Wade Phillips press conference 10/1/08

Summary of Wade Phillips' press conference today.

Tank Johnson didn’t participate in practice but did his rehab stuff which is still strenuous on his ankle. A lot like last week, he’ll probably practice tomorrow. Of course, Kyle Kosier and Roy Williams didn’t practice. Pat Watkins didn’t participate, he’s had a stinger for the last couple of games and we’re being very careful with that. Stephen Bowen was limited, had a slight hamstring during the game, so we limited him, Deon Anderson was back for the full practice and Jason Witten had a full practice.

The games are most important thing but we didn't practice well last Wednesday. It may have been a little indicator. There's no direct correlation between good and bad practices and the game, it's hard to tell. But I think if you practice well, you play better. We had a good practice today.

Courtney Brown played a lot of the game, all the sub-packages, Pat Watkins only played in the regular defense, but he got banged-up again. He didn't practice today so he might not play this week. Courtney and Keith Davis will get more reps.

Terminology is the key thing for Keith to pick up, but our terminology hasn't changed and they (Miami) probably had some of the same terminology there. Keith didn't seem to have a problem picking it up.

I think we will get Montrae Holland in this week, I said we hope to last week, but we will this week. He won't start, Cory Procter will start.

Pat Watkins probably needs a one game break , two weeks where he doesn't have to hit anybody and with treatment, they think it will calm down. We don't want something that's chronic.

Deon Anderson did everything today in pads and we hit today. He had no problems.

Chad Johnson is a top receiver and they have others, too. He's capable of a big game certainly. We're going to take that in consideration. He's going to have some big games this year, I just hope it's not against us.

You never underestimate an opponent. The first opponent is always yourself, that's the main focus, you have to get yourself ready to play. Then learning about the other team is the next focus. We never underestimate other teams. They took the Giants to overtime, they're playing hard and they have talented players.

We're going to alleviate the run game issues from last week. We want longer drives with more plays, then we can get the ball to more players. Control the football. What  happened last week has happened in other games that we won, but it wasn't a big deal when we won.

Tony Romo doesn't do anything we don't want him to do. Certain plays have an option for a run or a pass. He does exactly what we tell him to do. He reads the defense and makes the call he's supposed to. He doesn't just come up and think "oh, I'll just go with a pass this time." It's not like he's on his own and just doing what he wants to do. He does exactly what he's told. We need to set it up differently, maybe audible from a run to a different run or something. (Wade was chastising the press for making it seem like Romo was doing the wrong thing by audibling to all the pass plays).

It's a difficult situation when the team has two QB's who are different types. One guy (Ryan Fitzpatrick) ran for 41 yards last week, Carson Palmer is more in the pocket. It's a different mindset and sometimes different defenses, you have to have two game plans. Palmer's a great QB, a number one pick at QB that came through, he's certainly worth the number one pick, a top-notch QB. Against the Giants, they did a good job and moved the ball well.

Turnovers by our defense are an emphasis every week. Especially with our offense being high-powered, we emphasize getting off the field. We've made stops on fourth down which is like a turnover. I think the turnovers will come, we're aggressive enough.