What happened yesterday? I can't dwell on it, we have a short week, we have plenty of opportunity to still do something, I just hope we play better.
What happened to the defense? We're not as bad as we showed yesterday, but they had a good plan. We made some mental mistakes, and we didn't make several plays that we could've and that resulted in big plays, a couple of them TD's. They executed better than we did.
I felt mentally we were prepared for the game, they just took it away from us.
How come Romo had a poor game? Romo had a couple of things happen that might go unseen. On the first INT, we had a mental error where another receiver should've held the safety, so the safety cheated and made the play. On the one in the endzone late in the game, you can't drive that ball thru traffic, using a lob pass is a better choice. Overall, we only had the ball 6 plays in the 1st qtr, they had it 49 plays in the 1st half. Even when we got the FG to start he second half, I thought we would get it going, but they came right back and got another one. As I said it was a poor performance. But we got work to do today and practice tomorrow to get ready for Atlanta, they present unique problem with their QB.
Will other team's copy the Saints' defense against you? They played the same defense we've been playing all year, every team plays it. Tampa, the Colts Atlanta, Carolina , each team has little nuances, but it's basically the same. They did a good job, when you're one dimensional in the second half, this can happen.
How do you approach the team after this kind of loss? The situation forces me to try and get rid of the doom and gloom around here. A lot of people would like to be in our position, but we have a couple of contenders to play back to back, but we're still in good position. If we play well the next couple of weeks, if we win out then we win the division.
What did you think about T.O.'s comments in his latest interview on Sunday? I didn't hear the interview, so I don't know.
He said you didn't talk to him after the overdose, is that true? I probably didn't talk to him but that's old news, why would you revisit it, now.
Do you talk to him regularly? We have conversations from time to time. I would say in the normal course of practice you deal with a great number of players, so you don't follow a specific pattern.
More T.O. questions: I'm not going to continue this line of questions, its old news.
The perception is it's a bad relationship, but he says it's getting better. Do you agree? There a lot of people determined to make the relationship bad.
Play of Roy Williams in coverage? We didn't play well at safety last night, on a couple of throws we were right there, but for some reason we didn't make the play. Hopefully we can do a better job. Roy is basically a strong safety, but nowadays safeties have to play all parts of the field. There is no "down" safety on every play; formations, motion, shifting, things like that makes it prohibitive. You can't be restricted to one aspect. You're going to be "down" sometimes, and then you'll be back sometimes in the middle or quarter of the field. I think we have people with certain strengths and they get into areas where they are not as comfortable.
Do you change play-calling because of the struggles at safety? You have to play the game and do what you do, you just hope the results are better, but I'm not pinning the loss on them.
Tony Parrish? I was looking for veteran, a savvy guy with experience. Our two backup players are young and inexperienced. Abe Elam hasn't played a lot but is doing well on special teams. Patrick is a rookie; he needs to take almost all the reps in practice to play well. I was just looking for more experience that doesn't need as much repetition in practice. Tony has played both positions. I haven't decided yet on splitting up the practice reps, we're meeting on that today.
T.O. made some comments that his play on the field suffered from feeling betrayed, bored etc.? I have no reaction to his statements.
Spears and Canty? Spears and Canty played a little better this week. Spears played quite a bit better. Canty didn't have as much action come his way.
Will team's copy the Saints game plan against you? The Saints have some unique players that not everybody has that provide certain problems. Atlatna has unique guys too, but at different positions.
Why couldn't you stop the passes in the flats? We made mental errors on those plays in the flats, we turned guys loose, sometimes in man-to-man, we didn't peel back to cover the backs. It's elementary stuff that we just blew. We did practice it this week, but under the heat of the game, we didn't execute. There were several times when that occurred. At the end of the game we peeled off like we were supposed to and they didn't have a play, but we didn't do it several times earlier.
Was not getting pressure on Brees part of the problem? Not as much as you might think. Several of those third downs we were there to make plays but we didn't make them. Brees bought a little time with his feet. One time he dumped it to Bush against the grain for a big play, those kinds of things. I would like to have more pressure but that's the way it is.
How much was it the game plan vs. the players' execution? When you don't execute you look back and wonder, are we trying to do things that are too complicated. With mental errors you wonder if you got things across in practice. I do as a coach; I think about are we asking Tony to do too much. When things are going well, you have a tendency to think you can supplement them, but you might get in an overload situation. We had some problems defensively last night in mental errors.
Is this the "bloody nose" game for Romo? That just doesn't fit Romo but the whole team. Generally, we had some of these early in the season where we got beat up. Now we are playing better, but we took another on the chin so we'll see what happens. I'm anxious to see how we respond.
I don't just worry about Tony I worry about all of them.
John Madden mentioned in the game that you're asking Romo to do too much? I think its something we have to talk over. Maybe cutting down on some of the options on things we are doing. They were trying to make him a pocket passer. But we didn't even get to our game plan; we were one-dimensional for 2 and a half quarters.
I'm hopeful Tony will respond, I'm sure he'll do his best.
Tony Parrish's health? Parrish is doing fine health-wise. I have to see where he is. Last week we didn't have a chance, but we met with him on Saturday and are meeting with him again today.
Are you looking at him as a backup or a starter? I don't know yet, I have to see him in practice. He only did a few reps on Friday and that's it.
What happened with bringing in Tommy Maddox? We're looking to see if we need a 3rd QB, that's what we were doing. I'm not replacing Drew as backup, just looking at a 3rd guy.
Did you think about playing Bledsoe in the 4th quarter? No.
On losing this badly: You don't like to get beating this badly, but you can only lose a game once. I learned that from the baseball guys, when they lose 13-1. We're still leading the division; we just need to play good football.
Are you concerned on how the team will react? It's human nature to be concerned. As a coach I have to try and get them back on track. Out last road game is coming up and we've won 4 on the road this year, and then we have two home games.
Hoyte injury? I don't think Hoyte's injury is that bad. I'll work him tomorrow some and I'll know more then. It's his knee.
Do you wish you'd run the ball more in the game? We only had the ball 6 plays in the first quarter, we only had the ball 22 minutes in the game. We didn't get chance to do the things we wanted to do.
Do you think about blitzing more to get pressure? We blitzed some last night.
But that was early in the game: We were making errors on some of those and that kind of scares you. We turned some guys loose but they didn't capitalize on all those errors.
You have the corners who should be able to cover on the blitzes: They were not the people who were getting beat. It was the guys on the RB's and TE's.
Gramatica? I have no second thoughts on kicker, he hit the ball solid, he just pushed it a little to the right.