for it and he’s a young guy.

EDWARDS: “He’s a pretty heady kid. He’s going to improve. Both corners we drafted we liked. They’re going to have the opportunity to play a lot for us. We can anticipate that.”

Q: It would seem that’s a position where you would want the learning curve to be accelerated. Have they been up to it so far?

EDWARDS: “You can’t accelerate it. They have to play. That’s how they learn how to play in this league. You can say what you want but until they go on the field and play and go through all the scenarios and get beat for a touchdown and how they react, you don’t know.

“We’ve got a young secondary here all of a sudden. Very young. The two oldest guys are Pat (Surtain) and Jon McGraw. The rest are three years guys or less. So they’re very young and they will have an opportunity to play together, I hope, for a long time.”