(On if WR Keelan Cole could replace WR DJ Chark Jr. on Sunday if needed) “With both [Keelan] Cole and obviously Chris [Conley] and Dede [Westbrook], we’re going to look for those guys to step up. And then obviously we have C.J. Board and Michael Walker too, so those will be the guys that will be playing.”
(On if he believes Chark will be able to play on Sunday) “We were hoping. I think it’s really close. We made a decision, basically the swellings down and how we can get him rehabbed faster will the pool, so we made a decision to keep him here to give us a better opportunity for him to play next week.”
(On how QB Gardner Minshew II is progressing) “Good. It’s good. I say the same thing, as a coach I sit up here and people get tired of, ‘Hey, they’re doing this well, practicing well.’ It’s on the field performance, that’s the one thing that we talk about all the time. It’s hard for me to get up, ‘We’ve had a good week, or we’ve had a good day, or we had a great day,’ and then all of a sudden you go out there on Sunday and you don’t play well. I think you, the media and the fans, the people, they look and say, ‘What the hell’s going on?’ So, everything’s about the Sunday performance, that’s the most important thing.”
(On how LS Matt Orzech has performed this year) “We’re happy with where he is. I talk to him all the time. Obviously, any young player there’s always things to work on and he has some things that we’ve talked, I’ve talked to him personally about, because I’ve done that before. And I told him, I said – He has the ability to play in this league a long time and not a lot of people like to switch those guys out, just from a confidence standing, and he’s done a good job for us this year. So, he’s got a year now under his belt, or closing in on a year under his belt to a point where we feel really good about him. And I told him, I said, ‘If you can keep up maintaining this—,’ and he’s a guy that coverage ability, which is always tough to get at that position. He becomes a highly marketable type of player and we’re fortunate that we have him for a couple years.”
(On if his message to the team has been to play well and put it on film with only three games remaining) “That’s the way I addressed it. If you don’t go in there and you don’t address the elephant in the room, really what are you doing. So, I’ve always been a guy that hey, if there’s things that are going on in these types of situations, what we’re in, it’s not a secret. I just want to make sure that everyone understands what I try to do a good job of when people get up there and say, ‘Well this guy’s not doing this,’ or, ‘This guy’s giving up,’ or, ‘This is happening.’ They really can’t afford to do that, because the one thing about this league is nothing for certain. And if they’re doing that, it’s going to jeopardize their living, whether it’s coaches, myself obviously, or the players, or anyone else around the program. So, I just try to be straight and honest, and that’s just the way it is. I talked to the players about, hey listen, I can only give you my opinion; I know a lot of people, and every place I’ve been when we were looking at players that are available or players that were coming in and taking over for, we looked at the beginning of the season and the end of the season, and we wanted to see what the differences were. And if we felt that it wasn’t up to par, or that player outside of injury might not be performing at that level, well shoot, no one wants to be around guys like that and no one wants to keep guys like that on their team or no one wants to hire coaches that do that.”
(On how C Brandon Linder has progressed) “Good. He’s having a good year. He’s probably one of the brighter sports of the team in a bad situation [and] not playing well, but he’s actually been playing well. Actually, I think recently what you’ve seen is his play has actually gotten better, so he’s finishing stronger and that’s what you want to do. You want to start strong and finish stronger, so I think he’s doing a very good job of that. He’s done a good job of maintaining his body during the year. Last year he’s always been nicked up and hurt, but he’s been pretty consistent this year and I think he’s done a really good job of managing himself and playing well.”
(On if Calais Campbell’s week-to-week performance dropped off from prior years) “I think he’s obviously someone that people are going to target, meaning when they’re going to pass the football, they want to make sure exactly how they’re going to block him and do it. I think the one thing I look at right off the bat without having really studied it hard, is that I would look at what the situations are in the games. Once they have a two score, three score lead, it’s going to be a different type of thing where they’re not playing against the opponent, they’re playing against the clock, so your opportunities are going to be down. I think a better way to evaluate a player is hey, the opportunity for passing is he winning or losing? You might not be able to get to the quarterback a lot, because a lot of times they’ll think, ‘OK, if they’re worried about the rush, they’re going to get the ball out quickly.’ And a lot of times when they do that, it causes a little bit of frustration in my experience between the D-Line. But the one thing I’ll say about Calais, he’s never shown that. He keeps that same type of tenacity, the same type of violence or rush throughout the game. So, I think it’s probably more so of the numbers not playing in favor of having enough of those rushers.”
(On having S Ronnie Harrison back in the lineup) “Yeah, we’re expecting him to come back there and help us. And again, it’s a situation back there where we have guys playing, we’re going to play a couple different packages and looks, and Ronnie will be an important part of what we’re doing back there.”
