Bill Parcells did have a press conference today but it was a different kind of one, held at the stadium and more formal in tone (well, except when old Jerry got in on the act). I guess it wasn't shown live but the replay is up on DC.com. I think it was for a Miller Light function or something, anyway, here's what he said.
Encouraged by the work on the side that Flozell did, we'll see where he is tomorrow morning.
Thinks Minnesota will be a good test. The have good young defense. They have 3 first rounders on their front line.
Limited reps with Terrell yesterday, he was fine this morning and he practiced this morning. Don't know if he'll play but we might dress him. It's up to him if he wants to get some plays, we might do it.
Young team, defense hasn't played a lot. I would rather the first unit get some work tomorrow or they might lose their sharpness. We got 9 days until another game after this.
Roster spots are up for grabs tomorrow. But not a lot, talked to management about it yesterday. Teams are interested in some of our players.
Just trying to keep them on track this game. Minnesota is going to give us some problems. We've only run two blitzes this preseason. We've been very conservative in preseason on defense.
Canty and Spears are good young developing players. Marcus has to fight to keep his weight at 300, Chris has built himself up to 300. Fortunate to get both those guys in one draft. Prototypical for our style of defense. A long way from being where I think they can go. Marcus missed some time but he has plenty of athletic ability, you have to prod him. Chris played the same defense in college, gave him an advantage, much like Fasasno.
This team is willing to work, not lazy, tried to spend time with them todeay on situations, I want a smart team. They've responded well, I've tested them, today I would call something out indiscriminately and they had to respond. 5 seconds left, we're winning, Bledsoe or Baker have to get in their and make the call. Their punting from deep in their endzone, 10 seconds to go in the first half, what do we do, or we just tackled them for a safety. I want them to respond properly, without any coaching. (Parcells brought up the play in the last game about the long pass then having to call timeout).
Stanley and Johnson? Johnson knows a little bit more about what we're doing. Impressed us a little last year, especially nickel situation. Stanley is green, learning a new defense. Stanley is bigger, Johnson is quicker. That's a position that will be in question. I doubt we can keep both of the players. Jay Ratliff could do it if had to, tried him there the last couple of days. (Roster hint: either Stanley or Johnson goes).
Vandy, I expect him to kick the first kickoff and take a couple of FG's if we can get in position.
We have a plan to work Terrell in, we have a numerical number of plays. Trying to run some of his primary plays. He was in a lot of this situational stuff today, because he hasn't been in it in camp. He's got some days here after the game that can be used to everybody's advantage in conditioning and stamina. Our training staff has been running a pretty good workload on him the last few days before he practiced.
(Reporter asked him if he ever had his relationship with a player scrutinized as much as this one with Terrell Owens. Parcells responded with a whimsical tone). Oh I don't know I've had a few, I had a thing up in New York with a QB named Simms, it wasn't that good of news for a while. (Then got serious) It's a different era now, so much more electronic media and it's a coast to coast thing not just local, that's different. Nation-wide commentary going on about things here in Dallas, they're 800 miles away and they don't know what's going on, so that's different. It just part of it now, so you have to acclimate to it.
Don't know if Adams or Terrell plays in Jax. Flozell is getting better, much better over the last few days. His calf bled out again after some rehab. But that's good, it means it's healing.
One of the things I want to do with Terrell if we could, I want him on the sideline for him to learn our sideline game operation. They're all different in the league. I would hope he could dress, we'll just see where he is tomorrow.
(Reporter asked who his most difficult cut was? It took Parcells about 20 seconds of thinking and uhmming to answer) I would probably say Quincy Carter. I was saddened by the whole thing; we invested a lot of time. A year and a half of time invested then you find out it's not going to work.
The game operation has gone from chaos in Seattle, to a little delirium in San Fran, to smoothing out last game, and hopefully we can get is right this week. The chaos early was due to so many players on the roster at the time. Right now we have Chris Palmer up (in the booth), David Lee up, Paul Pasqualoni up and Mike McIntyre up. That may change; I don't like more on the sideline I like less.
(Jerry Jones stood up and said he was a reporter in San Antonio and wanted to know who was the boss out there, when was he going to let old Jerry back on the sideline and is there an off-track betting scheme going out there? Parcells aksed how many questions was that, it sounded like a trilogy to me. Everyone got a good laugh).