Wade Phillips press conference 9/17/08 - Deon Anderson surgery, out of game

Paraphrase of Wade Phillips' press conference today.

Deon Anderson will have his left knee scoped; it's a clean-out situation, not any ligament problems. He'll be out a couple of weeks. Sam Hurd and Kyle Kosier went through a limited practice today (no pads for the team). All the others practiced except Roy and Deon. Not a full-blown practice today. I think they'll all play but we need to see with Kosier and Hurd. Deon and Roy are definitely out. Kosier has come along well, we'll see after a practice with pads. After a full practice we'll see.

Deon Anderson will be replaced by TE's mainly. The problem is you have to cut somebody if you call up Julius Crosslin. We play a lot of TE's at FB so we can adjust that way. We can play more receivers, a lot of options, we could play three TE's when we need to run. Guys like Witten and Curtis can play the FB blocking position. Deon's knee bothered him in the game and just kept bothering him, so they decided to clean it out. It's a recent injury but it wasn't in the last game. Deon has come along good enough to be our starting FB, he's done good things. Our running attack is strong with him in there.

Zach Thomas has played really well, he's a difference maker in the running and passing game. There's a reason he was in the Pro Bowl for 7 consecutive years. He hit the QB a couple of times, has 5 pressures in the first two games, active player. Real instinctive. No physical limitations. He had one of the harder licks in the game, he hit Westbrook on a screen. He studies everything since he got here, you can trust a guy like that. He has a knack but he also studies the opponent. Both he and Bradie are smart guys.

Pat Watkins has range, he's a good tackler, and pretty good in man-to-man. He's not as good a communicator as you want in a FS and that gave him some problems. He's got good range and will hit you and we can put him in man-to-man.

Aaron Rodgers played good against us last year. I was impressed with him last year, he was ready to play and did a good job. Not surprised he's done well this year.

Our rookie class has shown up really well. We expected them to be good but they've been better than expected.

We'd like to get Felix Jones touches on offense instead of kickoffs, because on kickoffs means the other team is scoring points. It's not easy because we have a great back already there who can give you big plays, too. Felix does give you some juice, we'll  try to work him more and more, we have plays just for him. Once we saw in preseason that he can catch a swing pass and go 29-yards and we can hand him the ball and he might break it. He picks up blitzes and catches the ball well. How much we put him in is yet to be determined but we'll try to work him in.

Green Bay is still similar on offense to what they did with Favre. Not too many things that Favre was doing that Rodgers is not able to do. He throws the ball well, he can scramble, a lot of the same things. They've fine-tuned it for him.

On defense they have a good rush, play a lot of man-to-man, they challenge you with that. They play the run well, they're a good defensive team.