Q: What happened to Tyler Sash?
Coughlin: His ankle locked up, is what they said to me. Otherwise, I have no idea. I’ll have to wait till I get inside.
Q: Osi didn’t practice…
Coughlin: Osi has some swelling, so we shut him down.
Q: His knee?
Coughlin: Yes, it’s more precautionary than anything. He’s practiced every practice.
Q: Are you concerned?
Coughlin: I love it when you ask me if I’m concerned. I don’t know. No, I’m not concerned. If anything drives you nuts in this business, it’s that stuff.
Q: With the Wednesday game and all these guys nicked up, does it change your approach?
Coughlin: It’s going to be normal. I’ll approach it the best way that we can. We have a bunch of people, some who played pretty well the other night, some who didn’t. The opportunity is there.
Q: How much will the starters play?
Coughlin: We’ll see. We’ll have to make good decisions on a lot of these guys.
Q: Jacquian Williams seems to be around the ball a lot since he came back from injury?
Coughlin: That’s a good thing. He had a nice catch, a nice play out there today.
Q: How difficult is it to make the cuts when you have guys like Shaun Rogers and Terrell Thomas injured?
Coughlin: It’s very, very difficult because, first and foremost, you have an obligation to play the games in the preseason. So while we can talk all we want about, ‘we have to meet this deadline with these cuts,’ somebody has to play the game. So if you have an injury or two at a spot, it affects what you’re going to do. It makes it a difficult, anxious kind of a thing. You can walk out there and have things set in your mind, and then something happens and you have to adjust.
Q: Is David Wilson’s preseason having any effect on your perception of Danny Ware’s role?
Coughlin: Not necessarily.
Q: Will you hold Hakeem Nicks out for the last preseason game?
Coughlin: We have another practice to go and then we’ll make a call on that. He practiced pretty close to full speed today. He did a great job after the catch, of turning and running, those are the things we need to see, and then see how he feels a little bit afterwards, and so on.
Q: You got a couple of d-ends making plays – Ojomo and Broha. What do you see out of the two of them?
Coughlin: Good effort players, young, very green, but show flashes of talent and have done that in games with consistency, too.
Q: Ojomo seems to do it in bunches.
Coughlin: Been around the ball. He’s gotten to the quarterback and Broha is pretty close most of the time too.
Q: Ojomo didn’t do a lot of that in college. Is that something he’s developing here as far as the pass rushing?
Coughlin: He’s in with a group of defensive linemen that are very much akin to getting after the quarterback. You hear the banter between those guys back and forth and you can’t help but want to be excited about maybe having a part of that and he’s done a nice job with them.
Q: How’s JPP’s back?
Coughlin: Getting better. He’s been getting better.
Q: How does the linebacker situation compare to last year? It seems like last year there were a lot of questions and now this year there seems to be too many bodies.
Coughlin: You can never have too many good players. That’s one that you would look forward to. If you have that much competition, that’s a good thing. That’s what all spots should be like. I wish I could say that for every spot out here. The more the competition, the better the players practice, focus, perform and then… Therefore you have a better opportunity to evaluate them.
Q: Did Hosley get the boot off today?
Coughlin: He did. It’s just one of the steps.
Q: I guess that’s progress for Will Beatty to be standing around at practice?
Coughlin: He did some things. He was down in the corner with the trainers. It’s good to see. It’s always based on what’s he like afterwards? What’s it going to be like? If anybody has had a bad back…
Coughlin: I want to make sure you understand about the other night with regards to the ball that was on the ground. As you probably know or don’t know, as far as the rule is concerned, if the ball is possessed and it comes out, you can advance it. We’ve always been a team that’s tried to scoop and score. Let the officials call you back. Now in theory if it’s a muff, then the ball is not advanced. In this case, when you realize it, it was possessed. The ball was knocked out. You saw two guys… Andre, for sure, that was going for the scoop and score. The point about all of that is that you’ve got to make a judgment call in that much time because the ball is laying right there and it will be inside the 10-yard line. If there’s any question whether you can cleanly pick the thing up, you’ve got to cover it and covering it means it would’ve been points of some nature, hopefully a touchdown but it would’ve been points. That’s the point I was trying to make with you and why it was so important for me at the half to make sure that I emphatically made that point with our players because when you’re talking about opportunities, we had blocked the punt, the momentum had changed in the game, we scored a touchdown, we kicked the ball, there it is again and it’s maybe the most important play of the game at that time. Get the ball back. Of course, we didn’t and we didn’t because one guy was scooping and scoring and the other one was trying to cover it and it made for a squiggly ball out of there. That’s the point I was trying to make. You’re always going to pick it up and run in if you can, but the officials bring it back and tell you whether it was muffed or whether possession was established. But in this case, you got to come away with the ball. You at least have got to get the ball even if it’s not a touchdown.