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December 4, 2012
Redskins Park
*
Executive Vice President/Head Coach Mike Shanahan
*
On the confidence of the team during this three-game win streak:
“I think any time you win those kinds of games you feel better about yourself. You find a way to get it done in the last couple minutes of the game. When you’re able to run your four-minute offense the way we did and finish the game when they know you have to run the football-they know you have to get a first down, trying to take all the time of the clock, you’re able to run the ball three times and still get a first down-the football team starts feeling good about themselves because they knew we had to run it, we knew we had to run it, and we were able to get a first down. Those types of things build a lot of confidence.”
*
On who should get credit for not allowing a sack against the Giants:
“I think you said it best. When we don’t give up a sack, it says a lot about your entire football team. It starts with your offensive line and it continues through the rest of the players. It’s a group effort. A lot of people have to do the right thing. It might be a receiver running a hot route. It may be a tight end or fullback with second effort, the quarterback getting rid of the football. A combination of a lot of different things, but like you mentioned, they’re an excellent front. It’s very hard to limit them with no sacks. I feel very good about the way our players played.”
*
On the scuffle after the fumble by running back Alfred Morris:
“It’s football. Those things happen. There’s a lot of emotion out there. At the end of the day, I just let those things go and you kind of fight through it.”
*
On if he has any concern that the team will become complacent:
“We can’t be complacent because we don’t have the opportunity to be complacent. Every game to us is like a playoff game. We understand that and our players understand that. You’re hoping that mindset is there, because if not, you’re out of it very quickly. Hopefully that’s not the case and you have the character to persevere.”
*
On if there is a certain message he sent to this team:
“We try to do it day-by-day.* We talk about how talk is cheap. What you have to do is prepare yourself. You have to get ready for each game and our players know for us to beat a football team like Baltimore that we have to take care of business each day. Guys have to prepare just like we have been all season and you have to play your best on gameday. You have to do the little things the right way, but you have to come ready to play. You have to play your best game as a group; offense, defense and special teams. You have to do it for 60 minutes because you have to find a way to win. If you don’t, you’re out of it.”
*
On the “us against the world” mentality:
“It’s not really a motivating tool. What you’re doing is you’re trying to find a way to win. When you do lose some close games, a lot of times people will lose confidence. I’ve always felt with this group that it’s a special group of people. We’ve lost some players on defense and offense. As I tell them, that’s part of the National Football League. Guys will be replaced. Sometimes it’s injuries. Sometimes it’s sickness, but guys have to step up and play at a very high level if somebody goes down. It’s taken us a while to fight through that, but I felt that we had a special group of players with a lot of character that play extremely hard. And with that type of character, you feel like you’ve always got a chance. I think we’re learning how to win, learning how to play our best football in the second half of the season. That’s what you have to do.”
On getting a good defensive performance in the second half without causing a turnover:
“It’s a combination of all of those things. Some days you’re going to score 40 points and you have to score 45. Other times you’re going to score a touchdown and you score a field goal. It doesn’t matter. Each game you have to find a way to win. I think you’re referring to the way our defense, giving up 8-out-of-10 third downs in the first half, 1-out-of-5 in the second half. That’s something we had to do to win that football game. They controlled the tempo of the game with their first four possessions. They did a heck of a job keeping the ball away from us. In the second half, we didn’t get it more times, but we kept them out of the end zone.”
*
On the motivating effect of the salary cap penalty when facing the Giants:
“I don’t know if any players knew about the salary cap as a motivation. Obviously, it goes out there in the media. I never talked about that with any of our players. It fires me up. Sure it does.”
*
On the role character plays in the success of a team:
“I felt, at least in my coaching career, you can get to the playoffs, but if you want to do something special once you get there, you have to have those types of players if you want to win it. A lot of the times, you get to the playoffs and you can win one, two or three games, but the only team that’s happy at the end of the year is the team that wins the Super Bowl. If you have those guys, you have the chance to do something special. That’s been my experience.”
*
On the performance of linebacker Rob Jackson:
“He gave some great effort. He was possessed to put some pressure on the quarterback. I thought he did a good job in the running game as well as the passing game. My hat’s off to him as well as he played and the type of desire he showed to make some plays when we needed it the most.”
*
On the performance of running back Alfred Morris in conversion scenarios:
“We’ve talked about Alfred before. He’s a heck of a young man. He’s a great talent. The reason why I mention those last three carries is because when everyone knows you have to run the football and you can run the football against a defense like that, it tells you a lot about your guys in general. When they know you have to run the ball, they know you have to eat up the clock…if you take a look at those three runs he had, you can tell there was a desire there to get the first down that a lot of people don’t have. A second effort, the ability to put a game away, usually you don’t see guys like that as rookies making those types of plays.”*
*
On why Jackson was used on third downs:
“He’s got good pass rush ability. We’ve seen it at times. We needed some more rush than we had earlier and we really had confidence that he could get it done. He showed us that he could get it done.”
*
On if linebacker Lorenzo Alexander’s coverage skills were the reason Jackson normally doesn’t play on passing downs:
“We really don’t get into the thinking during the season, why we do different things, different packages. There are always thoughts there for why we use guys in certain situations.”
*
On how he felt about linebacker London Fletcher’s injury before the game:
“He’s one of the few guys who I’ve seen play, especially over the last couple of weeks, that I didn’t really think could play and played. He’s got the ability to play at a high level. With all of his experience, he’s able to feed off of that. If he’s able to go, he’s going to play at that high level, because that’s his mindset.”
*
On tackle Trent Williams playing through an injury:
"I was really pleased that he was able to go. Any time you have that thigh injury it’s tough to really loosen up, but I thought he did. I thought he played at a really high level. We needed him in the game. He played good enough for us to win and I was really pleased with his effort and his mindset that he was going to protect Robert [Griffin III]. No matter what the scenario was, he was going to go out there and give it his best. For him to last the whole game, it told a lot to his teammates about what kind of mindset he had going into the game.”**********
On if he was curious to see how the Giants would play the Redskins for a second time:
“You never are really sure what adjustments people are going to make. I think when people talk about that, they talk about some of the option offense. Are they going to do things a little bit different? When it comes down to playing great defense, you have to play solid defense. We do a lot of different things on offense so if somebody tries to take something away, we feel like we have the ability to go a different direction. Sometimes there are adjustments down the road, but the great defenses we have faced through the years, they just play good solid defense and you have to out-execute them.”
*
On how close Fletcher was to not playing:
“There is a reason why he has played as many games as he has, because he is going to play no matter what. So, I can’t give you that percentage. All I could tell you is what I told you last week: 'Never count him out because you probably will be wrong.’
*
On Griffin III using his vision during the play-action pass:
“You have to have great vision. You have to be able to read coverages. Usually the big plays come
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Redskins Park
*
Executive Vice President/Head Coach Mike Shanahan
*
On the confidence of the team during this three-game win streak:
“I think any time you win those kinds of games you feel better about yourself. You find a way to get it done in the last couple minutes of the game. When you’re able to run your four-minute offense the way we did and finish the game when they know you have to run the football-they know you have to get a first down, trying to take all the time of the clock, you’re able to run the ball three times and still get a first down-the football team starts feeling good about themselves because they knew we had to run it, we knew we had to run it, and we were able to get a first down. Those types of things build a lot of confidence.”
*
On who should get credit for not allowing a sack against the Giants:
“I think you said it best. When we don’t give up a sack, it says a lot about your entire football team. It starts with your offensive line and it continues through the rest of the players. It’s a group effort. A lot of people have to do the right thing. It might be a receiver running a hot route. It may be a tight end or fullback with second effort, the quarterback getting rid of the football. A combination of a lot of different things, but like you mentioned, they’re an excellent front. It’s very hard to limit them with no sacks. I feel very good about the way our players played.”
*
On the scuffle after the fumble by running back Alfred Morris:
“It’s football. Those things happen. There’s a lot of emotion out there. At the end of the day, I just let those things go and you kind of fight through it.”
*
On if he has any concern that the team will become complacent:
“We can’t be complacent because we don’t have the opportunity to be complacent. Every game to us is like a playoff game. We understand that and our players understand that. You’re hoping that mindset is there, because if not, you’re out of it very quickly. Hopefully that’s not the case and you have the character to persevere.”
*
On if there is a certain message he sent to this team:
“We try to do it day-by-day.* We talk about how talk is cheap. What you have to do is prepare yourself. You have to get ready for each game and our players know for us to beat a football team like Baltimore that we have to take care of business each day. Guys have to prepare just like we have been all season and you have to play your best on gameday. You have to do the little things the right way, but you have to come ready to play. You have to play your best game as a group; offense, defense and special teams. You have to do it for 60 minutes because you have to find a way to win. If you don’t, you’re out of it.”
*
On the “us against the world” mentality:
“It’s not really a motivating tool. What you’re doing is you’re trying to find a way to win. When you do lose some close games, a lot of times people will lose confidence. I’ve always felt with this group that it’s a special group of people. We’ve lost some players on defense and offense. As I tell them, that’s part of the National Football League. Guys will be replaced. Sometimes it’s injuries. Sometimes it’s sickness, but guys have to step up and play at a very high level if somebody goes down. It’s taken us a while to fight through that, but I felt that we had a special group of players with a lot of character that play extremely hard. And with that type of character, you feel like you’ve always got a chance. I think we’re learning how to win, learning how to play our best football in the second half of the season. That’s what you have to do.”
On getting a good defensive performance in the second half without causing a turnover:
“It’s a combination of all of those things. Some days you’re going to score 40 points and you have to score 45. Other times you’re going to score a touchdown and you score a field goal. It doesn’t matter. Each game you have to find a way to win. I think you’re referring to the way our defense, giving up 8-out-of-10 third downs in the first half, 1-out-of-5 in the second half. That’s something we had to do to win that football game. They controlled the tempo of the game with their first four possessions. They did a heck of a job keeping the ball away from us. In the second half, we didn’t get it more times, but we kept them out of the end zone.”
*
On the motivating effect of the salary cap penalty when facing the Giants:
“I don’t know if any players knew about the salary cap as a motivation. Obviously, it goes out there in the media. I never talked about that with any of our players. It fires me up. Sure it does.”
*
On the role character plays in the success of a team:
“I felt, at least in my coaching career, you can get to the playoffs, but if you want to do something special once you get there, you have to have those types of players if you want to win it. A lot of the times, you get to the playoffs and you can win one, two or three games, but the only team that’s happy at the end of the year is the team that wins the Super Bowl. If you have those guys, you have the chance to do something special. That’s been my experience.”
*
On the performance of linebacker Rob Jackson:
“He gave some great effort. He was possessed to put some pressure on the quarterback. I thought he did a good job in the running game as well as the passing game. My hat’s off to him as well as he played and the type of desire he showed to make some plays when we needed it the most.”
*
On the performance of running back Alfred Morris in conversion scenarios:
“We’ve talked about Alfred before. He’s a heck of a young man. He’s a great talent. The reason why I mention those last three carries is because when everyone knows you have to run the football and you can run the football against a defense like that, it tells you a lot about your guys in general. When they know you have to run the ball, they know you have to eat up the clock…if you take a look at those three runs he had, you can tell there was a desire there to get the first down that a lot of people don’t have. A second effort, the ability to put a game away, usually you don’t see guys like that as rookies making those types of plays.”*
*
On why Jackson was used on third downs:
“He’s got good pass rush ability. We’ve seen it at times. We needed some more rush than we had earlier and we really had confidence that he could get it done. He showed us that he could get it done.”
*
On if linebacker Lorenzo Alexander’s coverage skills were the reason Jackson normally doesn’t play on passing downs:
“We really don’t get into the thinking during the season, why we do different things, different packages. There are always thoughts there for why we use guys in certain situations.”
*
On how he felt about linebacker London Fletcher’s injury before the game:
“He’s one of the few guys who I’ve seen play, especially over the last couple of weeks, that I didn’t really think could play and played. He’s got the ability to play at a high level. With all of his experience, he’s able to feed off of that. If he’s able to go, he’s going to play at that high level, because that’s his mindset.”
*
On tackle Trent Williams playing through an injury:
"I was really pleased that he was able to go. Any time you have that thigh injury it’s tough to really loosen up, but I thought he did. I thought he played at a really high level. We needed him in the game. He played good enough for us to win and I was really pleased with his effort and his mindset that he was going to protect Robert [Griffin III]. No matter what the scenario was, he was going to go out there and give it his best. For him to last the whole game, it told a lot to his teammates about what kind of mindset he had going into the game.”**********
On if he was curious to see how the Giants would play the Redskins for a second time:
“You never are really sure what adjustments people are going to make. I think when people talk about that, they talk about some of the option offense. Are they going to do things a little bit different? When it comes down to playing great defense, you have to play solid defense. We do a lot of different things on offense so if somebody tries to take something away, we feel like we have the ability to go a different direction. Sometimes there are adjustments down the road, but the great defenses we have faced through the years, they just play good solid defense and you have to out-execute them.”
*
On how close Fletcher was to not playing:
“There is a reason why he has played as many games as he has, because he is going to play no matter what. So, I can’t give you that percentage. All I could tell you is what I told you last week: 'Never count him out because you probably will be wrong.’
*
On Griffin III using his vision during the play-action pass:
“You have to have great vision. You have to be able to read coverages. Usually the big plays come
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