(Where was Woodson today?)
Charles Woodson had a personal matter to attend to. He should be back tomorrow.
(How's Pickett looking?)
Ryan Pickett, he went through a partial rehab and testing segment, and then he was limited in practice. We're trying to bring him back in steps. We'll see how he does tomorrow, but I would classify him as limited.
(Do you feel pretty good about Barnett?)
Yes, Nick felt good today. Nick practiced today. We were going to bring him back in a limited fashion today, but Nick was a full participant.
(Do you think this is something you're going to have to monitor the rest of the season or is it a short-term thing?)
Can't answer that. He's coming off of major knee surgery, and he had some swelling in there. Just being smart with it. He feels fine. Sometimes it takes a little longer to recover. I think that's kind of the situation he's in right now.
(Is this fairly typical for someone coming off of that?)
Absolutely yes.
(They say it takes at least a year with an ACL for a guy to be totally past it. Do you see any difference now in how he's playing or how explosive he is?)
I think Nick Barnett is playing very well coming off the injury. But anytime you have a major joint injury, particularly with the ACL, the recovery time is sometimes longer coming off of a football game. That's really the issue that Nick is in right now. We're seeing it a little bit also with Mark Tauscher. This I think is a very normal process that players go through coming back from that type of injury.
(Do you have plans to practice outdoors this week, and what factors do you use to determine when to go out or not?)
Player safety and quality of practice. That's always been the criteria that we follow, as far as setting up our practice structure. We practiced outside today.
(Did the conditions at all dictate versus Chicago your personnel groupings? Is that what you're going to look like in an outdoor game in the cold, or was that just for the Bears?)
I didn't really classify the Chicago game as a cold game. I think we're getting close to that. I think Chicago definitely plays you differently, which is common in your division opponents. I think they play you differently, in my opinion, early in the season than late in the season. I think that's been evident just the way the games have gone, in competing against the Bears the last couple years. We're still, if we don't feel that we can do certain things based on the weather, then that will change what we do schematically. But personnel-wise, you're always looking for the matchups, and weather doesn't really dictate that as much as the concepts, scheme.
