LaChapelle
09-28-2009, 05:31 PM
Todd Haley Press Conference - 9/28
Sep 28, 2009, 6:16:05 PM
(TW) http://www.kcchiefs.com/news/2009/09/28/todd_haley_press_conference__928/
[I'd get lost in the other thread for those who would like to read it]
TODD HALEY: “Good afternoon. As I said yesterday, it was a disappointing outcome to the game - disappointed with all phases of our operation yesterday. I had great optimism after last week’s practices that going into that game we would be in a competitive game with a chance to win. It didn’t happen that way.
“I think it’s pretty clear that our margin of error is not real great right at this time, so we must as a team and as a coaching staff really do everything right – all the little things including technique, decision making – especially against a team like Philadelphia. We weren’t and that’s why we saw the result that we had.”
Q: What was the most disappointing aspect of the performance in your mind?
HALEY: “When you go into a situation like that and you know that it’s going to be a daunting task and you feel like you’re ready and then you play like that. That’s the most disappointing thing to me.”
Q: So what do you do different this week?
HALEY: “I don’t think you do a whole lot different. I think that we have to go back to work. I feel like we’re working hard and we have to stay the course. We’ve got to continue to coach discipline. We just have to get better at the little things. When your margin of error is small you can’t align a yard out of place, or allow a big play to happen. We need to have all those little things coached hard, coached correctly and then we need to execute. I don’t think we do a whole lot different other than focus and not let anything slide. That’s the direction.”
Q: Is it reasonable to think that you guys will get to a point where you will have a margin of error or are you going to have to learn to live like this?
HALEY: “I don’t know if our margin of error is going to change a whole bunch this year. I really don’t. Although we’ll keep working at getting this team roster-wise as good as we can get it I don’t think our margin of error will change a whole bunch. So, I think we’ll have to play a certain type of football and that’s going to have to be on point all the time.”
Q: Is that because there is so much new here and you’re trying to fit so many new components together or because Philadelphia has better players?
HALEY: “I think it’s a little bit of everything, a little bit of everything. But it’s our intention is to win games. Right now, we’re 0-3 in the first quarter of the season and we’ve got to do everything we can to try to get a win in this quarter.”
Q: Pass interference was a favorite call of the officiating crew that got you yesterday. Looking at the tape was it technique or a poor call?
HALEY: “Little bit of both but I won’t get into the calls. We have to coach the penalties. The penalties fall on me and we can’t have 10 penalties in a game. We just can’t do it. We have to coach them and make them more aware than we have to this point obviously. We had two first-and-20’s; I believe we had six second-and-12 plusses, five third-and-12 plusses. You know what we were on third down but that’s all a result of what we did on those other downs. Penalties were a big part of it and we’re not going to have much of a chance if we do that.”
Q: When you say margin of error you mean your team; you have to be very good to have a chance to succeed, right?
HALEY: “I think we have to do it right in all phases including coaching. If we’re not then what you saw yesterday is what we’ll get. That’s the way it is right now. That in no way means we don’t have a chance. I’ll say it again and I’ll say it to you straight up: I went into that game believing that we could win that game. After watching the (game) tape in all phases the game should have been competitive. It should have been competitive but it wasn’t.”
Q: Was there a moment in the game where you stopped thinking you couldn’t score and adjusted how you called the game? You said yesterday how you wanted to identify running the football. Where do you draw the line between winnable game and probably not going to win and look to establish something else? How do you do that in a game that counts?
HALEY: “I just felt in my gut yesterday. What we did in the second half all it took was two plays, an interception for a touchdown or a blocked punt. You don’t know what that play is going to be. One of those runs could have broken out. We had some opportunities for big play.
“It was in my gut because of the way we performed early in that game and ran for three yards. I got to halftime and I thought to myself, what are we doing? We need to make some progress in this game. I just felt like our best chance offensively to make progress was to figure out what we wanted to do.”
Q: So how would you respond to some people who said today that it seemed like midway through the third quarter the team was just trying to get home, it couldn’t win?
HALEY: “I would say that was not the case. We ran a fake punt, we ran an end-around; we had two other calls that we had to check out of. In no way was it a wave the white flag.
“It was, in my gut and as the head coach that something had to be done to benefit this team. Not in that particular game but to benefit this team as we go forward, to establish our mindset and to lay it out there. Let’s see who’s got what. I think you started to see some signs of guys deciding whether they were going to lay down or they were going to fight. I saw some positive signs despite the outcome of the game.”
Q: Every day you say you battle with your emotions. But why do you feel that you are the head coach that you need to mute that a little bit?
HALEY: “I think I said it yesterday: as the leader of this team I think you need to have some composure. If you’re the captain of the ship and you’re running around in a storm and a rogue wave is about to hit you and you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off you’re probably not doing the best thing for your crew.
“I try to use that emotion to help me and help us. At the same time, I think as the leader of the team I’ve got to be in control so I can make the right decisions at the right times.”
Q: Do you regret anything you said or did in the first couple of games?
HALEY: “No, there isn’t anything where I said, ‘that was probably stupid, Todd.’
Q: I asked you a couple of weeks ago if you had the personnel on the offensive line to protect your quarterback and run the ball.
HALEY: “I think we do. We just have to do it right. When I watched the tape last night on the plane and again today with the coaches and again with the players – four times through – offensively if the guys had just done their jobs with technique I think it would have been a little different outcome. Now, whether we had won the game or not I don’t know, but offensively it would have been a different outcome. That tells me if we just do it the right way and are physical we can be good enough up front to compete and win.”
Q: A lot of the guys on your roster now up front weren’t here at the beginning of the off-season. If you could go back would you change any of that?
HALEY: “No, I wouldn’t change anything. Like I said, Scott, myself and the staff will continue to try to get better, try to get better personnel-wise and try to get better in every phase and when there is an opportunity to do that we’ve done that.”
Q: Second half you had Belcher out there with the base defense? Will that continue?
HALEY: “Yeah, I think you’ll see more of 59. I think he’s a guy that’s impressed us all from early on and I think we’ve got a potential player there. Whenever you’ve got a guy who can run and hit and shows up around the football and has done a good job on special teams it helps. That’s a guy that needs to be on the field. It was his first real action. He gives us some speed and is a run-and-hit guy.”
Q: You also made a change with your nickel back by using Washington. Will that continue?
HALEY: “We’ll see. We were running out of bodies at one point. When you’re not seeing what you want to see I’m not going to be afraid to change any of those guys. They know it and it’s pretty clear we’ve got to get better and it’s not going to stay the same. It’s not going to stay the same. Whatever it is, that won’t be accepted. In my mind it can’t stay the same if it’s not going the way you want it to.”
Q: I don’t know what you’re staff totals were, but the press box totals after the game had nothing for Jackson, no tackles, assists, pressures. Same with Dorsey. Was that close to what kind of game they had?
HALEY: “Yeah, I think when you give up the kind of yardage we gave up it would be hard to find any guys who gave you a chance to win, or their play did.”
Q: Looks like one guy who did get something done was Gilberry?
HALEY: “He made a couple of effort plays. He didn’t have very many plays but I think he showed up, but I like some things that Wallace has done. He’s a high-effort player that seems to play hard and likes it. I would say for the amount of plays that he played he showed up.”
Q: How would you evaluate Tyson Jackson so far?
HALEY: “With that particular position it is difficult. I’m not making excuses for the player because he needs to be better and we need to get him better. He can’t take steps back. That’s what I would say. I just want to see steady improvement and not the yo-yo stuff. He’s working hard and is into it but it is a big job, a big job.”
Q: When you draft that position you know it will take time. Is that third game better as a rookie or….?
HALEY: “Incrementally. Small increments knowing what we know about that position. It’s a non-glory position as it is. You just want to see steady improvement and this was probably just a little step back for him.”
Q: What happened when you had such a good week of practice and what happened in the game?
HALEY: “Well, if I had that answer I could have stopped it. In pre-game I was even a little worried because of the overall mood and the way some guys were acting. We’ve got to get back to work and trust the things that we’re doing will get us better. We’re still in the first quarter of the season and 0-3 and two of our losses are to teams that were in the championship game last year and they could very well be in those same positions last year. Those are games we’ve got to compete and win in. We’re not going to accept the result, no way am I saying that. But the reality is we’re 0-3 and we lost to two teams that are pretty good and we’re going to play another pretty good one this week. We’ve got to do everything in our power as a coaching staff to clean up those areas that are keeping us from winning or even competing yesterday.”
Q: Was Bowe a close decision yesterday to play or not to play?
HALEY: “No, not this week. As it turned out anytime you’re talking about a hamstring I think on a skill position you’ve got to error on the side of caution. Those can turn out to be a long term thing if you’re not careful.”
Q: Was the weather a factor?
HALEY: “No, just the progress we wanted him to make he didn’t make.”
Q: Would you expect Bowe and Derrick Johnson to practice Wednesday?
HALEY: “I’m hopeful - again, Derrick a little more hopeful. Trying to be smart with the other guy early in the week.”
Q: When you said in pre-game you were a little nervous. Can you can expand on that?
HALEY: “Just having coached and been out in that situation a bunch as a position coach and coordinator, that’s a game us coaches play all the time: what do you think? We talk to each other. What are they acting like, what’s your feel? Yesterday in particular it wasn’t a very good feel that I had of what I was seeing. In fact, in seven-on-seven which is a throwing drill I ended up getting ticked off and handing the ball off about eight straight times. The energy, the movement was bothersome to me.”
Q: Is the problem with penalties a symptom of a bigger issue with personnel or just a team going through some on-field discipline problems?
HALEY: “I don’t know if it’s either. This is something we stress and talk about all the time and coach hard. It’s one of the areas I was pretty pleased with throughout the pre-season and our first game. Generally those things don’t change dramatically. If you’re low penalties through the pre-season and the first game you don’t expect to swing like this normally. To come into the second game and all of a sudden technique breaks down and we start making poor decisions it’s something we have to figure out how to get back to where we were.”
Q: Do you think Brandon Albert has regressed from what you’ve seen of him the first three games?
HALEY: “I don’t know if I’d go that far. I would say that yesterday was not his best and I think he would tell you that. That’s a player who has worked hard and is trying to do all the right things that went south yesterday. I think he’s as disappointed as we are and that’s a good thing.”
Q: When things aren’t going well, do you go back to making it simple?
HALEY: “I think we will do whatever we have to do to give ourselves the best chance to win. If that’s one of the areas – generally when you’re making some mistakes that would be something you might look at – then I think that’s a possibility.”
Q: Did you get the feeling that guys were laying down or giving up?
HALEY: “Lay down was probably the wrong term. In trying to find this identify for our team which I’ve made clear how you respond in those situations is a big part of that identify. Good teams can impose their will or run the football specifically even when the other teams knows what they’re doing. I think it was more a case of just a little wake up call. This is what we’re doing and we don’t care if they know what we’re doing. We’re going to block them. There were enough encouraging signs to me to think we’re making some progress.”
Sep 28, 2009, 6:16:05 PM
(TW) http://www.kcchiefs.com/news/2009/09/28/todd_haley_press_conference__928/
[I'd get lost in the other thread for those who would like to read it]
TODD HALEY: “Good afternoon. As I said yesterday, it was a disappointing outcome to the game - disappointed with all phases of our operation yesterday. I had great optimism after last week’s practices that going into that game we would be in a competitive game with a chance to win. It didn’t happen that way.
“I think it’s pretty clear that our margin of error is not real great right at this time, so we must as a team and as a coaching staff really do everything right – all the little things including technique, decision making – especially against a team like Philadelphia. We weren’t and that’s why we saw the result that we had.”
Q: What was the most disappointing aspect of the performance in your mind?
HALEY: “When you go into a situation like that and you know that it’s going to be a daunting task and you feel like you’re ready and then you play like that. That’s the most disappointing thing to me.”
Q: So what do you do different this week?
HALEY: “I don’t think you do a whole lot different. I think that we have to go back to work. I feel like we’re working hard and we have to stay the course. We’ve got to continue to coach discipline. We just have to get better at the little things. When your margin of error is small you can’t align a yard out of place, or allow a big play to happen. We need to have all those little things coached hard, coached correctly and then we need to execute. I don’t think we do a whole lot different other than focus and not let anything slide. That’s the direction.”
Q: Is it reasonable to think that you guys will get to a point where you will have a margin of error or are you going to have to learn to live like this?
HALEY: “I don’t know if our margin of error is going to change a whole bunch this year. I really don’t. Although we’ll keep working at getting this team roster-wise as good as we can get it I don’t think our margin of error will change a whole bunch. So, I think we’ll have to play a certain type of football and that’s going to have to be on point all the time.”
Q: Is that because there is so much new here and you’re trying to fit so many new components together or because Philadelphia has better players?
HALEY: “I think it’s a little bit of everything, a little bit of everything. But it’s our intention is to win games. Right now, we’re 0-3 in the first quarter of the season and we’ve got to do everything we can to try to get a win in this quarter.”
Q: Pass interference was a favorite call of the officiating crew that got you yesterday. Looking at the tape was it technique or a poor call?
HALEY: “Little bit of both but I won’t get into the calls. We have to coach the penalties. The penalties fall on me and we can’t have 10 penalties in a game. We just can’t do it. We have to coach them and make them more aware than we have to this point obviously. We had two first-and-20’s; I believe we had six second-and-12 plusses, five third-and-12 plusses. You know what we were on third down but that’s all a result of what we did on those other downs. Penalties were a big part of it and we’re not going to have much of a chance if we do that.”
Q: When you say margin of error you mean your team; you have to be very good to have a chance to succeed, right?
HALEY: “I think we have to do it right in all phases including coaching. If we’re not then what you saw yesterday is what we’ll get. That’s the way it is right now. That in no way means we don’t have a chance. I’ll say it again and I’ll say it to you straight up: I went into that game believing that we could win that game. After watching the (game) tape in all phases the game should have been competitive. It should have been competitive but it wasn’t.”
Q: Was there a moment in the game where you stopped thinking you couldn’t score and adjusted how you called the game? You said yesterday how you wanted to identify running the football. Where do you draw the line between winnable game and probably not going to win and look to establish something else? How do you do that in a game that counts?
HALEY: “I just felt in my gut yesterday. What we did in the second half all it took was two plays, an interception for a touchdown or a blocked punt. You don’t know what that play is going to be. One of those runs could have broken out. We had some opportunities for big play.
“It was in my gut because of the way we performed early in that game and ran for three yards. I got to halftime and I thought to myself, what are we doing? We need to make some progress in this game. I just felt like our best chance offensively to make progress was to figure out what we wanted to do.”
Q: So how would you respond to some people who said today that it seemed like midway through the third quarter the team was just trying to get home, it couldn’t win?
HALEY: “I would say that was not the case. We ran a fake punt, we ran an end-around; we had two other calls that we had to check out of. In no way was it a wave the white flag.
“It was, in my gut and as the head coach that something had to be done to benefit this team. Not in that particular game but to benefit this team as we go forward, to establish our mindset and to lay it out there. Let’s see who’s got what. I think you started to see some signs of guys deciding whether they were going to lay down or they were going to fight. I saw some positive signs despite the outcome of the game.”
Q: Every day you say you battle with your emotions. But why do you feel that you are the head coach that you need to mute that a little bit?
HALEY: “I think I said it yesterday: as the leader of this team I think you need to have some composure. If you’re the captain of the ship and you’re running around in a storm and a rogue wave is about to hit you and you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off you’re probably not doing the best thing for your crew.
“I try to use that emotion to help me and help us. At the same time, I think as the leader of the team I’ve got to be in control so I can make the right decisions at the right times.”
Q: Do you regret anything you said or did in the first couple of games?
HALEY: “No, there isn’t anything where I said, ‘that was probably stupid, Todd.’
Q: I asked you a couple of weeks ago if you had the personnel on the offensive line to protect your quarterback and run the ball.
HALEY: “I think we do. We just have to do it right. When I watched the tape last night on the plane and again today with the coaches and again with the players – four times through – offensively if the guys had just done their jobs with technique I think it would have been a little different outcome. Now, whether we had won the game or not I don’t know, but offensively it would have been a different outcome. That tells me if we just do it the right way and are physical we can be good enough up front to compete and win.”
Q: A lot of the guys on your roster now up front weren’t here at the beginning of the off-season. If you could go back would you change any of that?
HALEY: “No, I wouldn’t change anything. Like I said, Scott, myself and the staff will continue to try to get better, try to get better personnel-wise and try to get better in every phase and when there is an opportunity to do that we’ve done that.”
Q: Second half you had Belcher out there with the base defense? Will that continue?
HALEY: “Yeah, I think you’ll see more of 59. I think he’s a guy that’s impressed us all from early on and I think we’ve got a potential player there. Whenever you’ve got a guy who can run and hit and shows up around the football and has done a good job on special teams it helps. That’s a guy that needs to be on the field. It was his first real action. He gives us some speed and is a run-and-hit guy.”
Q: You also made a change with your nickel back by using Washington. Will that continue?
HALEY: “We’ll see. We were running out of bodies at one point. When you’re not seeing what you want to see I’m not going to be afraid to change any of those guys. They know it and it’s pretty clear we’ve got to get better and it’s not going to stay the same. It’s not going to stay the same. Whatever it is, that won’t be accepted. In my mind it can’t stay the same if it’s not going the way you want it to.”
Q: I don’t know what you’re staff totals were, but the press box totals after the game had nothing for Jackson, no tackles, assists, pressures. Same with Dorsey. Was that close to what kind of game they had?
HALEY: “Yeah, I think when you give up the kind of yardage we gave up it would be hard to find any guys who gave you a chance to win, or their play did.”
Q: Looks like one guy who did get something done was Gilberry?
HALEY: “He made a couple of effort plays. He didn’t have very many plays but I think he showed up, but I like some things that Wallace has done. He’s a high-effort player that seems to play hard and likes it. I would say for the amount of plays that he played he showed up.”
Q: How would you evaluate Tyson Jackson so far?
HALEY: “With that particular position it is difficult. I’m not making excuses for the player because he needs to be better and we need to get him better. He can’t take steps back. That’s what I would say. I just want to see steady improvement and not the yo-yo stuff. He’s working hard and is into it but it is a big job, a big job.”
Q: When you draft that position you know it will take time. Is that third game better as a rookie or….?
HALEY: “Incrementally. Small increments knowing what we know about that position. It’s a non-glory position as it is. You just want to see steady improvement and this was probably just a little step back for him.”
Q: What happened when you had such a good week of practice and what happened in the game?
HALEY: “Well, if I had that answer I could have stopped it. In pre-game I was even a little worried because of the overall mood and the way some guys were acting. We’ve got to get back to work and trust the things that we’re doing will get us better. We’re still in the first quarter of the season and 0-3 and two of our losses are to teams that were in the championship game last year and they could very well be in those same positions last year. Those are games we’ve got to compete and win in. We’re not going to accept the result, no way am I saying that. But the reality is we’re 0-3 and we lost to two teams that are pretty good and we’re going to play another pretty good one this week. We’ve got to do everything in our power as a coaching staff to clean up those areas that are keeping us from winning or even competing yesterday.”
Q: Was Bowe a close decision yesterday to play or not to play?
HALEY: “No, not this week. As it turned out anytime you’re talking about a hamstring I think on a skill position you’ve got to error on the side of caution. Those can turn out to be a long term thing if you’re not careful.”
Q: Was the weather a factor?
HALEY: “No, just the progress we wanted him to make he didn’t make.”
Q: Would you expect Bowe and Derrick Johnson to practice Wednesday?
HALEY: “I’m hopeful - again, Derrick a little more hopeful. Trying to be smart with the other guy early in the week.”
Q: When you said in pre-game you were a little nervous. Can you can expand on that?
HALEY: “Just having coached and been out in that situation a bunch as a position coach and coordinator, that’s a game us coaches play all the time: what do you think? We talk to each other. What are they acting like, what’s your feel? Yesterday in particular it wasn’t a very good feel that I had of what I was seeing. In fact, in seven-on-seven which is a throwing drill I ended up getting ticked off and handing the ball off about eight straight times. The energy, the movement was bothersome to me.”
Q: Is the problem with penalties a symptom of a bigger issue with personnel or just a team going through some on-field discipline problems?
HALEY: “I don’t know if it’s either. This is something we stress and talk about all the time and coach hard. It’s one of the areas I was pretty pleased with throughout the pre-season and our first game. Generally those things don’t change dramatically. If you’re low penalties through the pre-season and the first game you don’t expect to swing like this normally. To come into the second game and all of a sudden technique breaks down and we start making poor decisions it’s something we have to figure out how to get back to where we were.”
Q: Do you think Brandon Albert has regressed from what you’ve seen of him the first three games?
HALEY: “I don’t know if I’d go that far. I would say that yesterday was not his best and I think he would tell you that. That’s a player who has worked hard and is trying to do all the right things that went south yesterday. I think he’s as disappointed as we are and that’s a good thing.”
Q: When things aren’t going well, do you go back to making it simple?
HALEY: “I think we will do whatever we have to do to give ourselves the best chance to win. If that’s one of the areas – generally when you’re making some mistakes that would be something you might look at – then I think that’s a possibility.”
Q: Did you get the feeling that guys were laying down or giving up?
HALEY: “Lay down was probably the wrong term. In trying to find this identify for our team which I’ve made clear how you respond in those situations is a big part of that identify. Good teams can impose their will or run the football specifically even when the other teams knows what they’re doing. I think it was more a case of just a little wake up call. This is what we’re doing and we don’t care if they know what we’re doing. We’re going to block them. There were enough encouraging signs to me to think we’re making some progress.”