We played better tonight. That's the bottom line. We played better. New England came in here and had not turned the ball over the entire preseason and we got two. That was good. I didn't like the pick at the end. The high ball, tipped ball is always trouble. A lot of people had a lot of opportunities tonight. Did some good things and there were some bad things. There were some things that the people who were being studied, some of them really did a nice job and came through and gave us good thoughts there were others other times when that wasn't the case but nice win, nice to see Bomar and Duke Calhoun come back late like that and make a play. As I said, we got a lot of snaps, I thought Shawn Andrews, William Beatty on the left side in that third quarter did a pretty good job. I liked the first offense and the drive. I liked the turnover that we got with Rolle's turnover there in the first half. The goal line stand was clearly a huge play in the game. So, nice to win and hopefully we didn't...we had a couple things with Dillard with the hamstring, Courtney Brown with the ankle, Andre Brown had a turf toe. He was a late scratch.
Q: This week, your first team offense went right down there and gets that touchdown drive to start the game. How much does that tell you about the guys?A: That was a challenge. It was a challenge. Everything is a challenge. It was good to see the poise and the execution and the way in which Eli engineered the drive and distributed the ball around. Bradshaw made some plays. Boss, of course, with the play there. It was good for us to drive and I wish we would have been able to do that in the second as well.
Q: With that ball loose on the ground there with Eli, were you concerned given what happened in the Jets game?
A: My number one concern was how did the ball get out. He works so hard to clear traffic and sometimes he loses control of the ball. I was very happy that there was no one right on top of him.
Q: Did Jonathan Goff really get a chance to establish himself tonight?
A: Yes he did. That helped. As long as he doesn't have anything come up physically that would set him back. I thought he really enjoyed it and was relaxed and got to be instinctive and made some really nice physical plays out there. As you look at it, we were down in numbers to start with at linebacker. We lost one right away so our combinations were all messed up so Goff had to go. We got the snaps taken care of with Keith and so on. So it just happened to work out that Jon had to take ton of snaps, and he did. I think he benefits from it.
Q: How much did Bomar establish himself?
A: He certainly played well. He scrambled well. He did some very nice things and stood in the pocket well. The kid stands in there now. He'll stand in there until the last second. There are still some things I wish we could get corrected from the mechanical standpoint, but he's constantly working on it. He did a nice job.
Q: What happened with that first extra point?
A: Muffed. I hadn't seen that probably the whole spring and summer. It happened one other time in practice this week which uh-oh - what's that all about? I mean, come one.
Q: How did you think special teams did overall?
A: Well, I didn't like obviously the first cover. I mean, that was ridiculous. He put it two yards into the end zone. Ball comes out to the plus 45. But I thought we did some pretty good things as we went along. We had our own kickoff returns which weren't too bad. Again, some of our punts were very good. Some didn't have the hang time we would like, but again we got some good experiences in regards to that. Lawrence (Tynes) continues to do a nice job. His kickoffs are strong and far, and they're carrying. There's distance there so our coverage should be better than it is. When you go into the 53 number, there are going to be some guys that have got to help us on special teams that haven't had a lot of that work.
Q: Your defense talked about getting off the field last week. Did that frustrate you?
A: Yeah, it did. That was the goal. Get them out. Get them off the field. But it was better. I think it was an improvement. We did improve in that area. It wasn't great, but it was an improvement.
Q: How much energy....
A: The first drive. The first drive was very good. I just felt the guys played better. They performed better. It looked like they were much more into what they were doing tonight.
Q: When did the Andre Brown thing come up?
A: He's had it. He's been limping around all week. He's been doing what he could do. We've tried to cut him back on some of the snaps, but he just could not get to a point where he was real comfortable.
Q: Do you think Kenny Phillips is ready for full time duty?
A: He played probably mid-20s in terms of snaps, maybe a little more than that. I think he really played well. He's in good shape. As always, we'll see what the training room looks like in the morning.