Here are my highlights from the Wade Phillips press conference.
I
njury Situation:
Miles Austin - sprained knee 4-6 weeks
Kevin Burnett - surgery went fine, expect him for opening game
Terence Newman - may practice this week, maybe play last preseason game
Anthony Spencer - should be back this week
Justin Rogers - Grade I shoulder sprain which is minor OK for this game
Ronnie Cruz - similar injury to Rogers
Chris Canty - right hip contusion, no problem
Marcus Dixon - back problems, don’t know if he’ll practice
Quincy Butler - maybe this week or next.
Mental mistakes like missed assignments and some of the penalties were the big problem in the
Denver game. A little unsure about some of the calls and wants to talk to the NFL about the tripping call and how late is a late hit to get clarification. We don’t tackle in practice and you can only see that in game and we need work on that so we’re playing the starters a lot more this week, also want to get the timing in passing game.
Special teams played well because they hardly made any mental mistakes. Felix Jones may play some kickoff return in the next games but there are several guys who can do it, Isaiah Stanback continues look good, Orlando Scandrick looked good, Pacman wants to do everything, as does Felix. Felix is becoming integral to the offense, too. Makes us a little reluctant to play Felix on that team because there are more injuries on kickoffs than other phases of the game.
We have enough WR’s without Miles to be a strong group.
It’s possible the starters will play three quarters Friday.
Miles Austin has come a long way, we saw the potential, he’s reaching it now, played well the last two games. His routes are better, his confidence up, he made two contested balls look like easy catches in the game, he’s learning how to do that.
We didn’t double #15 (Brandon Marshall), we would have, they threw it to him in practice all week, but we played our base stuff and got that down. We also played a lot of people, we’ll hone it down this week to guys we’re counting on.
The blocked punt was a great play by Tashard Choice, he was the hold-up guy and could press the punt if he thinks he can block it, that shows he has moxie, we had two spies who didn’t wait to see the ball punted, they left early. That won’t happen again. Choice keeps improving on special teams. He contributed more on ko coverage, ko return and punt return. He’s a young player who wants to do it.
Isaiah Stanback will get a lot of work, he’s doing better and better, he’ll get his opportunity. He ran good routes in the game, he’s a strong runner after the catch. It’s about confidence with him, we’re looking at him as one of our WR’s and he’ll get more playing time.
Adam Jones played a bit on Saturday, he’s started to get his timing back. Adam almost had a pick six, he’ll get one this year and had a great punt return. He asked me to do punt or kickoff return last week, I said no wait until we get home, he came back to me and said “coach just give me a kickoff or punt return.” I said OK if they were backed up and we could return it. He might not have known about the spiking rule, but he does now, it won’t happen again.
Bradie James played alright in the nickel role of Burnett, he’s been playing consistently in preseason, he’s in a groove, he had 5 tackles and a knock down on a third down pass. We’ll do more things on defense than what we did, we we’re vanilla on third downs, ran the same coverages. With Burnett out, Bradie will play in that role but Bobby can play it and Zach can play it, too.
Roy Williams has had a good camp, he hasn’t played a whole lot yet, he needs more playing time like a lot of the starters. His coverage has been good
