Wade Phillips press conference 10/30/08

Summary of Wade Phillips' press conference today.

The same guys practiced today, Anthony Henry and Anthony Spencer practiced, it looks like they'll play, that's good news. The other guys didn't practice. Jason Witten we'll have to see about later in the week.

With Witten it's a pain problem. We have to address that first, if the pain is the same as it has been he can't play. With some pain he can play, if it's where it has been the last couple of days then he can't play. We'll go with the two TE's we have (Bennett, Curtis).

Martellus Bennett played 55 plays last week, we expect him to play and play well. You should be prepared every game that's what we expect, it's not always the case, but the corners came in and played well last week. Bennett was a good blocker in college, he's done a fair to good job competing and blocking on this level. He's learning. The routes and those things are tougher to learn. The blocking is tough too, but he's come along quicker in the blocking.

Brooks Bollinger took a few reps with the first team, the same as yesterday.

Anthony Henry looks like he'll play and start. (Any thoughts about moving him to safety?) We played him inside on dime stuff earlier in the year when we had more players, that was good, it's not exactly a safety but we were moving him around. Ken Hamlin is the FS and has played well, that would be more Henry's spot if he moved to safety.

We blitzed Hamlin some in the game. It's all about the protections and who we think can get free. Sometimes it's about matchups, other times to get one-on-ones, it's not all out blitzes. It's harder to get a guy free but that's what we try to do. Bradie James came free and that's a result of our planning. You can blitz everybody and always get a guy free but you're vulnerable then. We're scheming to get somebody free and other times it's to get certain matchups and get pressure that way. A lot of times it's a 5 man rush, but if you can get somebody free like a safety or inside backer that they don't see coming, that's part of the scheme. That was because of how we perceived they would block and we attacked. Some teams will block the safety and we'll try to get someone else free.

We've seen the Giants several games against the 3-4 defense now, we'll probably see a similar running attack and how they attack the defense in the running game. The passing game can have different coverages whether it's the 3-4 or 4-3, teams have different schemes and you can use any type of coverage in a 3-4 or 4-3, it doesn't matter. But up front it helps to see how they attack in the running game.

Our goal is to protect the QB. Part of it is to run the football, or use a quicker passing game and sometimes you use max-protect. We've run some max-protect, but you want Witten in the route he can get open on a blitz. We think it's better to release him in most cases. It depends on how they attack.

We have moved T.O. around, we put him in slot, we'll keep trying it. It's similar to last year. (Why do you think his production is down?) He's had double coverage, and they've put pressure on us. Now we've had games with 200 yards rushing because they covered him all the time and also good games from other players. Lately we haven't done quite as well.

Anthony Spencer says he's well and the trainers say he's well, we'll go from there. Whenever he played last, he was dynamic but only got six plays in before the injury, but they couldn't block him. He had a tremendous training camp but has been hampered by injuries. He can get off blocks, they have trouble blocking him.

They use their TE's similar to before. They used to put Shockey, they split him out sometimes to get a one-on-one, they don't do that now, but other than that they utilize similar, maybe a little more in blocking to help the running game, otherwise it's similar.