(You changed up your Friday routine. What's your philosophy on keeping things fresh?)
This week's practice plan, very similar to last week. We accelerated our game plan installation on Tuesday and Wednesday and was able to practice everything Wednesday and Thursday. So with that, I was looking for a day to kind of give the team their legs back, rest and recovery built in. I felt it was important for us to have the padded practice yesterday, work through all the different situations. I thought our work was of high quality. We hit the targets that was needed on Thursday, and actually we took some of the things we normally do on Friday and put it into Thursday's practice. We felt very good about that as a staff, and just with us projecting to a potential six-day work week as opposed to a normal seven-day work week in the first week of the playoffs was all part of our planning.
(How cautious are you going to be with some injured guys? You have Chillar doubtful and Pickett questionable.)
Well, they have 48 hours to get a chance to play. I thought Brandon would make a little more progress at this point, but we'll see how it goes. You do get concerned with his type of injury with the three-hour flight out there. I'll just take these next 48 hours like we normally do.
(Did Chillar have a setback or is it still the back spasms?)It's the back spasms. He played through it last week, and it was just really re-occurring.
(You had a chance to play Flynn a quarter last week. If the circumstances dictate, what would it mean to get him out there again?)
You talk to any quarterback that's played in this league, there's no replacement for game reps. It started with the preseason and obviously in-season is what you're looking for. Anytime you're in a backup or a No. 3 role as a quarterback, live snaps in real games is so valuable. Anytime you're able to give your backup quarterback that opportunity, it's great for him and it also gives you a chance to look at a number of different players last week in the Seattle game. I was excited to see the performance that a number of the backup players were able to provide for us, particularly on the one scoring drive. It's a great opportunity and you would love to be in that position to give Matt Flynn some more reps.
(Where is he at as far as leading the offense in year two?)
He's our No. 2 quarterback, and we expect the No. 2 to be able to continue with the game plan, the volume of the game plan, and the ability to go challenge the opponent's defense. I feel very confident that Matt would be able to do that.
(Will you want to know what the Giants-Vikings outcome is so you can adjust accordingly?)
Let's be honest, in today's business, I'm sure I will know. If I didn't want to know, I'm sure it would be made available, even moreso from Arizona's approach. So I think it will be very obvious by the time the game starts, or at some point if everything goes around. Information today will be accessible. But it's important for us to go through the week the way we have. We've had a quality week of preparation, and we need to go out there and play with the same energy, intensity and keep the momentum going that we've created here the last seven weeks.
(Holmgren used to have them turn off the out-of-town scoreboard. Those days are gone now?)
I can only speak from my perspective. That doesn't bother me. I think the game of football is very clear. If you're not focusing on the fundamentals and the things at hand, then you're lessening your opportunity to be successful. Does that give you the ability to control the potential clutter? Yeah, maybe so. But it's important to educate and stay on your football team through the progress of training from day one, to keep focused on just playing the game and the importance of playing the game. Because really everything else is mental clutter, and that's something that we talk about all the time. So I don't ever get caught up in that personally.
(Did you do any team today after the walk-through?)
We had a special teams jog-through, an offensive jog-through and a defensive jog-through today.
(Do you ever remember having a Friday without any team?)
Yeah, absolutely. We didn't even have practice last Friday.
(But you did on Saturday to make up for the holiday ...)
We had a jog-through on Saturday.
(What was your thinking with the schedule today?)
Well, my schedule today, it's a week schedule, it's not a day schedule. To me, everything I do from a planning standpoint, I break everything down into three environments. You have a classroom environment, a practice environment, and a gameday environment. There's targets that you hit in each environment, and with that, the number of reps, regardless of the situations that apply to your game plan, that apply to your preparation. With that, this week's work was very similar to last week's work as far as accelerating the game plan, the installation of the game plan, which was reflected in our Wednesday and Thursday schedules. We had everything in yesterday. We had a longer padded practice yesterday than normal on Thursday, that we had everything in, and it was important for me today to go down there and review it. But also, we're looking ahead to potentially being on a six-day work week and so forth. Today was more of an opportunity to review everything that's been in, but with that, giving the players a chance to get their legs back with a day of rest and recovery and just projecting to a potential six-day work week yesterday.
(Are you expecting to play Saturday?)
Yes, I think we have a high probability of playing on Saturday.
