Q: With Shaun O'Hara injured, are going to insert Koets or just move Rich over and put Andrews in there and shake up the whole line?
A: A lot of things enter into that and we could stand here for an hour and a half, because that's about how long the discussion goes on...hours to decide what's the best way to do it. I think we felt that Adam has been playing well enough that he deserved the chance to start because by doing that, we've made less overall changes. It's one person, so rather than changing three, you're changing one. If we didn't think he could do the job or he hadn't been playing well when we've asked him to do it, you couldn't make that decision, but he's earned it. There's no question he's earned the chance to get an opportunity and we're optimistic that he's going to play well and confident that he will. We'll see.
A: Yeah. He started at tackle and he's moved inside. We just felt that he was probably better suited to be an inside player and last year he started to really come on and we were really optimistic about...hey, here's a guy who could be an interchangeable part in that guard/center mix and then he got himself hurt in that New England game and he tried to play through that. He actually showed great physical courage doing it, but the problem was that it was a high ankle sprain and it set him back for about the next 8-10 weeks and all the sudden Kevin Boothe became the guy and he kind of got left on the sidelines. This year, you say, oh, he's been hurt, he hasn't really done it yet and then sure enough he starts coming around and then he got himself injured in the New England game again but fortunately it wasn't the kind of injury that took him out so he's been in the mix really since the pads went on and it looked like, can he do it? Yeah. He looks like the same guy that we thought he was four years ago.
Q: If he has to start, will you be holding your breath?
A: No. I think he'll play well. You hate to see any of your starters - and of course Shaun has been such a terrific player, you're not just losing a player, you're losing a very good player and guy that's been out there, that's experienced everything so you hate to see that happen but we do have confidence that Adam will play well.
Q: Do you look at Shawn Andrews as a guard or a tackle at this point?
A: That's the million dollar question. Right now we've got no choice. He's got to play them all, but we've kind of had to say, hey, you're the swing tackle now. We were looking to make him the swing guard and then when William Beatty got hurt then we kind of said, you know what, we can't afford to just...even though we're trying to spoon-feed you and bring you up slowly so you learn the offense and you only have to learn these positions...all of the sudden we've had to switch those positions and now it's not the inside, it's the outside.
Q: Does that factor into your decision to have Koets in there so that you don't have to move Shawn around?
A: To me, he's got nothing to do with it anymore because he's a tackle. Right now we're better off just knowledge-wise and performance-wise with Adam.
Q: The offensive line had a little bit of a down week last week. What can you do this week to get them going again?
A: I wish we had an easy solution to that. You hope and you know that the character of the group...it's wearing on them. It's difficult for them not to have played well. We just haven't been consistent with the running game this year. We stress it so much that it's disappointing but if you look at it statistically, we were better last week than we were the week before so hopefully we're headed in the right direction and that you'll continue to see some dividends from our commitment to it. They struggled against two outstanding pass-rushers in a hostile, loud environment last week so we'll at least have the benefit of being home, which is a good thing now that...they've got to play better and just our unit has to play better because we never ask just our tackles to block. We've been helping our tackles for years with chips here and tight ends there. The guards have to slide on all of those things. They didn't have their best game but we didn't have as good of a game as we needed to as a unit in helping assist those guys, especially under the conditions of last Sunday.
Q: Are you going into Sunday thinking that Shaun is not going to play?
A: You always go into that...you hope for the best and say, hey, if he does, that's great, but you always prepare for the other.
Q: Do you have to do a similar thing with the Titans speed-rushers though because they're pretty fast, too?
A: They're good players. They're the number one defense in the league. They're great players. Number one against the pass. Certainly they've got good cover guys, but a lot of it is because of the quality of the rush, so yeah, but we do that every game and we've very cognizant of the ability level that they have and we expect our tackles to play well. I think they will. I think they'll rebound. They've got tremendous pride, but also as a group, we'll make sure that we do a better job than we did in terms of helping and assisting.