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Coach Sparano Press Conference And Transcript

Posted Sep 19, 2011



Coach Tony Sparano

(On assessing the free safety play the first two games)- “Game one pretty good, game two…I would call it average.”

(On his reaction Jason Taylor’s comments about his teammates not believing they could win)- “Well my reaction hearing it is if after two games you don’t believe you can win, something is wrong with you. We do everything in our power here to fester in that kind of environment here. But at the end of the day you got to go out there and have success. I mean you got to feel like you’re having success. Success isn’t kind of a sometimes thing, it’s got to be more of an all time thing. You have to believe that you can change the game when the game isn’t quite going your way. I think with our football team in the mixture of our football team right now which is young and very few true veteran players meaning Will Allen, Jason Taylor, those kind of guys, (Marc) Colombo, that have seen those things happen on a regular basis where you’re down however many points and you see teams come back and win some of those games. This team needs to get over the hump that way in those kind of games last night where it’s 16-13. We got to get over the hump and win those kind of games so that they smell that a little bit. But we’ll get there, we’ll absolutely get there. There was enough really good things done on the tape that is a lot different than it was a week ago.”

(On if Jason Taylor’s comments were out of anger and frustration)- “No, I think Jason is entitled to make his comments. I mean I think what Jason is saying is true in some senses of the word. I just answered the question. We got to get over the hump as a football team and figure out how to win those kind of games. I mean I think that’s what the guy is talking about.”

(On how much he is relating back to his previous experiences of losing a couple games then winning after)- “Listen, there is a lot of teams that have been in this spot before. As I told the team last night, you can’t keep coming back here saying well that was only one game, we got 15 more to go. Now that’s two games and we got 14 more. That’s not acceptable. I mean you can’t keep doing those kind of things. Before long you run out of them. But all that being said it’s the second week of the season. We got a lot of football ahead of us and we got a chance to right the ship and we’re going to do that.”

(On what he was able to take out of Daniel Thomas’s performance)- “A lot of positives. Daniel ran the ball extremely well, really did. I thought ran the ball hard in between the tackles. But there is a lot of things off of Daniel’s performance that you guys wouldn’t see that we see that Daniel needs to get better at. He’ll know that today here shortly when he watches the tape. Sometimes you’re a young guy and this is where we got to get better. This goes back to (the question regarding Jason Taylor) I think a little bit of what Jason is talking about. I think the natural reaction is to the leave ball park and think I carried the ball this many times, I had that many yards and boy I did a good job. But then when you watch the film there might be a couple others things you didn’t do so well that you can improve on or that you really need to do better because then you got to look and say well these are the pluses and these are the minuses and how do these things weigh each other. There was a few things in the game, obviously we put the ball on the ground once. You need to take care of it. It’s a 13-yard run in a critical situation of the game. The ball ends up on the ground, the kid makes a good run, kid puts his facemask right on the ball and just…it happens. But Daniel is going to tell you he needs to take care of that. And then there is a couple other things there that he needs to do a little better. All that being said where this guy was a week ago; he didn’t play in the game. I saw a pretty good runner out there at times last night.”

(On looking back at the comments where he said he had no answers last night)- “Criticism doesn’t bother me one way or the other, ok. But the question that I was asked is that we’re 1-11 at home or something to that affect. I still don’t really have answers for that. I mean I gave you the answers that I gave you. All I know is that when we play home games, for whatever the reason, we are behind in the turnover ratio. And when you turn the ball over in this league, particularly when you turn it over in their end of the field and give them the ball on the seven, eight yard line, whatever it is, you’re struggling. You got to work your way out of those things and it’s hard. Those people ended up scoring points there and in that situation you can’t do those kind of things. That’s the only thing that I can give you that’s tangible. When I look at all the numbers and I look at the all the things that are out there on paper right now, the turnover ratio is what sticks out at me.”

(On if he can use going on the road to turn this thing around)- “All I know is when I go on the road I have my team’s full attention. I have their full attention, I’m with them longer, I get to be around them longer, they get to be around the coaches longer. That’s what I know. If that’s a good thing then that’s a good thing. We’re going to take the team on the road and we’re going to do everything. It doesn’t matter where we’re playing. We can be playing in the middle of the street this week. We need to find a win and that’s what we’re going to try to do. It doesn’t have anything to do with home or away or any of those things. Like I told you before; at the end of this they’re just going to tally them all up. They don’t care where you win them.”

(On how Will Allen played)- “Will played pretty good during the game. He had about 25 plays in the game. There’s a couple things that he can do a little bit better out there but some things that he did well. He jumped up on that quick screen that was out there and did a nice job, made a tackle for a loss on that. I asked him to play five or six special teams plays because we were down at bodies at times and he made a tackle, had a knockdown and did some things that way. Those are things that 10 year veteran doesn’t usually do and this guy was pretty unselfish there. He played about 35 plays or so in the game and I thought he gave us a good night’s work yesterday. I mean, he did a good job.”

(On if he will let the cornerbacks match up against specific receivers)- “I mean we match them up when we think we need to match them up. Last night wasn’t an area where we needed to match them up. We had double coverage, we rolled coverage, we did a bunch of different things during the course of this game from a coverage standpoint.”

(On assessing the offensive line)- “Well I would tell you we rushed the ball for 153 yards, about 5.5 yards a carry yesterday. The quarterback got hit a few too many times for my liking, wasn’t all offensive line play. Some of it had to do it with running back, tight end protection gigs. But I would tell you that as a whole I really like what was happening in the run game last night. I thought we started to see them get off the ball and start to move the line of scrimmage a little bit. There was even some of the unwritten communication that goes on within the offensive line starting to take place. I thought Vernon (Carey) did some things in that phase of the game that was pretty good. I thought that Richie (Incognito) did some things that way that were pretty good. We had a few too many guys on the ground. We were on the ground a few too many times in the offensive line and I think that those six yard runs could be bigger runs if we’re playing on our feet so that’s something that they’ll take from the film today a little bit there too. At the end of the day the last couple of drives of the game on both sides of the football where you got to try to finish the game was probably…I would call it the worst time for us, both sides of the ball there. In other words they have to throw it, we have to throw it, rather and they are running it. I didn’t feel like at that point in time we stopped them very good. We didn’t necessarily protect Chad (Henne) very well in the last series of the game.”

(On if there are any updates with Karlos Dansby or Vontae Davis)- “No updates right now. I have not met with the trainer.”

(On how concerned he is with Karlos Dansby)- “Well, I’m concerned. Karlos is a good player for us and I’m obviously concerned. We’ll see how it goes here. I don’t know to the degree of where we are with it. Any time you lose a good player, that was my point last night, I’m not being critical, I’m just talking about any of my players. You guys took it and ran with it a different way last night but I’m talking about when you go out there with 46 players and you’re down four or five players and you got good players sitting on the sideline it makes it hard. We need those guys out there, particularly a guy like Karlos in this situation so hopefully he’s going to be ok.”

(On how he would assess Marvin Mitchell)- “Marvin came in and did a good job…honestly, was very productive. Had five, six tackles in about 30 plays or so, played downhill. The downside of it was that Marvin was a core special teams guy so when that happened we had to cover him on special teams. He played 12 plays up until that point we had to take him out because he was in the game on defense so he probably played 45 plays last night. Then somebody else had to go in the game there and kind of cover him on special teams but I was pleased. To bring him into the game and see what he did there he made a little bit of progress last night.”

(On Nolan Carroll’s progress and if he would be comfortable if Vontae Davis can’t play)- “Yeah I though…the thing with Nolan is Nolan competes his tail off when he’s out there, he really does. Now the ball got behind him one time there at the end of the game with, I think it was Andre (Johnson) running down the sideline there. But other than that I thought Nolan competes hard. He’s got to wrap up on one particular tackle out there but other than that the guy is all around the football. Pretty physical kid, plays good in the special teams area. I think the guy had done a nice job. I don’t know what else is going to happen this week with where we are injury wise or any of those things but I feel good about it.”

(On if the assessment by the players is accurate with not winning enough one-on-one matchups and if he has any statistic that backs that up)- “No, I don’t have a stat that backs it up. I know how many times in a game we rush four, five or six so I’m assuming that’s what we’re talking about. But we hit the quarterback quite a bit last night. I think between Jason (Taylor) and Cameron (Wake) then we hit them a couple times. Reshad (Jones) hit him once and Vontae (Davis) hit him once. We hit him a few different times that way so I thought we hit this guy a good ten times last night during the course of the game. I think Cameron had three or four and (Jason Taylor) had couple, two or three. We got to the quarterback pretty well. Randy Starks was active last night at times during the course of the game inside and creating some problems in there too. We won a few one-on-one matchups, that’s the point here. There were more things done well this week then there was last week, ok. Now at the end of this we’re 0-2 so of course it’s doom and gloom. But there were more things done well this week then there was last week during the course of this game. Maybe not necessarily offensively all the time but the rushing game was much better this week which took some pressure off of the pass game. But there was still 11 plays made over ten yard runs or 20 yard passes in this game.”

(On if he felt like he used Reggie Bush enough)- “Well, Reggie played 25 (plays), Daniel played 33 (plays) yesterday. Maybe you’d want that flipped around a little bit but it was just the way we were running the football and the nature with the way we were running the football and what Daniel (Thomas) was doing with the ball just led me to him a little more.”

(On Reggie Bush and Daniel Thomas on the field at the same time)- “Yeah a little two half back. So it was something, someone asked a question about using the two of them, or using Reggie if Daniel is running well, I think was the question asked. That’s a way to do it, it’s just somebody got to block if you’re doing that. You can’t throw it all the time out of that. In order to do some of those things, that was how the wildcat started way back when. It was part of our package going in last night to try to keep a few more play makers out there. The package wasn’t, we didn’t expand on the package a whole lot. We just weren’t sure by weeks end with Daniel with where he was physically going into the ball game.”