Buns
09-18-2007, 03:26 PM
http://www.kcchiefs.com/news/2007/09/18/herm_edwards_press_conference__918/
HERM EDWARDS: “The Vikings sort of ran into a similar fate that we ran into last week. They turned it over five times, had a chance to win the game and turned it over in the Gold Zone. Detroit then went down and scored. It was a long game. I think Detroit threw 56 passes or something like that. I think they only ran the ball like ten times. They just threw the ball over the yard. I think it was about a three and a half hour game.
“What the Vikings have done the last two weeks is take the ball away. They did last year. The six games that they won last year they were in the plus category in takeaways. This year they’ve taken it away and scored three touchdowns.
“They’re very active on defense and they run the ball very well on offense, too. They take their shots up field but they methodically move down the field. When you look at the play-by-play they had the ball 13 times and the opening drive went 10 plays; they had two seven-play drives and two eight-play drives. They can move the ball. They have a way of getting into rhythm.
“Their front four is very good and they’re hard to run the ball on. They’re big inside and have good speed at linebackers.
“The way they’ve played is they haven’t allowed an opponent any scores in the first quarter. So they generally have a lead after the first quarter and scored the majority of their points in the third and fourth quarters. They make you play from behind so they can get after you with their front four.”
Q: How’s Damon Huard and Damon McIntosh?
EDWARDS: “They’re fine. Damon was sore and he is our starting quarterback. McIntosh will play. His knee just got a little sore. It got hit on about two or three times.”
Q: I talked to some of the players after the game and asked some of them if they thought they were on the same page as your offensive coordinator. Some said yes and some said no. Do you feel that everybody’s on the same page?
EDWARDS: “They understand the game plan, hopefully. If they understand the game plan they’ve got to execute the plan during the week. It’s not like they’re sitting in different rooms and don’t understand the game plan. They understand that. They had a good week of practice last week.
“What we have to do is execute. We have to execute what’s being called and then we can’t turn the ball over. We’ve done that at an alarming rate the last two games, and we had way too many penalties the last two weeks. We had nine [vs. Chicago]. We’re usually not like that. We have way too many penalties going into the third week of the season. That’s the page we need to be on if there is any page. If some guys are on their own page, that’s the wrong page to be on: how we’re committing fouls and how we’re turning the ball over.
“Some guys are frustrated. That’s going to happen because guys care. When they care some guys will say yeah and some guys will say no. I always tell players to look at yourself, how did you perform? That’s the most important thing.
“We’ll be fine. We’ll have a good plan on how to attack these guys. Their job is to go out and execute what we ask them to do.”
Q: Whether it’s offense, defense, special teams, how important is player confidence in what you’re doing?
EDWARDS: “Very. You gain confidence by being successful. That’s what gains confidence. It’s not talking about it; it’s not play calls. It’s being successful on the football field. We’ve had some success moving the ball at times. We haven’t enough success scoring. That’s the problem. If you don’t score you don’t gain a lot of confidence. We’ve been down there a couple of times and haven’t scored. We’ve turned the ball over. You can’t turn the ball over down there. All it takes is a touchdown and then you gain confidence.
“Once you gain confidence it keeps growing. It’s no different than we were last year. We were sitting in the same rut. Hadn’t scored a lot of points. Really, we scored only three more points then than we have this year.
“We’re in the same situation. We had the game at home and, all of a sudden, we got going. We scored 41 [points last year.] Who knows what’s going to happen this Sunday?
‘But the whole deal in gaining confidence is you have to do something that’s good – makes you feel like you can do good, makes you feel like you can do it. That’s the way the defense is playing right now. They’re playing with the ability that they can take the ball away. We talked about it all last week in practice. Low and behold, they took the ball away three times. You have to build it but then you have to go execute it on the field.”
Q: Do you feel as if their confidence is wavering?
EDWARDS: “No, I just think they need some success like anybody else. It’s like anybody in life. If you’re not having something good happen to you, before you know it you think the dark cloud is hanging over your head. It’s always raining on me. But it’s not raining on you, you just have to go and make something happen and get it away from you. We just need to make some plays. We have enough players over there to make those plays. I anticipate we’ll have to make some this week.”
Q: Are they playing scared? I mean, you’re 0-2 and you have your home opener this week.
EDWARDS: “We were the same way last year at 0-2.”
Q: But don’t you think it’s different than last year because you lost your starting quarterback and this year you didn’t?
EDWARDS: “We have a new starting quarterback that hadn’t started but two games in five years until last year. The thing with the offense is when you look at our offense a lot of the guys hadn’t played together all pre-season. You’ve got a new left tackle, a new right tackle, you moved the right tackle to guard. Those guys have to gel. The quarterback didn’t play a whole lot in the preseason, the running back wasn’t here, the tight end didn’t play a lot, the starting wide receiver is out and you’re basically playing with two young receivers. They’ve got to gel and it’ll take some time. That’s all it takes.
“But last week at times we moved the ball against a good defense. They did and got into position but didn’t score. We turned the ball over and you can’t turn it over.”
Q: What was the mindset of the team last year at 0-2 going into that San Francisco game?
EDWARDS: “It’s too early, too many different players on the team. But they were anxious, anxious about playing at home obviously. It’s like anything else: you’re playing a younger team and you’re playing them at home, but you need to make something happen and we did. We got off to an early start; we got an early lead. The last two games we’ve been behind every time at halftime. So you’re digging yourself out of a hole.
“This game last year we got up on San Francisco and were up, I believe, 24-0 at half. We got going and kept going.”
Q: How appreciable a factor is playing at home to your successful play?
EDWARDS: “Very, especially here. You have a home field advantage if you choose to take it, especially if you can get up and get the crowd involved in the game. It’s very difficult for them on offense to go back and throw the ball. It’s very, very loud and it’s hard. It gives you a step and a half as a defensive player. It’s loud and you can’t hear the snap count.
“Our players play with a lot of energy in this stadium. We’ve got a lot of new players that are going to play opening day in Arrowhead for the first time.
“But we have to do something. We’ve got to do something offensively to get going. We’ve got to make a play or two to get going. We haven’t done that and it’s been our struggle thus far.”
Q: People are questioning Mike Solari’s decision-making, so as you grade your coaches how’s he done?
EDWARDS: “Mike is a second-year coordinator. He’s like any other second-year coordinator who’s never done the job. They learn as they go. That’s the process of giving guys opportunities. It’s no different than a young player. It’s no different when I was a young head coach. You learn as you go and that’s part of growth.
“I’ve witnessed that with a lot of coordinators on both sides of the football. It’s not as easy as people anticipate. It’s always easy after the game: you should have called this and called that. Then if you run the ball and don’t make it, people say, ‘why did you do that? You should have thrown a pass.’ That’s ball and that’s fans being disappointed. But it’s part of a process.
“But that being said, Mike is going to get better. It’s his second year doing this and he inherited really kind of an offense that’s now in flux. He’s got a lot of new players playing over there. Even though there are veterans on the offensive line they haven’t played together. The only two guys who have played together on that offensive line for the last five years basically are the center and the left guard. Everyone else is new this year. We moved the right tackle to guard. We’ve got a new right tackle who played a little left tackle last year a little bit. We’ve got a new left tackle, who played some time [in the pre-season]; we’ve got Will Svitek at left tackle sometimes in the game. There have been a lot of changes.
“But, hey, when you lose you magnify everything. Everything gets magnified and you know that. I’ve been in this league long enough to know it gets magnified. They want you to throw the baby out with the bath water. But we’re not going to do that.
“This team is 0-2 right now. There are 10 teams that are 0-2 and last year there were 11 teams that were 0-2. Of the ten teams that are 0-2, five of them were playoff teams last year. We happen to be one of those five. But it’s no need to panic. We’re going to keep doing what we have to do and we’ll get better. We’ll get the offense going and, hopefully, a month from now we won’t be discussing this. We’ll be discussing, if you win this one and….”
Q: With Eddie Kennison out what did you see from your young receivers Dwayne Bowe and Jeff Webb?
EDWARDS: “I’ll tell you what: there are a lot of oooh’s and ah’s when they play. That’s what you get. The one [catch] that Bowe makes he basically ran a smash route. He saw the quarterback running outside the pocket so he went to recess like in the school yard. He sort of spun and ran into the end zone. Damon threw the ball to Tony [Gonzalez] and he had no idea that Bowe was back there. Tony was probably thinking that two more catches and he could break the record. He was figuring I’ve got one left and here comes this guy flying out. [Bowe] made a great play.
“That’s the kind of he is. Last week people were talking he was no good after one game. All of a sudden in this game he looked pretty good to me. He ran across the field on the other one [in the end zone] and Webb was in motion and they called it back. But he made a great catch with two guys on him. That’s what we saw in college. He’s a physical guy that throws his body around; he can make catches with people on top of him.
“Webb caught a couple of slants, dropped one. He made a great catch on the long one from Brodie down the rail. He dove out and made that one.
“They do some things that make you scratch your head and say why did they do that? Then they make some catches that make you go, ‘wow, how did they do that?’ We have to live with that and that’s good. Those young guys bring energy. They just want to play. That’s a great thing when you put young players in there. Their eyes get real big but every time they play they get a little bit better.”
Q: One of the concerns some draft analysts had about Bowe coming out of LSU was that he and his QB Russell tended to improvise on their own. Was that a concern coming in or is it a risk-reward thing you can live with?
EDWARDS: “Tell you what with schoolyard, if the quarterback scrambles it’s OK. Now, he has to be more disciplined like a lot of those college guys. A lot of those college guys are not real disciplined route runners. A lot of those quarterbacks when they get into trouble have a certain guy they like to throw to. If I’m a quarterback on this team and I’m scrambling I know I want to know where number 82’s at, ‘cause if I throw it up to him he’s probably going to jump up and catch it.
“He’s going to be more disciplined but he has a little bit of that to him where he’ll…that’s a communication between the quarterback and the receiver. There’s one guy up in New England right now who’s lighting them up. They said he had a lot of schoolyard in him, too. They said he was done. If you think you’re even with him he throws his hand up and they throw it down there and he jumps up and catches it even though he’s covered. We have those types of players and you have to give them the chance to make the play. Sometimes when guys are covered they’re really not covered because the guy has the ability to jump and catch the ball. You want guys like that.”
Q: What did you see from Adrian Peterson who’s put up some good numbers the first two weeks?
EDWARDS: “Very, very fast. Kind of what you saw in college. We saw him a little bit in training camp at the scrimmage in River Falls. The other one he didn’t participate. I remember the one play they put him in there and they gave him a little toss to our right and I thought we had an angle on the guy and the next thing I know he’s running down the sideline.
“They have a good running attack. They run the ball for an average of about 130 yards a game, so they run it very well.”
Q: There are so many turnovers in the NFL and you see a receiver or back fighting for the extra yardage and the ball is pried loose with two or three guys on him. Can you coach a guy to just wrap up and fall down without taking away his competitive drive?
EDWARDS: “I think what you have to understand is the situation in the game. That’s what you always try to preach to your players: know where you’re at in the game and know who you’re playing against. Those two things are a factor.
“But when you’re fighting the clock and you know it’s against you and you need time, the main thing you always try to tell those guys is when a guy tackles you don’t struggle for extra yards because the longer you struggle and don’t go down you’re playing to the defense. That’s what we tell the defense. If a guy is struggling great, go after the ball, but if there are two or three guys on top of you don’t get up real fast. Let the clock run. Situations in the game kind of dictate that.”
Q: Larry Johnson has two games under his belt and it’s a home game, so is he going to get the ball more this week? Is he going to have more than 15 touches?
EDWARDS: “I spoke to him last night on a radio show. He told me he wanted 40.”
Q: And?
EDWARDS: “I said in one game. I went, ‘ok, sounds like a good number to me.’ So, if we run it 40 then we only have to pass it 20 times. That’s probably right. He won’t carry it 40, I don’t think.”
Q: But if it’s third-and-one….
EDWARDS: “Hey, if he has 40 carries we might run a quarterback sneak.”
Q: What are you thoughts on the fade pass?
EDWARDS: “Who’s the guy? Who are you throwing it to? I always believed the bigger guy has the better chance to make the contested throw. I played corner and I always had problems with big guys. I knew that the bigger guy – whether Ahmad Rashaad or Harold Carmichael, the latter you had no shot ‘cause he was 6'7" – gives him a better advantage.
“That doesn’t mean the smaller guy can’t beat you. But those are match-up things. You always try to match-up the receiver to the corner. The first thing you study the corner on is what type of anticipation skills does he have: does he play the ball? Lots of guys don’t play the ball, especially when their backs are turned to the ball and it’s man-to-man. Then sometimes it doesn’t matter who the guy is. You want to throw the fade because two things are going to happen: he’s going to catch it or you’re going to get pass interference.”
Q: With Bowe being a bigger guy does that give him more snaps when Eddie Kennison comes back?
EDWARDS: “Oh, he’s going to play.”
Q: If Eddie Kennison comes back might he be your starter anyway?
EDWARDS: “Oh, we move Bowe to ‘X’ [position]. Why not? They’re all going to play. All four of those [receivers] are going to play. Three played last week and it was a good rotation. When Eddie comes back it’ll be a similar rotation. On the sheet you have to put who’s the starters, but in the end it’s how many times are they playing. We’ll get them mixed in the game.
“Webb and Bowe are two big guys who can make some plays. They can go in and catch the slant because they’re big. Webb is a real long-arm guy who can get to some balls out there that other guys can’t get to because of his ability to stretch out and catch the football. They’re big guys and they have to play for us. They need to be in the system and we’ve done some things in the system to ease their mental load so they can line up and play for us fast.”
Q: Are you going to leave Drummond back on kickoffs and punt returns?
EDWARDS: “Yeah, I think it’s kind of funny. I know where we’re going with this. You see the best guy in the league run punts and kickoffs back [Hestor] and so you compare him to our guy and you say, wow. That guy is the best and everyone doesn’t have that guy. But our guy is pretty good. He’s a good solid guy and plays on all teams. He missed a tackle against one of the best in the league. But last week he makes a great tackle.
“Drummond’s fine but you’re comparing him to Hestor. He’s doing good. He’s been a good solid return guy. He’s got a lot of young players playing on [special] teams that have to help him and block better for him, too.”
Q: Will Jared Allen start this week?
EDWARDS: “Will he start? That’s a good question. I don’t know but he’s going to play. He probably will start but we’ll have to give him a blow, bring him along a little slow. He’s excited and been in all the meetings and that’s good to have another good player back.”
Q: Is he one of those guys you will have to say calm down?
EDWARDS: “He’ll be off-sides the first third down. I have a bet with him. He’ll be off-sides and lining up in the backfield. He will be excited.”
Q: How tough is it today on a coach when a team has a lot of talent and loses. In San Diego, Norv Turner is already catching heat for losing to New England.
EDWARDS: “It’s hard. Even though you have the same problem when you become the coach there is a way you do things that is a bit different than the other guy. It doesn’t mean to say the other guy is wrong; you just have a certain style.
“The problem is they have a good team; they’re expected to be in the Super Bowl without playing the season. They go to a difficult place to play against a good football team. And they lose. Some people mixed up the script and think they win because of cameras. They win because they’ve got good players and they’ve got a Hall of Fame football coach. They’ve won three Super Bowls. Let’s not get that thing twisted.
“They’ve lost one game. That happens in this league. You’re going to lose some games. [San Diego’s] a good football team and they’ll be standing around somewhere in the playoffs when the playoffs start.”
HERM EDWARDS: “The Vikings sort of ran into a similar fate that we ran into last week. They turned it over five times, had a chance to win the game and turned it over in the Gold Zone. Detroit then went down and scored. It was a long game. I think Detroit threw 56 passes or something like that. I think they only ran the ball like ten times. They just threw the ball over the yard. I think it was about a three and a half hour game.
“What the Vikings have done the last two weeks is take the ball away. They did last year. The six games that they won last year they were in the plus category in takeaways. This year they’ve taken it away and scored three touchdowns.
“They’re very active on defense and they run the ball very well on offense, too. They take their shots up field but they methodically move down the field. When you look at the play-by-play they had the ball 13 times and the opening drive went 10 plays; they had two seven-play drives and two eight-play drives. They can move the ball. They have a way of getting into rhythm.
“Their front four is very good and they’re hard to run the ball on. They’re big inside and have good speed at linebackers.
“The way they’ve played is they haven’t allowed an opponent any scores in the first quarter. So they generally have a lead after the first quarter and scored the majority of their points in the third and fourth quarters. They make you play from behind so they can get after you with their front four.”
Q: How’s Damon Huard and Damon McIntosh?
EDWARDS: “They’re fine. Damon was sore and he is our starting quarterback. McIntosh will play. His knee just got a little sore. It got hit on about two or three times.”
Q: I talked to some of the players after the game and asked some of them if they thought they were on the same page as your offensive coordinator. Some said yes and some said no. Do you feel that everybody’s on the same page?
EDWARDS: “They understand the game plan, hopefully. If they understand the game plan they’ve got to execute the plan during the week. It’s not like they’re sitting in different rooms and don’t understand the game plan. They understand that. They had a good week of practice last week.
“What we have to do is execute. We have to execute what’s being called and then we can’t turn the ball over. We’ve done that at an alarming rate the last two games, and we had way too many penalties the last two weeks. We had nine [vs. Chicago]. We’re usually not like that. We have way too many penalties going into the third week of the season. That’s the page we need to be on if there is any page. If some guys are on their own page, that’s the wrong page to be on: how we’re committing fouls and how we’re turning the ball over.
“Some guys are frustrated. That’s going to happen because guys care. When they care some guys will say yeah and some guys will say no. I always tell players to look at yourself, how did you perform? That’s the most important thing.
“We’ll be fine. We’ll have a good plan on how to attack these guys. Their job is to go out and execute what we ask them to do.”
Q: Whether it’s offense, defense, special teams, how important is player confidence in what you’re doing?
EDWARDS: “Very. You gain confidence by being successful. That’s what gains confidence. It’s not talking about it; it’s not play calls. It’s being successful on the football field. We’ve had some success moving the ball at times. We haven’t enough success scoring. That’s the problem. If you don’t score you don’t gain a lot of confidence. We’ve been down there a couple of times and haven’t scored. We’ve turned the ball over. You can’t turn the ball over down there. All it takes is a touchdown and then you gain confidence.
“Once you gain confidence it keeps growing. It’s no different than we were last year. We were sitting in the same rut. Hadn’t scored a lot of points. Really, we scored only three more points then than we have this year.
“We’re in the same situation. We had the game at home and, all of a sudden, we got going. We scored 41 [points last year.] Who knows what’s going to happen this Sunday?
‘But the whole deal in gaining confidence is you have to do something that’s good – makes you feel like you can do good, makes you feel like you can do it. That’s the way the defense is playing right now. They’re playing with the ability that they can take the ball away. We talked about it all last week in practice. Low and behold, they took the ball away three times. You have to build it but then you have to go execute it on the field.”
Q: Do you feel as if their confidence is wavering?
EDWARDS: “No, I just think they need some success like anybody else. It’s like anybody in life. If you’re not having something good happen to you, before you know it you think the dark cloud is hanging over your head. It’s always raining on me. But it’s not raining on you, you just have to go and make something happen and get it away from you. We just need to make some plays. We have enough players over there to make those plays. I anticipate we’ll have to make some this week.”
Q: Are they playing scared? I mean, you’re 0-2 and you have your home opener this week.
EDWARDS: “We were the same way last year at 0-2.”
Q: But don’t you think it’s different than last year because you lost your starting quarterback and this year you didn’t?
EDWARDS: “We have a new starting quarterback that hadn’t started but two games in five years until last year. The thing with the offense is when you look at our offense a lot of the guys hadn’t played together all pre-season. You’ve got a new left tackle, a new right tackle, you moved the right tackle to guard. Those guys have to gel. The quarterback didn’t play a whole lot in the preseason, the running back wasn’t here, the tight end didn’t play a lot, the starting wide receiver is out and you’re basically playing with two young receivers. They’ve got to gel and it’ll take some time. That’s all it takes.
“But last week at times we moved the ball against a good defense. They did and got into position but didn’t score. We turned the ball over and you can’t turn it over.”
Q: What was the mindset of the team last year at 0-2 going into that San Francisco game?
EDWARDS: “It’s too early, too many different players on the team. But they were anxious, anxious about playing at home obviously. It’s like anything else: you’re playing a younger team and you’re playing them at home, but you need to make something happen and we did. We got off to an early start; we got an early lead. The last two games we’ve been behind every time at halftime. So you’re digging yourself out of a hole.
“This game last year we got up on San Francisco and were up, I believe, 24-0 at half. We got going and kept going.”
Q: How appreciable a factor is playing at home to your successful play?
EDWARDS: “Very, especially here. You have a home field advantage if you choose to take it, especially if you can get up and get the crowd involved in the game. It’s very difficult for them on offense to go back and throw the ball. It’s very, very loud and it’s hard. It gives you a step and a half as a defensive player. It’s loud and you can’t hear the snap count.
“Our players play with a lot of energy in this stadium. We’ve got a lot of new players that are going to play opening day in Arrowhead for the first time.
“But we have to do something. We’ve got to do something offensively to get going. We’ve got to make a play or two to get going. We haven’t done that and it’s been our struggle thus far.”
Q: People are questioning Mike Solari’s decision-making, so as you grade your coaches how’s he done?
EDWARDS: “Mike is a second-year coordinator. He’s like any other second-year coordinator who’s never done the job. They learn as they go. That’s the process of giving guys opportunities. It’s no different than a young player. It’s no different when I was a young head coach. You learn as you go and that’s part of growth.
“I’ve witnessed that with a lot of coordinators on both sides of the football. It’s not as easy as people anticipate. It’s always easy after the game: you should have called this and called that. Then if you run the ball and don’t make it, people say, ‘why did you do that? You should have thrown a pass.’ That’s ball and that’s fans being disappointed. But it’s part of a process.
“But that being said, Mike is going to get better. It’s his second year doing this and he inherited really kind of an offense that’s now in flux. He’s got a lot of new players playing over there. Even though there are veterans on the offensive line they haven’t played together. The only two guys who have played together on that offensive line for the last five years basically are the center and the left guard. Everyone else is new this year. We moved the right tackle to guard. We’ve got a new right tackle who played a little left tackle last year a little bit. We’ve got a new left tackle, who played some time [in the pre-season]; we’ve got Will Svitek at left tackle sometimes in the game. There have been a lot of changes.
“But, hey, when you lose you magnify everything. Everything gets magnified and you know that. I’ve been in this league long enough to know it gets magnified. They want you to throw the baby out with the bath water. But we’re not going to do that.
“This team is 0-2 right now. There are 10 teams that are 0-2 and last year there were 11 teams that were 0-2. Of the ten teams that are 0-2, five of them were playoff teams last year. We happen to be one of those five. But it’s no need to panic. We’re going to keep doing what we have to do and we’ll get better. We’ll get the offense going and, hopefully, a month from now we won’t be discussing this. We’ll be discussing, if you win this one and….”
Q: With Eddie Kennison out what did you see from your young receivers Dwayne Bowe and Jeff Webb?
EDWARDS: “I’ll tell you what: there are a lot of oooh’s and ah’s when they play. That’s what you get. The one [catch] that Bowe makes he basically ran a smash route. He saw the quarterback running outside the pocket so he went to recess like in the school yard. He sort of spun and ran into the end zone. Damon threw the ball to Tony [Gonzalez] and he had no idea that Bowe was back there. Tony was probably thinking that two more catches and he could break the record. He was figuring I’ve got one left and here comes this guy flying out. [Bowe] made a great play.
“That’s the kind of he is. Last week people were talking he was no good after one game. All of a sudden in this game he looked pretty good to me. He ran across the field on the other one [in the end zone] and Webb was in motion and they called it back. But he made a great catch with two guys on him. That’s what we saw in college. He’s a physical guy that throws his body around; he can make catches with people on top of him.
“Webb caught a couple of slants, dropped one. He made a great catch on the long one from Brodie down the rail. He dove out and made that one.
“They do some things that make you scratch your head and say why did they do that? Then they make some catches that make you go, ‘wow, how did they do that?’ We have to live with that and that’s good. Those young guys bring energy. They just want to play. That’s a great thing when you put young players in there. Their eyes get real big but every time they play they get a little bit better.”
Q: One of the concerns some draft analysts had about Bowe coming out of LSU was that he and his QB Russell tended to improvise on their own. Was that a concern coming in or is it a risk-reward thing you can live with?
EDWARDS: “Tell you what with schoolyard, if the quarterback scrambles it’s OK. Now, he has to be more disciplined like a lot of those college guys. A lot of those college guys are not real disciplined route runners. A lot of those quarterbacks when they get into trouble have a certain guy they like to throw to. If I’m a quarterback on this team and I’m scrambling I know I want to know where number 82’s at, ‘cause if I throw it up to him he’s probably going to jump up and catch it.
“He’s going to be more disciplined but he has a little bit of that to him where he’ll…that’s a communication between the quarterback and the receiver. There’s one guy up in New England right now who’s lighting them up. They said he had a lot of schoolyard in him, too. They said he was done. If you think you’re even with him he throws his hand up and they throw it down there and he jumps up and catches it even though he’s covered. We have those types of players and you have to give them the chance to make the play. Sometimes when guys are covered they’re really not covered because the guy has the ability to jump and catch the ball. You want guys like that.”
Q: What did you see from Adrian Peterson who’s put up some good numbers the first two weeks?
EDWARDS: “Very, very fast. Kind of what you saw in college. We saw him a little bit in training camp at the scrimmage in River Falls. The other one he didn’t participate. I remember the one play they put him in there and they gave him a little toss to our right and I thought we had an angle on the guy and the next thing I know he’s running down the sideline.
“They have a good running attack. They run the ball for an average of about 130 yards a game, so they run it very well.”
Q: There are so many turnovers in the NFL and you see a receiver or back fighting for the extra yardage and the ball is pried loose with two or three guys on him. Can you coach a guy to just wrap up and fall down without taking away his competitive drive?
EDWARDS: “I think what you have to understand is the situation in the game. That’s what you always try to preach to your players: know where you’re at in the game and know who you’re playing against. Those two things are a factor.
“But when you’re fighting the clock and you know it’s against you and you need time, the main thing you always try to tell those guys is when a guy tackles you don’t struggle for extra yards because the longer you struggle and don’t go down you’re playing to the defense. That’s what we tell the defense. If a guy is struggling great, go after the ball, but if there are two or three guys on top of you don’t get up real fast. Let the clock run. Situations in the game kind of dictate that.”
Q: Larry Johnson has two games under his belt and it’s a home game, so is he going to get the ball more this week? Is he going to have more than 15 touches?
EDWARDS: “I spoke to him last night on a radio show. He told me he wanted 40.”
Q: And?
EDWARDS: “I said in one game. I went, ‘ok, sounds like a good number to me.’ So, if we run it 40 then we only have to pass it 20 times. That’s probably right. He won’t carry it 40, I don’t think.”
Q: But if it’s third-and-one….
EDWARDS: “Hey, if he has 40 carries we might run a quarterback sneak.”
Q: What are you thoughts on the fade pass?
EDWARDS: “Who’s the guy? Who are you throwing it to? I always believed the bigger guy has the better chance to make the contested throw. I played corner and I always had problems with big guys. I knew that the bigger guy – whether Ahmad Rashaad or Harold Carmichael, the latter you had no shot ‘cause he was 6'7" – gives him a better advantage.
“That doesn’t mean the smaller guy can’t beat you. But those are match-up things. You always try to match-up the receiver to the corner. The first thing you study the corner on is what type of anticipation skills does he have: does he play the ball? Lots of guys don’t play the ball, especially when their backs are turned to the ball and it’s man-to-man. Then sometimes it doesn’t matter who the guy is. You want to throw the fade because two things are going to happen: he’s going to catch it or you’re going to get pass interference.”
Q: With Bowe being a bigger guy does that give him more snaps when Eddie Kennison comes back?
EDWARDS: “Oh, he’s going to play.”
Q: If Eddie Kennison comes back might he be your starter anyway?
EDWARDS: “Oh, we move Bowe to ‘X’ [position]. Why not? They’re all going to play. All four of those [receivers] are going to play. Three played last week and it was a good rotation. When Eddie comes back it’ll be a similar rotation. On the sheet you have to put who’s the starters, but in the end it’s how many times are they playing. We’ll get them mixed in the game.
“Webb and Bowe are two big guys who can make some plays. They can go in and catch the slant because they’re big. Webb is a real long-arm guy who can get to some balls out there that other guys can’t get to because of his ability to stretch out and catch the football. They’re big guys and they have to play for us. They need to be in the system and we’ve done some things in the system to ease their mental load so they can line up and play for us fast.”
Q: Are you going to leave Drummond back on kickoffs and punt returns?
EDWARDS: “Yeah, I think it’s kind of funny. I know where we’re going with this. You see the best guy in the league run punts and kickoffs back [Hestor] and so you compare him to our guy and you say, wow. That guy is the best and everyone doesn’t have that guy. But our guy is pretty good. He’s a good solid guy and plays on all teams. He missed a tackle against one of the best in the league. But last week he makes a great tackle.
“Drummond’s fine but you’re comparing him to Hestor. He’s doing good. He’s been a good solid return guy. He’s got a lot of young players playing on [special] teams that have to help him and block better for him, too.”
Q: Will Jared Allen start this week?
EDWARDS: “Will he start? That’s a good question. I don’t know but he’s going to play. He probably will start but we’ll have to give him a blow, bring him along a little slow. He’s excited and been in all the meetings and that’s good to have another good player back.”
Q: Is he one of those guys you will have to say calm down?
EDWARDS: “He’ll be off-sides the first third down. I have a bet with him. He’ll be off-sides and lining up in the backfield. He will be excited.”
Q: How tough is it today on a coach when a team has a lot of talent and loses. In San Diego, Norv Turner is already catching heat for losing to New England.
EDWARDS: “It’s hard. Even though you have the same problem when you become the coach there is a way you do things that is a bit different than the other guy. It doesn’t mean to say the other guy is wrong; you just have a certain style.
“The problem is they have a good team; they’re expected to be in the Super Bowl without playing the season. They go to a difficult place to play against a good football team. And they lose. Some people mixed up the script and think they win because of cameras. They win because they’ve got good players and they’ve got a Hall of Fame football coach. They’ve won three Super Bowls. Let’s not get that thing twisted.
“They’ve lost one game. That happens in this league. You’re going to lose some games. [San Diego’s] a good football team and they’ll be standing around somewhere in the playoffs when the playoffs start.”