(Injuries coming out of the game)
I'll start with the injuries: Nick Collins had a knee sprain but he did return, Jermichael Finley had cramps and he returned after an IV, so with that I'll take your questions.
(What did you think of all the penalties in tonight's game?)
Too many; 17 penalties were obviously a factor in the outcome of the game. The pre-snap penalties, I don't feel we did a very good job of handling the backed-up area [of the field]. Just going through them, I know it was talked about at halftime, we addressed it with the football team and then we came out and had three on the first offensive series. It obviously factored in the game from our perspective, it held us back from point generation and it definitely helped them – particularly on the last drive – and in their drives to get points, so it was obviously a huge factor in the outcome of the game.
(Is it good to have the quick turnaround and have this short week to prepare for Detroit to get past this one right away?)
You could look at it that way. Losing this game I don't think is ever a good thing. This is a game that is very competitive, I think that was illustrated and I thought both teams played hard, it was a tough, physical game. I thought our players had a good week of preparation coming into this, we did not do some things very well in Week 1 and Week 2 and we wanted to improve on those things. We'll take a look at the film, but 17 penalties, that doesn't cut it, you can't play football like that so we need to evaluate that and apply that to our preparation for Detroit.
(What did you see on James Jones' fumble that led you to challenge the play?)
I was standing right there and I had a pretty good indication of what happened. I did see the defensive back's foot swing out of bounds, so I was just hopeful that the officials maybe saw that his foot may have hit. It was 2:18 [left to play], I had two challenges left, and that was obviously a huge play in the game that maybe we could swing our way.
(Did you consider letting them score on their last drive to give your offense time on the clock to come back?)
No I did not. I did not consider letting them score at the end. I felt that if they missed the field goal, we'd win the game. It was talked about, but that was not the decision I went with.
(Was your game plan coming into the game to throw it as much as you did?)
Frankly, I don't remember calling a game against [Bears' defensive coordinator] Rod Marinelli and I was curious to see how they played us. The match-ups, the pass protection and how the game flows, we didn't run the ball at all in the first half very well, and we were able to get it going a little bit in the second half, but we just took advantage of the things that were there. I thought we moved the ball very well, but you've got to score points, and the penalties factored into our point generation tonight.
(With regards to the penalties, have you ever seen a game like that?)
I don't think so. It's hard to play football like that, 17 penalties, that's a lot of penalties.
(What went wrong with your special teams tonight?)
They performed better than we did, I think that was obvious. They won the field position battle I would think – I haven't looked at the statistics. I though their coverage teams, covered better than ours did, their return game was more productive than our game, I felt we had some things going into the game that we'd be able to take advantage of, but we did not. I thought their specialists handled the football better, so that was not a positive for us tonight.
(Did the punter outkick the coverage team on the one Devin Hester returned for a touchdown?)
I thought we had good coverage lanes. I thought in that particular situation, you obviously want to place the ball at certain places on the field against a Devin Hester. We were in a backed-up situation, we were trying to change the field position and you've got to cover the ball once in a while. We've been covering the football better, but it didn't happen tonight and obviously that was a huge play in the game.
