Q: What did you tell your offensive line and your team today about playing in the noise in Seattle?
A: Nothing different than we tell them every time we play away, it's just that this one might be a more heightened concern just because the volume seems to be so overwhelming at times, but in terms of listening and the clues to when you can't hear the quarterback's signals, nothing changes, it's the exact same - you've got to go off of the movement of your interior linemen to the inside.
Q: Even if Adam has to play instead of Shaun?
A: No. No relevance, it's all the same.
Q: Have you guys put Kevin Boss in a little bit of a different role this season - having him be more of a blocker than a receiver?
A: I don't think so. That's always been part of what we ask of him and it's an integral part of our success, so it could be more, it hasn't been intentionally more. It's something that's always a vital area of ours and he does it very well, so percentage wise I don't know. I don't think so, but he definitely is asked to do that - to either stay in for protection purposes or chip on his way out, which impacts what routes you can ask him to do and those types of things, but usually what happens during the course of the whole season is that by the end of the season he gets the same amount of throws as he usually gets and I would imagine that it will turn out the same way.
Q: The forecast for Sunday out there is pretty much like this [rainy].
A: Oh is it? Oh, geez.
Q: How does that affect turnovers and controlling the ball, etc?
A: It makes it more difficult. It's all the more challenging, so it's all the more important that you be attentive to all of the little things that you always talk about - location of the throws, following the ball all the way in, tucking it away after the catch - all of those things that you're emphasizing anyway, especially in the context of the fact that it's been an area that we've not been good at, but it certainly heightens your concern.
Q: Can you change anything in practice? Wet footballs or anything?
A: Well, we've done that for the center-quarterback exchange, but we haven't done it in terms of throwing and catching. With the gloves now the way they are, it's really not as big of a deal as it used to be with your bare hands, but there's no question that it's easier to knock it out and it's more difficult to catch and what have you, but I think that as long as you're paying attention to all of the little things that we sound like a broken record emphasizing, but we always talk about it, I think we'll be fine.
Q: Tom called tipped passes a plague after seeing some of the games this weekend. Did you get a glimpse of any of that at all?
A: I didn't see it per se. I saw a little bit of the Jets game, I saw a couple of drops or guys got hit. You've got some great defensive players coming in, reacting quickly, knocking the ball out and doing some things, but usually it evens out over the course of a year, but we seem like we've certainly gotten our fair share during the early first half, so hopefully it'll diminish the number we get in the second half.
Q: Is the key to handling the noise getting good production on first downs?
A: Yes. Obviously, yes, but the reality of getting that done and trying to get it done or setting it as an objective are two different things. It's just like if you can get an early lead, that takes the crowd out of the game too. That's our plan - well, that would be our plan every game.
Q: It is an area that you've been successful in this year.
A: Yeah. It's certainly something you'd like to do, but to be quite honest, it's no different than what we're trying to do every game - get off to an early start and of course we tried to do it last week and failed miserably at it, but fortunately rebounded and played very well after that, but that's certainly an advantage if you can make the distance that you have to go on third down more manageable or you jump up on them and take the crowd out of it.
Q: Anything in particular that you look at after self-scouting this past week that shows why you have been so successful on first down or is it just execution?
A: Yeah. I think we've done a good job in our preparation, having a sense of what we're anticipating them giving us and calling plays that give our guys a chance to be successful and then the implementation of the calling or the actual execution, the guys have done a good job with it, so it's a combination of all of those things. Hopefully that will show up on Sunday.
Q: Looking at their defense, does their rookie safety Thomas jump out at you?
A: He looks like a good player. They mostly keep him back and in a cover position, so he looks athletic and like a guy that can react to where the quarterback is looking and get a good jump on the ball and covers a lot of ground.
Q: Those meetings that Eli runs - what do the players get out of those and how rare is that?
A: I don't know. We've been doing that for years. It's fairly common in the league, where you take the extra time, you put together a film of things that....he hears me say it and now it's a chance to say it and reinforce and kind of strengthen and say, Hey, here is what they're talking about here, here's what I'm expecting to have happen, Coach said this, we're going to call that and this is what I'm going to do. So all of the things that we've educated him on, he's turning around and reinforcing it with the other guys.
Q: When you self scout do you look at the Giants defense too?
A: No. Not at all. We've got enough just looking at ourselves.