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We came away from the game without any injury of significance. We should be going into this week of rest and revitalization with only three guys injured. They would be Carson Palmer, Andre Caldwell and Jerome Simpson. There is a possibility that a week from now, Andre will have come around some.
Q: Will you do anything with Carson Palmer (on the field) this week?ML:
No.
Q: Will that process pick up next week as you get ready for the Eagles?ML:
I said at some point, as we get into November, we'll see. But for now it's going to wait.
Q: Do you anticipate any chance of him playing against the Eagles?ML:
I don't know that right now.
Q: Your record here coming off the bye is 1-4. How do you rectify that?ML:
Win the game.
Q: It hasn't worked wel:ML:
We're 1-4, so I would say it hasn't worked real well. You want to come out of the bye and win against the Eagles. But the past doesn't really matter, does it? It doesn't really count for anything. I don't think the players really care. Most of them weren't here. It's important to come out of the bye and win the game. It's as late as we've had a bye, so maybe that will be a change and turnaround.
Q: What is your message to your players this week before they leave?ML:
Take care of yourself, take care of your body, be smart, act like a pro.
Q: Speaking of acting like a pro, what about the (Andrew) Whitworth situation and the fight with John Henderson? Afterward, Andrew talked about feeling that he had to defend himself after what he told the offense last week about not getting pushed around:ML:
Obviously, I wasn't part of Andrew talking to the offense, but I think he had no choice in the matter. To get free of John Henderson, he had to do what he did. He got grabbed from behind. I think Andrew's tone of the game and how he played prior to that was very good.
Q: In your opinion, did the offensive and defensive lines play their best games so far this year?ML:
No doubt it was, we won the football game. I thought offensively, we came off better together and didn't miss.
Q: Do you think there is a chance Andrew (Whitworth) could face some repercussion from the league? ML:
He may be fined, yes. Any person that gets a personal foul penalty in the NFL is subject to a fine.
Q: Isn't an ejection an automatic fine?ML:
I don't know that.
Q: In those first two offensive drives, of 14 plays and 10 plays, what was the difference? ML:
We converted third downs, which keeps the drives alive. T.J. (Houshmandzadeh) had the one penalty on third down for the motion, and then we come back and get the reception after that. You dont want to have that penalty to go from third-and-five to third-and-10. We were able to overcome that. Ryan (Fitzpatrick) made some plays with his feet early on to convert the first third down of the drive, and those are significant. I thought the execution between the receivers and Ryan was good. The line gave Ryan time to make some reads and opened lanes for Cedric (Benson) to run.
Q: First-down execution was pretty good in the first half:ML:
Coming out of the gate, we did a good job of getting things going to drive the football down the field. On the second drive, we run through the grab and get our feet tangled up, but we get the (pass interference) call because were running. You're going to get some of those calls on the outside because you're running. We have to do a better job on the deep balls. We had a few opportunities to make big plays and I'd like to think we can do better than what we did on those opportunities. We'll keep working on those plays in practice and make sure we can connect, because those can be huge in the football game.
Q: Cedric Benson had some nice runs, especially in the third touchdown drive. Does his running style mesh with what you try to do in the running game?ML:
Actually, you try to make your running game mesh with the back you have. After you've had a running back for a few weeks, like we've had Cedric, we try to do things that fit his style. He still had a couple miscues that we need to get corrected, and hopefully the mistakes don't happen at the wrong time. We had one where Ryan (Fitzpatrick) got the ball back to the line of scrimmage, but we also had others at different times. We just have to keep going. Cedric's style is running behind his pads; and he is a good cutter. He is very quick and generally very deliberate in where he goes with the football. He has great vision, and he has the speed and quickness when he does get to the next level ... better than the guys we've had in there before him this year.
Q: Is T.J. (Houshmandzadeh) your most productive and consistent player so far this year? ML:
I don't want to get into who's the most anything. I don't need to. No reason to.
Q: How much progress has Pat Sims made these past few weeks? ML:
We've seen a lot of progress from Pat. Pat had a sore shoulder and was not very good in practice on Wednesday, and he came close to standing beside me in street clothes. So it was good to see him pick things up Thursday and Friday, and he did a good job yesterday in the game. He got credit for his first NFL sack. I think he's finding out that he can do this, and he can do it pretty good. He's just got to keep going and work harder and harder, and gain a little more understanding of offenses. If it's second-and-10, Pat, it's probably going to be a screen in that situation. And some things like that he's got to get better with, and I think he will. He's a smart enough guy to understand it, and I think he'll continue to grow.
Q: Glenn Holt had his first fumble on a kickoff return:ML:
Well, he had a fumble, and that's a bad deal. And it put us at risk. We've got to do a better job getting them (kickoff team) blocked, so we don't leave a guy free and clean on him. But obviously, the second part is him taking care of the football.
Q: Would a healthy (Andre) Caldwell make you look at who is returning kicks?ML:
Well, Andre's not healthy right now, so I don't have to worry about that. So we'll continue to go the way we are.
Q: One of the trends in the NFL is to put your offensive coordinator on the field, but what do you like about Bob Bratkowski being up in the booth?ML:
I think guys that call the plays from upstairs feel like they have a better viewpoint of what's going on. It's not as chaotic. They've got a little better understanding of what's happening that way.
Q: Did you learn anything about Johnathan Joseph, since he played well after two poor games?ML:
We expect Johnathan to play better than he played the previous weeks. He can continue to play at this level and better. He needs to play better, and he can still play better. He did some good things yesterday, and that's the way he ought to play week-in and week-out. He's a better player than he had shown the previous weeks.
Q: Did you notice that there was any lift from (Andrew) Whitworth and the conflict he was in?ML:
I don't think we much rallied. It was 3rd-and-11, and we ended up punting the football after taking a sack. The good thing is, we made the plays at the end of the game, when some bad things did occur, to win the game. We made them work the length of the field. You don't want to give up the score that would put us into a tie. We did a nice job defending the two-point play, executing the onside kick, and getting the ball offensively. Kyle Larsons execution on the punt to end the game was great. I think there were a lot of good things to end of the game.
We came back from what had become kind of a chaotic situation at the end of the third quarter and the start of the fourth quarter, and we got things done. Everyone started to settle down and kept playing. It would have been a shame to probably outplay the opponent quite a bit and then put ourselves back in jeopardy with an overtime game. So it was good to win the football game like that.
Q: Basically, what Henderson did to (Andrew) Whitworth was very unnecessary and there is no room for that in the game. Do you talk to your team about things like that?ML:
We talk about those all the time, and you can't tolerate those things. If we don't come back at Henderson (and get offsetting personal foul penalties), we have a first down on probably their 30-yard line, up 21-3 with two minutes to go in the third quarter, and with an opportunity to kick a field goal to be up a minimum of three touchdowns in the fourth quarter. You don't want to have that situation occur. I think their player was very frustrated. On first down, we ran for nine yards, and he took some swings at Whitworth on second down, and then it got out of hand from that point on.
