Parcells press conference 11/06/06
By Grizz
Posted on Mon Nov 06, 2006 at 03:16:33 PM EST
I don't think we had any serious injuries.
We had an individual breakdown in protection on the left side on the FG. I can't explain it to you, he hadn't done that before. The technique he used was the first time we've ever seen it, the other kicks he was fine but he did it on the last one. It was Colombo.
We approached the game well, but we didn't play smartly. Results are important this time of year. We have to put some things in sequence or we'll be an average to below average team. We had a good opportunity yesterday and we didn't do it. It's discouraging for me and the players. You can look at the positives; there are a few things that show we can be better. But doing some of the things we do - I'm not going to sugarcoat - 11 penalties are costly, especially on defense, they got points on everyone of them. There's an opportunity to win, but we make critical errors and that keeps up from being 5-3.
On the safety play, I was blind, I couldn't see it. I asked the coaches 4 times, look at it and what do you see? Every time they said it was a safety, his knee was down with ball on the goal line, which is part of the endzone. That doesn't mean it happened that way, but that was the view they had. They told me and I went by that. You're supposed to have the network feed, but how it's administered and done, it beats me. Don't know how many views there were, I guess it depends on how many cameras, I don't know the answer to the question. I had the challenge flag in my hand, but they gave me no evidence to throw it. I've seen the play now, I don't think they would overturn it. Looking at it, they would've said the ruling on the field stands. It was worth the risk to challenge if I had any evidence, but I can't be indiscriminate, and the people I rely on tell me no 4 times.
Colombo was supposed to hinge back on the FG. Jason takes the outside guy.
The only call that I was troubled by was the last facemask, it could've been a 5 yard penalty. But the officials make a judgment. I didn't think it was flagrant, but this is no criticism, it's his his judgment.
Most exasperating to me is the concentration and judgement lapses, that's penalties. I can't think for player. I'm ultimately responsible when my team plays without discipline. But I can't make them think a certain way. I put up a study for them that included penalties, what we need to fix, 2 days in a row this week. Right in front of the team. I guess it wasn't enough; it didn't get through to them.
Sure it's embarrassing; I've had maybe 1 in 18 teams in my career that were bad with penalties. I don't know, it's exasperating. They're lacking good judgment. Do some of that and it results in points for the other team and it's stopping drives. If we didn't help them offensively, they might not have scored on us. They made a couple of plays in the redzone, but we made errors on those plays.
On the FG: We blocked down to a guy who's inside the tackle, it's senseless.
The officials told the players about celebration early in camp, if you go on the ground it gets called. I spoke to him [Owens] about it, but it's a day late and a dollar short. He didn't have a response.
Reporter: it looked like he said something to you: It wasn't in regards to that, it was something else. It was an encouraging type thing.
The player says he does it to help the team, to fire them up: I wouldn't see how that helps the team, I don't think it does.
On Owens big drop: We've has some drops, some others, too. I'm hopeful for more consistency, both in execution, penalties, and mental errors. We need to smooth it out. We can move the ball, but it's not doing us any good.
Roy doesn't have a problem judging the ball, but what you see from above isn't what the players on the field always see. The ball comes out and sometimes you don't see it until it hits you, you're looking at your responsibility, and if you're not in a zone and see the ball coming out of the QB's hand, it can surprise you. It's been a problem, but you can't just single Roy out. He's made some good interceptions this year, that ball just surprised him yesterday.
On changing strategy because of the problems: You should try to play percentage football; you don't alter a sound approach to the game because things go wrong. You work on them and try to improve. That game was tough, for me, the players and the fans, I understand it's tough. But you can't dwell, you get ready for Atrizona. In 3 weeks, it could look different. You try to just put more emphasis on it, I tried to do last week, it didn't have much effect.
On the chart and the 2-pt. conversion: I'm not trying to be narrow-minded, but I've never heard substantial evidence except hypotheticals to increase your success by doing it differently from the chart, it's based on mathematics. Every one who questions it has a retrospective view. When it doesn't work out, you're open to it, when it works, nothing is heard about it later. Someone needs to give me something more substantial than "time left in the game", this is based on numerical equations. The card came from college to the pros. There are times I've thought better of it, the spread is way out, like at 19 ponts you do this, but yesterday I wanted to make it a one score game. We discussed that when it was 5-0, when we scored the chart says go for two, we talked about it well before it happened. To me that didn't have much effect, because the game would've played out differently.
On Romo: He played well, but the two sacks were his fault, he missed an open back on one and he could've thrown it way and avoided the sack on the other. ed. note: Agree, I had already written that in my soon to be finished film review article. He created some plays, that last sequence was impressive. He managed the game better. We saw him under a little more duress, and he did some positive things.
Are you better than 4-4, stats would suggest so? I think things are making us 4-4, you can't just pluck out a scoring stat. We're scoring. But the overall picture, the other things we do bad, hurt us. We've shown the capability to do better. The secondary didn't play well yesterday, gave up two big pass plays. There were some little things they did that were bad, mental errors, Roy was actually the most solid of the group.
On Henry not making the play on Cooley's TD catch: That wasn't Henry's coverage, he was trying to help, tried to intercept it to save points.
The players have a day off because of plane problems. We got home late.
Are distractions each week emotionally draining to the players? If they are emotionally spent, it's a cop out.
Clock management at the end of the game? We wanted to save some timeouts, at least one, then we had a chance to save two, that was good, especially if they had made the kick.
On the rest of the season: I'm seeing a lot of things in the NFC that surprise me every week. Yesterday there were some surprises to me. We just need to put some wins together for a month, get to the last month in position, then you have a chance. Need to win 10 games for a chance. I don't think 9 wins will get it. Somebody will get to 10 in the wildcard. It's unsure in the NFC, other than a couple of division leaders. Minnesota a couple of weeks ago looked to be in good position, now they are like us.
That was a bizarre set of circumstances right there. 3 FGs in the last 35 seconds. Surprising. You get upset when you have a chance, what should've been a 90% [FG], I wouldn't bet against that kick with any kicker in the league.
I was disappointed in McBriar yesterday. He's been doing well all year, so I got to hope that this was just a blip.
Skyler did fair, a little non-descript. He was better on punts than kickoffs.
Crayton played 34 plays, Hurd would've replaced Glenn if he couldn't go, and I would keep Crayton as the #3. But he did some [bad] things yesterday to join the pack.
Barber got 34 plays, which was closing in on what we wanted. I try to keep an eye on JJ, see if he's getting too much wear and tear, you may see Barber more as we go.
A chop block is hitting a guy low and another adjacent player engages him, a cut block is legal. They thought Flo came over late and put his hands on him, but he didn't set him up for a chop.
Trouble covering the seams with LBers? Cooley dropped a pass on a play that we ran 5 times in practice. No one disrupted him on the line. They do that play against Cover 2, so we switched the coverage up some.
JJ has held up so far. I'll monitor him closely the rest of the season.
We're struggling a bit at FS, using a combination of players. Keith is an aggressive player, Marcus got in there yesterday, and it wasn't great, he needs to be better. He was looking in the backfield on the TD pass, he should have been over there to give help, but he was nowhere to be found. That hurt us.
There's a chance we look at Watkins again.
The players will be back on Weds.
Posted on Mon Nov 06, 2006 at 03:16:33 PM EST
I don't think we had any serious injuries.
We had an individual breakdown in protection on the left side on the FG. I can't explain it to you, he hadn't done that before. The technique he used was the first time we've ever seen it, the other kicks he was fine but he did it on the last one. It was Colombo.
We approached the game well, but we didn't play smartly. Results are important this time of year. We have to put some things in sequence or we'll be an average to below average team. We had a good opportunity yesterday and we didn't do it. It's discouraging for me and the players. You can look at the positives; there are a few things that show we can be better. But doing some of the things we do - I'm not going to sugarcoat - 11 penalties are costly, especially on defense, they got points on everyone of them. There's an opportunity to win, but we make critical errors and that keeps up from being 5-3.
On the safety play, I was blind, I couldn't see it. I asked the coaches 4 times, look at it and what do you see? Every time they said it was a safety, his knee was down with ball on the goal line, which is part of the endzone. That doesn't mean it happened that way, but that was the view they had. They told me and I went by that. You're supposed to have the network feed, but how it's administered and done, it beats me. Don't know how many views there were, I guess it depends on how many cameras, I don't know the answer to the question. I had the challenge flag in my hand, but they gave me no evidence to throw it. I've seen the play now, I don't think they would overturn it. Looking at it, they would've said the ruling on the field stands. It was worth the risk to challenge if I had any evidence, but I can't be indiscriminate, and the people I rely on tell me no 4 times.
Colombo was supposed to hinge back on the FG. Jason takes the outside guy.
The only call that I was troubled by was the last facemask, it could've been a 5 yard penalty. But the officials make a judgment. I didn't think it was flagrant, but this is no criticism, it's his his judgment.
Most exasperating to me is the concentration and judgement lapses, that's penalties. I can't think for player. I'm ultimately responsible when my team plays without discipline. But I can't make them think a certain way. I put up a study for them that included penalties, what we need to fix, 2 days in a row this week. Right in front of the team. I guess it wasn't enough; it didn't get through to them.
Sure it's embarrassing; I've had maybe 1 in 18 teams in my career that were bad with penalties. I don't know, it's exasperating. They're lacking good judgment. Do some of that and it results in points for the other team and it's stopping drives. If we didn't help them offensively, they might not have scored on us. They made a couple of plays in the redzone, but we made errors on those plays.
On the FG: We blocked down to a guy who's inside the tackle, it's senseless.
The officials told the players about celebration early in camp, if you go on the ground it gets called. I spoke to him [Owens] about it, but it's a day late and a dollar short. He didn't have a response.
Reporter: it looked like he said something to you: It wasn't in regards to that, it was something else. It was an encouraging type thing.
The player says he does it to help the team, to fire them up: I wouldn't see how that helps the team, I don't think it does.
On Owens big drop: We've has some drops, some others, too. I'm hopeful for more consistency, both in execution, penalties, and mental errors. We need to smooth it out. We can move the ball, but it's not doing us any good.
Roy doesn't have a problem judging the ball, but what you see from above isn't what the players on the field always see. The ball comes out and sometimes you don't see it until it hits you, you're looking at your responsibility, and if you're not in a zone and see the ball coming out of the QB's hand, it can surprise you. It's been a problem, but you can't just single Roy out. He's made some good interceptions this year, that ball just surprised him yesterday.
On changing strategy because of the problems: You should try to play percentage football; you don't alter a sound approach to the game because things go wrong. You work on them and try to improve. That game was tough, for me, the players and the fans, I understand it's tough. But you can't dwell, you get ready for Atrizona. In 3 weeks, it could look different. You try to just put more emphasis on it, I tried to do last week, it didn't have much effect.
On the chart and the 2-pt. conversion: I'm not trying to be narrow-minded, but I've never heard substantial evidence except hypotheticals to increase your success by doing it differently from the chart, it's based on mathematics. Every one who questions it has a retrospective view. When it doesn't work out, you're open to it, when it works, nothing is heard about it later. Someone needs to give me something more substantial than "time left in the game", this is based on numerical equations. The card came from college to the pros. There are times I've thought better of it, the spread is way out, like at 19 ponts you do this, but yesterday I wanted to make it a one score game. We discussed that when it was 5-0, when we scored the chart says go for two, we talked about it well before it happened. To me that didn't have much effect, because the game would've played out differently.
On Romo: He played well, but the two sacks were his fault, he missed an open back on one and he could've thrown it way and avoided the sack on the other. ed. note: Agree, I had already written that in my soon to be finished film review article. He created some plays, that last sequence was impressive. He managed the game better. We saw him under a little more duress, and he did some positive things.
Are you better than 4-4, stats would suggest so? I think things are making us 4-4, you can't just pluck out a scoring stat. We're scoring. But the overall picture, the other things we do bad, hurt us. We've shown the capability to do better. The secondary didn't play well yesterday, gave up two big pass plays. There were some little things they did that were bad, mental errors, Roy was actually the most solid of the group.
On Henry not making the play on Cooley's TD catch: That wasn't Henry's coverage, he was trying to help, tried to intercept it to save points.
The players have a day off because of plane problems. We got home late.
Are distractions each week emotionally draining to the players? If they are emotionally spent, it's a cop out.
Clock management at the end of the game? We wanted to save some timeouts, at least one, then we had a chance to save two, that was good, especially if they had made the kick.
On the rest of the season: I'm seeing a lot of things in the NFC that surprise me every week. Yesterday there were some surprises to me. We just need to put some wins together for a month, get to the last month in position, then you have a chance. Need to win 10 games for a chance. I don't think 9 wins will get it. Somebody will get to 10 in the wildcard. It's unsure in the NFC, other than a couple of division leaders. Minnesota a couple of weeks ago looked to be in good position, now they are like us.
That was a bizarre set of circumstances right there. 3 FGs in the last 35 seconds. Surprising. You get upset when you have a chance, what should've been a 90% [FG], I wouldn't bet against that kick with any kicker in the league.
I was disappointed in McBriar yesterday. He's been doing well all year, so I got to hope that this was just a blip.
Skyler did fair, a little non-descript. He was better on punts than kickoffs.
Crayton played 34 plays, Hurd would've replaced Glenn if he couldn't go, and I would keep Crayton as the #3. But he did some [bad] things yesterday to join the pack.
Barber got 34 plays, which was closing in on what we wanted. I try to keep an eye on JJ, see if he's getting too much wear and tear, you may see Barber more as we go.
A chop block is hitting a guy low and another adjacent player engages him, a cut block is legal. They thought Flo came over late and put his hands on him, but he didn't set him up for a chop.
Trouble covering the seams with LBers? Cooley dropped a pass on a play that we ran 5 times in practice. No one disrupted him on the line. They do that play against Cover 2, so we switched the coverage up some.
JJ has held up so far. I'll monitor him closely the rest of the season.
We're struggling a bit at FS, using a combination of players. Keith is an aggressive player, Marcus got in there yesterday, and it wasn't great, he needs to be better. He was looking in the backfield on the TD pass, he should have been over there to give help, but he was nowhere to be found. That hurt us.
There's a chance we look at Watkins again.
The players will be back on Weds.
posted by The Gryphon at 10:37 PM
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