Tough night. It's disappointing. I know everybody involved is disappointed. The players were jacked up for tonight. The crowd was great. It's just unfortunate that we were unable to move forward with the scrimmage, and clearly the determining factor was the safety of everybody involved. But it will give us an opportunity to get healthy, so that's the approach we've taken.
(Do you have to schedule an extra workout now that you didn't get to work tonight?)
I don't think you can. We're going to do some extra treatment tomorrow. We're going to take this opportunity to get the players back and we'll hit it Monday morning just to keep our install schedule going. I'm very pleased with the number of reps that we were able to attain last week in practice. We feel as a coaching staff, just during the delay having an opportunity to meet with the coordinators and some of the coaches, we feel that we are ahead of schedule in some areas. Really the health of our football team is the priority right now.
(Do you prepare for preseason opponents starting next week or is it just install stuff?)
Well, we'll work Monday install. Tuesday will be an install. We'll have a review practice in there also with the Tuesday morning and then we'll have a chance to spend some time on the Chicago Bears on Tuesday night. We'll review everything Wednesday and then we'll work on the Cleveland Browns on Thursday and Friday.
(Any plans to incorporate some live stuff during the week?)
I think we may have fallen under the classification of live in segments of our practice. I have been very pleased with the nature of our practices, the extra reps in the particular situations that we felt we needed the extra work. I like the attitude and the temperament of our football team right now. So we'll be ready to go when Cleveland rolls around next week.
(So Monday at 2 p.m. is your next practice?)
Correct.
(Just to clarify with the install on Monday and Tuesday; is everything installed then?)
Yes, we put our offense and defense in in nine installations, so we will do that Monday and Tuesday.
(After a week of practice, what is your biggest concern?)
The health of our football team. I think that is normal this time of year. It's the installation phase. If you're looking for statistics, you're always chasing your mental errors are too high. Actually we're lower than we have been in past years, and I think that is a compliment to coaches and players, particularly on defense with the new scheme and the multiplicity of that scheme. There are some situations as I go through my checklist that we may rep a little more next week than we did in past weeks. We've got another red-zone emphasis coming. We have other third-down emphases coming that are very important because they are concepts that will apply to the early part of our season. That's really where my focus is. We're definitely on track. I'm very pleased with the amount of work and the quality of work that we have been able to accomplish to this point.
{sportsad300}(Were you going to show much tonight on defense with blitzing and will you try to hide a lot of that during the preseason?)
We were going to play the defense that we ran in the first seven installs. The volume was cut back. The focus was to let the players line up and play. I did not want a lot of motions and shifts from the offense. The volume of pressures was cut back, because really tonight's emphasis was on evaluating our players. But as we go through it, there's certain things we'll rep in training camp, and there's targets that we'll hit with our defense. But what you show and what you don't show, that's obviously for us to watch in the future.
(Is tomorrow a total day off for players and what will the coaches do now with no film from tonight?)
We'll have treatments, and this will still be an active place tomorrow because of the health of our football team. We don't have practice, we don't have meetings, but it's definitely a recovery day and I think it's a time for everybody to take advantage of that. We're kind of at that spot right now in training camp.
(Why wasn't DeShawn Wynn suited up tonight?)
DeShawn Wynn, he has a knee that's kind of snuck up on him. He was unable to go tonight and we'll see where he is Monday morning.
(Can you talk about the process of calling off the scrimmage?)
Really Ted Thompson and Mark Murphy could probably give you more of the specifics. Their command center was up in the press box. I was in the locker room, and we just had constant communication. We were watching the Doppler TV, just like you were. We actually listened to what you guys said for once was accurate. Just trying to keep the players loose. The strength coaches were just trying to keep those guys going, because some players were in the locker room, and really once it got to about 8:15, 8:30, I was actually concerned. Because these guys were really hyped up to play tonight.
(Was it your decision to take the team off the field in the first place?)
It was clearly a weather decision. There was a lightning strike, and there's a procedure in place. When they empty the bowl obviously we get off the field. It was clearly a safety issue.
