Dick Vermeil postgame quotes

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Vermeil Postgame Quotes - Redskins
Oct 16, 2005, 4:01:45 PM



Kansas City Chiefs vs. Washington Redskins
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Postgame Quotes

VERMEIL: “We got better as we played them on defense as the game went on. We contained their running game and didn’t give up any big plays other than the one quick screen that they broke. Then we came back and executed a screen – a different kind of screen – and Priest took it all the way.

“Fortunate for us we were plus three in the takeaway margin and, especially when you’re on the road and a team turns it over three times, you very seldom win. Plus, we scored on defense. Jared Allen was very special. He has such an unbelievable motor. You expect him to run out of gas and he just keeps humming. He got the game ball. It didn’t take a very smart guy to figure that out. Jared Allen is on the verge every week. They have two fine football players playing tackles – two first round picks. You’ll see on one of (sacks) they doubled him; their H-back came over and doubled him on the outside and the tackle was on the inside and he split the double team. He’s got a little Tasmanian Devil in him. He just likes to play and when you combine that with athleticism and great work ethic you’ve got a great football player.

“We did what we had to do to win and really what it amounted to was to take the ball away. We took the ball away and won the football game. If we don’t take it away we don’t win the game, that’s all there is to it. We’re not where we ought to be on offense and sooner or later it will come. If it doesn’t come we won’t win many games like this one. But the defense is definitely getting better. They took some things away and (Washington) had to hold onto the ball and the pressure was there.

“We knew coming in here we weren’t going to go up and down the field on them.”

Q: Did you intend to go to Tony Gonzalez that much today?

VERMEIL: “Yeah, we expected to and three of the first five passes were to him. The first play of the game was to him and then we tried to hit him in the endzone for a touchdown. There were a lot of things that were designed to get to Tony, but Tony Gonzalez carries an unbelievable reputation from week to week.”

Q: Were screens in the plan today to Priest?

VERMEIL: “We were fortunate to execute a one-play screen. We’ve executed that play in the past and Larry Johnson took it a long ways against the Chargers here. They executed a quick screen on us.”

Q: How is Sammy Knight always in the position to make those kinds of plays?

VERMEIL: “Smart. Number one. He’s very, very smart. He’s totally aware of what’s going on. You don’t surprise him or fool him. The other thing if you really watch him closely he’s directing traffic a lot. He’s making sure that the young rookie linebacker is getting lined up right and knows who he’s covering. He’s doing a lot of things other than playing his own position very well.”

Q: You still gave up a lot of yards.

VERMEIL: “Find out if that’s more or less yards than they got at Denver last week. Right now I’m going to enjoy the fact that they took the ball away from them three times and knocked them around and I thought we played better in the second half in stopping the run. Portis was running pretty good earlier but he ended up with 77 yards and the last time he played against us he was at about 190, or something like that. He got tired today and got hit. But they did a good job of coverting third downs. They were leading the league before this game.”

Q: Talk about Joe Gibbs.

VERMEIL: “Joe Gibbs’ teams are always very deliberate with what they do, very deliberate and very defined, and they usually execute extremely well. They really did that in that first half and then they executed that great screen pass.”

Q: What happened with the quarterback signal to the helmet the first drive?

VERMEIL: “We heard later that that the FOX network got on our helmet frequency and screwed it up. We had planned to go no huddle but not right away.”

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Trent...


TRENT GREEN: “Anytime you get a win it’s nice. All three phases had to come up with plays to do it.”

Q: You had to run a bit today.

GREEN: “It’s a been a long time. It’s funny because a couple of the Redskins’ people that I still know came up and were kind of joking about it a little bit. I don’t want to make my living at that but it was nice I was able to come up with some plays and keep some drives going.”

Q: Was it good to have Willie Roaf back in the lineup?

GREEN: “I think we were able to do more seven-step drops and more play-action type stuff.”

Q: Can you talk about your first drive where you were in hurry-up and doing audibles?

GREEN: “Really it wasn’t intended to be a no-huddle. Our headset went down – the coach to quarterback communication. We have a no-huddle procedure and a two-minute procedure that we can do. Probably the first four or five plays that we huddled up I was just going off what personnel I had in the huddle. Once we figured out we weren’t going to get this thing fixed in the middle of the drive, then we went to a no-huddle and I was calling plays at the line of scrimmage just so the defense couldn’t substitute and gang up on us since we weren’t able to game-plan it. We were just kind of winging it. That’s really why I called the time out at the end of that drive because with the packages we have inside the five it makes it a little difficult.”

Q: What is the offense missing out there?

GREEN: “We’ve had way too many three-and-outs. We’re not really accustomed to that. We’re more accustomed to converting third downs and having more success on first and second down. Over the last few years we’ve done a really good job on not really having a lot of attempts on third down. We’ve led the league in terms of fewest third down attempts because of our success on first and second down. So, it really starts there. We’ve got to have more success in those situations. And, we’ve gotten some guys back healthy.”

Q: Talk about the quality of defenses you’ve played this year and it’s affect on your offense.

GREEN: “We’ve played several good defenses this year and that has something to do with it in terms of success or the lack of success we’re accustomed to having. Washington came into the game the fifth ranked defense. They do such a good job in multiple coverages, multiple dogs and blitzes. We knew it was going to be tough and the fact that our defense played well and created turnovers and scored helped. We were able to come up offensively with some big plays and use up some of the clock when we needed to in the fourth quarter. It was a good team win.”

Q: It’s been four weeks since you’ve won a game.

GREEN: “It’s been a real long time with the bye week and the Philadelphia game left a really bad taste in our mouth. The crowd was great today. I think it revved everybody up and the defense played very inspired and came up with big plays. It was definitely time for a win. We needed it bad.”

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Random player quotes....


DE JARED ALLEN

On preparing for today’s game against the Redskins: “I thought it was going to be a hard-nosed battle and they would be playing the run with a lot of power. They have a good offensive line and keep a lot of people in there and protect. It was really more run oriented but all week in practice we talked about the pass rush and getting off the ball. I found a snap key early and stuck with it the whole game.”

On being involved in three Chiefs takeaways today: “I don’t think I have ever caused all three turnovers in a game and got two of them. This was awesome! But what makes it better is that we won.”

On the feeling of the team late in the game: “We came out on defense and we looked at each other and said, ‘Hey, it’s 0-0 now. We’ve got one quarter to pull out a victory. If we can get it together for one quarter and get back in the end zone;’ we had a good punt and then a couple of sacks and then our offense picked it up. Our offense scored and we stopped them from scoring more than our offense scored.”

On having the defense being a key part of today’s victory: “It feels really good, especially to score on defense. When you score on defense you know you’ve done something right in the game. It feels good; we like to be out there and finish a game.”

SS SAMMY KNIGHT
On the fumble recovery for a TD: “We were just flying around and the ball just bounced our way and Jared Allen did a great job of causing a couple of fumbles for us. I was just fortunate enough to be in the right place. I waited on DJ [Derrick Johnson] to give me a couple of good blocks there and fortunately we got into the end zone.”

On the performance of the defense today: “Our theme all year has been to create turnovers. That’s what we did today was come out and create a lot of turnovers. And hopefully we can continue down that road, because we know that when we give our offense the ball they’ll make the best of the opportunity.”

On speaking to the team in yesterday’s team meeting: “I just talked about being accountable to ourselves and accountable to each other, especially when people are in the right place and trying to limit big plays. It’s a new defense and it’s still going to take time, but I think we’re improving week by week. I think that we show flashes of greatness and then we fall back. It’s just up to us to get that consistency and continue to grow.”

DE ERIC HICKS
On DE Jared Allen’s performance: “That’s an effort, right there. That’s a definite AFC Player of the week nod in my opinion. If he doesn’t get it, then he got robbed, that’s my opinion. He shut them down when we needed to and what else can you say about him? He’s a player on the rise and I guess you could say he arrived today.”

On the Redskins final drive: “They hit some underneath stuff because they were playing a three-man line and a zone behind it. I believe Dewayne [Washington] and Sammy [Knight] were over there to break up that last pass on forth down. Jared [Allen] got good pressure again and it was a total team effort. We gave up a few more rushing yards than we’d like to and then a big play up on the screen. Other than that I think we played pretty well.”

LB KAWIKA MITCHELL
On securing a victory for the first time in four weeks: “It’s nice, especially against a team that’s playing like that. They’re playing well and they’re a hard-nosed team and tough. We came in and went head-to-head with them. It’s a big win for us.”