(What happened to Brandon?)
Brandon Jackson was unable to go today. He tried to go in the jog-through period, and he had a setback.
(Did Bush hurt his ankle during practice?)
Yeah, I think it just flared up on him. We'll see how he is.
(You just can't catch a break at the safety spot, can you?)
It kind of goes that way sometimes. I'm confident, Jarrett played through the ankle injuries last year. My gut is it's not real serious, but I'll have more information probably tomorrow.
(Any better or worse feelings about Collins?)
Well, he's practiced two days in a row, so I anticipate Nick will go. He's always been a real pro when it comes to playing through injuries. So I anticipate that he'll go.
(He's gone through all the contact stuff in team drills?)
Yes. That's correct. He's taken all his reps.
(You said on Monday that maybe you've been guilty of helping the linemen too much. What alternatives do you have as a play-caller to fight against that?)
I think you're asking me two questions. I guess the first part of your question is we're all guilty of over-evaluating things. I think sometimes your strengths can possibly sometimes be a weakness. I think they're coached very well, all of our positions. I think we're very detail-oriented. The answer sometimes is not always an answer of technique. Football is meant to be played a certain way, and I think you need to stay in touch with that. Now, we're always working on our fundamentals, always working on our technique, but sometimes priorities can get out of whack. I'm not saying it's happened to us, I was referring to that. Once again, we've played two football games. There's information out there that we can build off of, there's information on our team that we need to work on. That's really the facts. The second part of your question, everybody has a plan on how they want to call a game. Games go different ways, every single one of them. The biggest challenge I feel as a play-caller is when you're playing in extraordinary down-and-distances, and obviously when you are playing in those types of down-and-distances, it's because something negative has happened, and we've fallen into two games in a row where we've had too many negative plays, which create a lot of long down-and-distances. Sometimes you can overcome it, sometimes you can't. We're at our best, like most teams are, when we're playing with balance, with tempo and we're taking care of the football. We've taken care of the football pretty good so far in these two games. We've had the one fumble. But those are things we strive for every day to show up on Sunday all the time. Sometimes your play goes up and down, but you have to have consistency in the fundamental things that you believe in, the things that you do every day, and that's the things I really put the most emphasis on.
(You said that Collins was on his way to a pretty good game Sunday. What impact is he having on the run defense versus in the previous defense?)
Just the way we played before, you're referring to the run support aspect of it? Well, there's a lot more communication involved in our scheme today ... well, that's not necessarily true. Just the way the game was going, the checks and the adjustments that you make when you deal with unbalanced formations. They played a lot of clubs formations, their personnel against us. Just having the thing communicated correctly and everybody in their right gaps. The safeties are the key communicators back there. Nick, if my memory serves me right, I think he had seven-plus tackles and he went out of the game in the second quarter. So I think he was off to a big-time game.
(So he's setting you up defensively?)
The safeties do, it's both sides, the linebackers. We have a lot more communication as far as everybody that's communicating compared to the past. It's a big emphasis of our game, it's a big part of what Dom's brought here since the day that he came. I look at the way we communicate now, it's very impressive compared to the way we have in the past.
