Wade Phillips press conference 10/13/08

Summary of Wade Phillips' press conference today.

Bobby Carpenter still has a groin strain and didn't practice. Felix Jones didn't practice. Isaiah Stanback popped out his shoulder so were waiting to see on him...

(Lost the feed here, when the feed came back I thought he was talking about Stanback's shoulder)  If it calms down again it will be fine, don't know about the long-term for surgery.

Brad Johnson will hold for us, we have the most confidence in him. He'll have to be the #2 QB or we'll need to keep three QB's active. Mat McBriar could have done it but we lost him as the backup holder. We're leaning towards two QB's active. With Carpenter looking like he may be down, special teams is a concern first, having enough people is a concern.

(Receivers and corners were going against each individually before practice in press coverage drills?)  We've seen a lot of press coverage the last four or five games, we try to work on it, we've been doing that drill in practice. Also, teams we play who play press coverage we do the drill in practice for the offense and it helps our defensive players too, working on their press technique.

Terence Newman seems fine, he looks to be back, he has a purpose and that is to play well this game, he feels comfortable. It gives us an opportunity to do some things we weren't doing before on defense.

The pass rush is good, we got a good rush team. I thought the last couple of games they've been very good. Against Tampa Bay we got to him a couple of times and got some pressure. Eli Manning had only been sacked six times before we played them and we sacked him four times and put pressure on him. We're getting stronger in that area. That's something we wanted to establish, that's needed for good pass defense and just good defense.

(John Madden said that besides Ware and Ratliff nobody else gets a pass rush on this team?) I don't know what he said but if we're not as good as the numbers show I don't know what can be said. We were fourth in the league last year and we're up there again in sacks and we play in a division were there aren't a lot of sacks on QB's. We have some good individual rushers and we try to put them in good situations. The numbers are there.

Anthony Spencer has developed on the line of scrimmage as a run player, he's hard to block, he's learned the techniques we wanted and does them efficiently. He has a quick start from the 2-point stance and is very athletic. He has caught on to playing all out on every play, sometimes it takes young guys longer to figure that out. He came on in training camp and he's played like that. We brought him back one game for six plays and he made three tackles before he got hurt again. He will be a good player for us. His transition from defensive end in college to OLB is complete, in my experience he's made that transition. We may spell Ware some with him and keep Ellis in the game some. It just depends on DeMarcus. He's had sacks at the end of games that have been important, so he can give it all out the whole game. But if he needs a break we can do it now.

I don't really know what impact DeAngelo Hall will have this week, it just depends. It's kind of like us getting Pacman and it was hard to do a lot with him then, just tell him to go cover this guy. Talent-wise he's talented. It will be interesting to see how much he plays.