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On how many quarterbacks could make the throw Carson Wentz made to Mack Hollins last night:
“Yeah, that’s part of it, you know? And I’ll tell you what, that was a heck of a throw. He launched it and normally D.J. [Swearinger] makes that play, but I think you’re right, I think he might have just taken that play for granted because he was so far down the field. He didn’t think the ball would get thrown, but it did get thrown. He has a cannon of an arm and made a great throw. That was one big play and there was a couple of other big plays that the kid made that you’ve got to tip your hat to him. But when it’s all said and done, you look at the tape, there’s four or five plays in that game that he made that we didn’t make that were the difference, defensively anyway. Offensively, we had our own issues, but he’s just a great player with a great arm.”
On if C Spencer Long could be available on Sunday:
“I think there’s…I don’t know. It’s really hard for me to say on any of these guys. You know, I think Spencer, McClure, Preston, Trent, Fabian, Brandon… Morgan probably has the best chance to play, but we’ll have to wait and see, you know? I’m hoping… usually the day after a game people are really, really sore and less optimistic than they are two and three days after the game. So we gave them another day off, just a walkthrough and meetings tomorrow. I gave them a little extra day to try to recover, and then Thursday I think will be a telling tale as far as optimism is concerned with a lot of these guys. So hopefully time will heal all wounds, but if they don’t, we’ll have to get some other guys ready. T.J. will have to get ready to go, obviously Chase will have to get ready to go and Catalina might have to get ready to go, so we just have got to continue to coach the guys who are not playing right now and prepare them to get ready to play.”
On how he can help the team prepare for a short week:
“Yeah, I think that the one thing that I’m pretty decent at is trying to get a gauge for how our team is feeling, physically, number one, and that’s my job to make sure that… The majority of these guys will run through a brick wall for the Washington Redskins, that’s for sure, that’s why I love this group. But I also have to be smart and make sure I understand that this is a long year and I’ve got to make sure that these guys are healthy. And there are some things we can do as far as more walkthroughs are concerned, more meeting time, and less pounding and running and physical contact, which, really about Week 6 or 7 it isn’t the end of the world. But we do need it for some of these younger guys who haven’t played. I’ll try to get those guys the work but the guys who are a little bit banged up obviously I’ll taper off of them.”
On if he is hesitating to have Pryor and Doctson on the field at the same time:
“No, it’s just the way we do it. We have had Terrelle Pryor, since he walked in the door, he’s been playing one position. When you have a receiver that hasn’t been playing receiver a whole lot in his career, you don’t want him bouncing around playing three positons. And Josh, very similar. He didn’t practice a whole lot last year, he’s only in his second year here so we wanted him to really learn one position and they happen to both be at X. [Jamison] Crowder, [Ryan] Grant we felt good about at Z, [Brian] Quick can play some Z and then obviously Crowder plays inside. Maybe in the future, maybe we can move Josh over to Z and I’m sure Josh could play some Z if need be, but we like Crowder out there, we like Grant out there and we like where we’re at there.”
On QB Kirk Cousins’ interception:
“We had Jamison Crowder on the high cross right behind that player. Chris Thompson couldn’t quite get out as fast as he was supposed to. He was supposed to track that player who got the pick, but Chris kind of helped with the offensive linemen a little bit longer than we would have liked, but still, I would like it better safe than sorry. So, Chris, I’m not faulting Chris at all. He did was he was supposed to do. If he feels like there’s pressure, he’s going to help with the offensive line and make sure there’s no pressure. But the player that was covering Chris was just standing there. Kirk was I think trying to drop it over that player’s head to get it to Jamison and I think his arm got hit and it went right to the player.”
On the team’s performance on third-and-short:
“We have not been faring well. We’ve tried to smash it up the gut a couple times and got rejected. We tried a couple bootlegs that have been successful. Last night, we had like one and a half. It was my first one. Third-and-one-and-a-half, closer to two. They were packed in there pretty good. They do a really good job with their safety play. Malcolm Jenkins does a good job setting the edge along with the defensive ends. They force everything and they pinch the defensive ends and the three-technique is a hell of a player – [Fletcher] Cox – so it’s hard to just say, ‘OK, let’s run it up the middle.’ It’s easier said than done. So we thought we had a nice little pick play to Jordan. Unfortunately, didn’t quite get the depth we were looking for and the pick we were looking for. Didn’t work out. The second one, had a chance to maybe run it, had another play we had a busted route on it and lost a part of the pick play and failed to convert. You’ve got your runs, you’ve got your play passes, you’ve got your boots, you’ve got your pick plays for man-to-man and we went with the pick plays and we felt strongly we were going to get man-to-man and neither one of them we got the picks necessary to make the play work.”
On the function of a lighter Wednesday:
“Normally Wednesday is one of our heavier days, but since we played on a Monday, physical game like it was with as many injuries as we have, I made Wednesday like a Tuesday. So we’ll have a walkthrough and meeting and introduce the Cowboys. We’ll put this tape to bed. We’ll get our corrections made on Philadelphia, we’ll introduce the Cowboys, have a walkthrough. Then Thursday we’ll have probably more of a walkthrough and try to get out there and practice a little bit, give them the looks necessary and then Friday we’ll get some red zone and some more third downs and try to get some more looks and Saturday might have to do a little bit more on Saturday to make up for losing Wednesday. But we’ll get our work in. I think right now it’s most important to let them know who we’re playing, obviously, let them know what they’re doing defensively, what our plan of attack is on both sides of the ball and then trying to get the reps the best way we can with the amount of bodies we have available.”
On WR Jamison Crowder’s fumble on a punt return:
“Well, he didn’t drop it; he just fumbled it. I promised he wouldn’t drop another punt. I think the ball just got hit. It was just one of those things, we’ve just got to make sure we just take care of the ball. Jamison is a sure-handed guy. It’s just very uncharacteristic of him having three balls put on the ground as a punt returner. We’ll have to keep studying the tape, where he’s holding the ball, how he’s holding the ball, and Randy [Jordan] will work with him and hopefully we’ll get it fixed because we need to take care of the dang ball, that’s for sure.”
On if he still has faith in Crowder at punt returner:
“We don’t have any other returners right now, so he is our returner. It’s not like we have punt returners coming out of the woodwork. We have him and Kendall Fuller, who really didn’t even do it in college. That’s kind of where we are right now with the punt returner position. He’s our guy, and I have faith that he’ll get it right.”
On if T Ty Nsekhe’s injury has taken longer than expected:
“We were told three to six weeks. So we took the optimistic approach with him because he is such an important key player as far as our depth of our offensive line. We were hoping it would be closer to three [weeks]. But we didn’t know – it could be closer to six. It depends. He’s such a big guy that it’s just taking a little bit longer. It’s not anything he is doing wrong, it’s just a tough injury for him. He will, I’m sure, do the best he can do get ready as fast as he can. He’s that type of guy. It’s just taking a little bit longer than we anticipated.”
On Nsekhe’s workload this week:
“We’re going to try increase his workload a little bit, try to get him a little bit of work in individual and we’ll see where he is. But it will probably be a long shot for him to play this week.”
On special teams:
“You would like to have some momentum-changing-type plays on special teams. I think Tress has had a good year. We’ve had some good punt coverage except for the return last week. For the most part, I feel pretty good about our punt coverage. And again, when Fabian [Moreau] goes down with his hamstring and Dunny [Quinton Dunbar] is thrust into the starting lineup, you lose two key, integral parts of your punt coverage team. You know, we’ve had to mix and match there. And some other key players get knocked out a little bit and obviously Mason Foster with his injury, he’s been taking off some of the special teams. It’s been tough. We have been trying to get some people out there to play. They’ve been doing a pretty good job. Kickoff return – we only had one opportunity and didn’t get much done there. For the most part, it’s been a wash, I think. I don’t think we’re giving up any momentum-type-changing plays but we’re not getting any. So, that’s something we have to figure out how to do.”