Herm Edwards Press Conference

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HERM EDWARDS PRESS CONFERENCE - 9/12
Sep 12, 2006, 3:23:24 PM

VIDEO: Herm Edwards - Real


HERM EDWARDS: “I apologize for being late but I was talking to Trent (Green). He’s getting ready to go home (from the hospital) which is good. Obviously, he’s out this week. We’ll move on and Damon (Huard) will play. We have to put a good plan in for him to let him be successful, especially going on the road against Denver.

“When you look at the Broncos last week the score doesn’t really dictate what happened to them. Offensively, they moved the ball very, very well. They ran the ball for 160 some yards on the Rams and really got down (near the goal line) but turned the ball over. You can’t turn the ball over five times, no team can. That’s what happened to them.

“They were very good on third down – 42% — and moved the ball up and down the field. They just turned it over too many times. I thought the Rams had a good plan of attack; they did some things to disturb the quarterback. But then Denver’s defense did a good job, I thought. They were put in some pretty bad positions on the field and held them to field goals.

“It’s a tough loss for them on the road, but they won’t play like that at home. That’s not a Mike Shanahan team. They’re not going to turn the ball over five times in a football game. They don’t do that two times in a row, so we can’t count on that. We’ve got to count on playing good football ourselves and really trying to control the ball offensively.

“We didn’t do a good enough job last week when you look at how we played. We had 10 second-and-10-or-more in the football game and that means you’re not doing well enough on first down. You do that all of a sudden third down becomes very, very tough.

“Field position got us last week, too, and we turned the ball over. When you go on the road you have to really guard against that, for if you don’t it becomes a passing game and, all of a sudden, the way people can blitz you now and can expose your tackles it’s going to be tough. They’re going to get to the quarterback, ala last night (Chargers vs. Raiders). That’s what happened. (Raiders) got behind and the way people can bring pressure can put the quarterback in harm’s way.

“You’ve got to stay out of the known passing downs and the way you do that is don’t be behind by two scores or more going into the fourth quarter.”

Q: Why are you bringing in Rod Gardner to play wide receiver?

EDWARDS: “First of all, we really haven’t signed anybody. He hasn’t been officially signed. But the thing I know about the player is he’s big, he’s a physical guy and has some talent. He was drafted in the first round, but for some reason he hasn’t really fit. I think he played OK in Washington for a while but then a new system came in. He’s a size, speed, physical guy. That’s what he brings.”

Q: Did you know that Willie Roaf was in town? Have you talked to him?

EDWARDS: “No, but I heard that he’s in town. He must be here for barbecue or something.”

Q: Doesn’t it surprise you that he’s here and is holding a press conference but hasn’t talked to you or Carl (Peterson) or his teammates?

EDWARDS: “I don’t know if he hasn’t talked to his teammates or Carl, but he hasn’t talked to me.”

Q: Doesn’t it surprise you?

EDWARDS: “Well, no. You say he’s going to hold a press conference? It’s not here is it?

Q: No.

EDWARDS: “It’s America and he can do what he wants. Obviously he feels he wants to talk to you folks and that’s his right. I don’t have any animosity towards Willie, I really don’t. I’m coaching the guys that are here; that’s what I have to do. Willie will speak to you folks this week. If Willie wants to come back and talk to me that’s fine; my door is always open. That’s fine.”

Q: How is Trent?

EDWARDS: “He’s feeling much better. He’s feeling a lot better and I think he’ll feel a lot better when he gets home this afternoon. We’ll see where he is from there. Obviously, he’s out this week and then we’ll see what happens after that.

“Players get hurt in this league and it’s important not to rush him back. Every organization understands that. We have to make sure Trent is OK, that’s the most important part.”

Q: Have they done all the neurological tests?

EDWARDS: “As far as I know and they’ll probably going to do some more. I’m not a doctor and they know best. I always say people should do their jobs and that’s their job and it’s their job to tell me and I’m ok. They’re sending him home and that’s a good sign ‘cause any time you send him home it’s going in the right direction.”

Q: Did he talk about when he might come back?

EDWARDS: “No, all he said was he felt sorry for me ‘cause he couldn’t finish the game for me. I told him not to worry about it. I feel sorry for you, I said, because every time I turn around something is wrong with the quarterback.

“But he’ll be fine. His spirit is good. That’s a good sign.”

Q: Did you sort of think about yourself, like, why me God?

EDWARDS: “No, but my wife said that it must have been before she married me; I must have done something bad to somebody.

“It’s just part of the game. Things happen. You can look at it any way you want. I just think it will bring us closer together as a football team. It has to. We’re going to have to play differently than we’d like to. People already assume I’ve changed this offense. I haven’t changed this offense too much at all. But if I have to that’s OK. We’ve got to do what we have to do to win games. That’s the most important thing.

“The second most important thing is to make sure Damon Huard is comfortable in what we’re asking him to do. That’s my thought right now.”

Q: Is Casey Printers going to be moved up from the practice squad?

EDWARDS: “We haven’t discussed that yet. We’ll decide as the week goes on.”

Q: What sort of things are you going to ask Damon to do?

EDWARDS: “We’ll find out Sunday. I don’t want to reveal that right now. I don’t think that’s fair to us. I don’t want to give Denver any more of an edge. They’ve already got one playing at home.”

Q: But Trent still wants to play football, right?

EDWARDS: “Oh yeah, yeah. If it was up to Trent, knowing the kind of guy he is, he’d show up tomorrow. He’d show tomorrow and go to meetings and be whispering in my ear, ‘hey, coach, I’m ready to go.’ That’s what he’d be telling me.”

Q: How do you properly defend the bootleg?

EDWARDS: “I knew that question was coming up. It looks to the spectator who views it like, why can’t they stop it. I’ll tell you why it’s so hard. A couple of things come to time.

“First of all, (Denver) runs the ball (what I) call stretch and zone. They take the runner and let’s say he starts out (points right) and the backside end has two responsibilities. He has to close the “c” gap and if he doesn’t, what they do is they cut (him) off on the backside. If he doesn’t close it and they cut the end there’s a hole between the “c” gap and guess who’s in the hole? Nobody, ‘cause your defense is flowing this way (points). So he has to make sure he closes that.

“But if he’s closing it and he’s inside he can’t see who the quarterback is giving the ball to, and if they run the boot then he has two responsibilities: he has that gap as the ball moves away and it’s a moving gap – it just doesn’t stay there. The gap actually moves. So he has to make sure that he stays outside. If he would stay outside and the offensive line goes this way (opposite) there will be a big hole there for the runner to run back and head for the goal post.

“He’s got to stop and contain. And with that being said there’s the tight end (to contend with) there and he slips, blocks down with a ‘3’ technique like it’s a run, and then he runs to the flat and there’s another guy running to the flat.

“So, it’s pretty hard to defend when you have a good running team. Denver runs the ball very, very well and what you have to do is get them out of rhythm and try to get them in downs where you can anticipate they have to throw. But they do a good job and run it on third down. They run the ball, and run the ball.

“You have to practice it and contain the quarterback and the way you contain the quarterback is don’t let him get outside of the perimeter.”

Q: What’s more important: an end with speed or an end with experience?

EDWARDS: “An end who can run because the problem you’ve got is a 4.7 (40-yards) quarterback running around the edge. If you’ve got a guy who can’t run, guess what? Who’s going to win that race? You’ve got to get a guy who can run. Tamba Hali can and Jared Allen can. We’ve got two of them. You’ve got to slow them down.”

Q: Did you figure out why the offensive line had so much trouble protecting the quarterback last week? You suffered seven quarterback sacks.

EDWARDS: “Don’t get down by two scores and at the end have to throw the ball every play. They can come get you. You’ve got to help some tackles out on the edge, too, and have a tight end stay in and shift. That’s hard to do when you’re down by two scores and you have to drop back and you just can’t just throw check-downs all day. You have to drop back and hold the ball – ala like the Raiders had to do last night – be back there seven steps, run deep patterns and get somebody open. He’s not going to hold up.

“So you don’t want to get into that game unless you’ve got great tackles, great pass blockers. You’ve got to manage the game a little better and not leave the tackles out on the edges so much. Eventually they’re going to get to the quarterback on a one-on-one match-up if you keep going like that. Then you’re in a shotgun at the end (of the game) and they just rush. You’re not going to run a draw with three minutes down by two scores left. You need big chunks and when you need big chunks you have to hold onto the ball.”

Q: Why was there miscommunication last game? Why did Mike Solari not know what down it was and where the ball was marked? Does that bother you?

EDWARDS: “No, it doesn’t bother me because a lot of things can happen in a football game. The one thing I do know is that it was the first quarter. You know what I think is crazy about this deal? Let’s say it was a pass and not a run and we didn’t make the first down. It’s not a guarantee that because of the play we ran, if it was a pass, we’d get a first down or score. People say that. You give me a play that I know that I can run right now and score a touchdown”

Q: Well, but you can try?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, but you can also try to run. You block it correctly and we might have scored a touchdown on that play. It’s no big deal.

“I’m an optimist when we play football, believe it or not. When we drove that ball down there (down to the goal line in the first quarter) I didn’t think this is the last time we were ever going to get down there. I don’t think like that. If I had thought that I would have gone for it on fourth down. I would have kept going for it if this is the last time I was going to get down there. It’s the first quarter. Are you kidding me?

Q: But it’s because you’re a conservative coach; that’s why you’re going to run the ball.

EDWARDS: “Conservative! I was conservative in this game? When people came to see the Kansas City Chiefs play (vs. Cincinnati) they saw the same offense they’ve watched for the last five years. Shifts, motions, we threw the ball more than we ran which I hate. Generally when you do that you’re going to lose the game.

“We get sacked seven times because we had to go back and throw. You know what? We did everything we did before.

“People think that I’m conservative. We ran a fake punt. That’s conservative? That’s perception, not reality. Go watch the game. People watch the game and the first play of the game was a reverse. That’s conservative. I didn’t give the ball to Larry Johnson on the first play. We ran a reverse on the first play. Are you kidding me? We were trying to score points. But we got into a game where we got behind, we turned the ball over, bad field position and when you do that against a good football team – and these guys are a good football team – they’re going to beat you. That’s what happened.

“But you’re right. I fell for the trap. I fell in love with this great offense. We scored 10 points. We scored 10 points at home! Maybe I should use three backs this week. You can take a lot of time off the clock so maybe I should do that this week.”

Q: But do you attribute the problem of running the ball to so many new faces on the offensive line?

EDWARDS: “Attribute the sacks or hurries?”

Q: Yeah.

EDWARDS: “When you’re not in rhythm and when you don’t make third downs. You get in third-and-long and second-and-longs and it’s predictable. You have to throw the ball to catch up. All those things are bad. It’s bad for any team. It’s too hard to survive and that’s what happened to us. We can’t get down like that.

“I keep going back to field position. Field position and turnovers kill you. We’ve all seen football: if your offense has the ball on the 50-yard line you only have to go 50 yards to score, on average, and the other team has to go 75-yards, so who do you think is going to win the game?

“The one that goes 50 (yards).

“You make two first downs and you’re in field goal range already. You have to go 20 yards and can kick field goals all day. If I have to go 75 yards the odds of that happening in the National Football League are very tough.

“(Cincinnati) had one long drive. They had one long drive on our defense. We had one long drive on their defense. Other than that the game was played on a short field by them and a long field by us. We turned the ball over – this great offense we’ve got.

“We scored 10 points. I’m going to say it again: we scored 10 points. So, people who say I’ve changed this offense…. I didn’t change this offense. We didn’t play well. We didn’t play good enough, OK. But I might change this offense because if we’re going to score 10 points and going to run out of quarterbacks by the end of the year I might have to change the offense. But at this point this offense has not been changed and for people who say that, well, they didn’t go to the game; they didn’t watch the game. This is the same offense. I didn’t call one play, not one play. So people who say I’m conservative that’s…

“I saw a guy last night (Marty Schottenheimer) who’s real conservative. He ran the ball 48 times and threw 11 passes and won 27 to nothing. He won the game. I coached with that guy. I know how to do that too.”

Q: What do you tell your team about playing on the road since I know you’ve been emphasizing that?

EDWARDS: “Obviously, you have to have a mindset. You can’t get behind, I know that. If you get behind you’re in trouble. You have to try and protect the ball and get the running game (going) and protect your quarterback. You have to have positive yards on first downs. We had 10 plays on first down with negative yards. That’s not good. We’ve got to make positive yards and defensively we have to stop the run. You want to go into the fourth quarter of the football game knowing you can still win the game. That’s got to be your mindset every week.”