The Patriots have had some personnel changes since the last time you played in the AFC Championship game. What have you seen from them in terms of their transition in personnel? (Aaron Wilson) “Well, I think what I see from them is Tom Brady is having one heck of a year – I think maybe one of his best years that he has ever had, because with some of the guys and the weapons that he has had in the past being gone, they are still productive, still putting up points [and] still putting up yards. You better play for 60 minutes with this team; they are the comeback team. Cleveland had them down two scores, and they came back and beat them with two minutes to go. I think Tom is having one of his best years ever and just really running the offense very, very well.”
What does Shane Vereen bring to the table for them, and how do they use him? (Matt Vensel) “He is such a dynamic receiver out of the backfield. It is a little bit like last week in Detroit when you had [Reggie] Bush. The guy is a good runner – he is a very good runner – but they put him out in an empty formation and get a linebacker matched up on him. That is a bad deal. Coming out of the backfield, he is a good screen [player]. He is just a really good receiver, very fast, and he has been a weapon. He has been another guy, since they don’t have as many tight ends as they’ve had in the past, kind of use the running back in the same fashion – not necessarily the same routes, but along with [No.] 80 [Danny Amendola] and [No.] 11 [Julian Edelman] and [No.] 10 [Austin Collie] and all those other guys. He is another weapon for them. I think he is really having a good year, too.”
Is Kevin Faulk a good comparison for him? (Matt Zenitz) “They use him a little bit like Kevin Faulk, [but] I don’t know if I’d use him as a comparison. Kevin Faulk is one of the best clutch players I’ve ever been around – ever. When everything was on the line, you talk about a guy who could make a play. I don’t know [Shane] Vereen well enough that I can’t say that. I’m just saying that I know Kevin Faulk. But it’s similar in some fashion in that he is a good screen guy, he can run down the field, he can get vertical. Kevin wasn’t as much fast as he was quick, where Vereen has really got pretty good speed and probably faster than what Kevin Faulk was.”
You have played the Patriots several times in recent years. Given your background in New England, is there anything different for you in terms of gamesmanship and just sort of tendencies that they may know about you and you know about them? (Aaron Wilson) “I don’t know what they know about me, so I couldn’t answer from that side of it. (laughter) From their side of it, really what has happened in the past … Somebody else asked me about our past history. Truth was, I was 13-0 against Buffalo before this year, and I was 11-0 against Cleveland. So what happened in the past is really irrelevant at this point in time.”
Does
Terrell Suggs
have an injury we don’t know about or you just don’t want to tell, because his numbers seem to have dropped off? (Mike Preston) “No, he has been doing some other things to kind of help us out a little bit in coverage – things that maybe we should get away from – kind of hitting guys before they come out, trying to hold up guys before he rushes and stuff. So no, there is nothing wrong with him. We’ve just got to get him going.”
What contributes to those struggles? You guys are 5-1, so in the back of your mind, as long as you guys are winning … He said yesterday that stats, as long as you guys make the postseason … (Adam Vorce) “I don’t understand the question.”
What contributes to Terrell Suggs’ struggles? (Adam Vorce) “I just said the fact that sometimes what he is doing is he is trying to help some other guys and not necessarily … Everything isn’t a pass rush with him, and it hasn’t been in the last couple of weeks. We’ve got to ramp it up a little bit. We’re down a little bit. Also, some of the credit [goes] to the quarterbacks for getting the ball out quicker. If I’m seeing a team on offense throw the ball deep down after down after down after down, week after week, I’d say we probably ought to get back and play the deep ball. Well, if we have 37 sacks in 12 games, then I think you ought to do something to probably keep us from pass rushing. Give the offenses some credit in the last couple weeks; they have done some things to hurt our pass rush. But we still had a lot of hits on the quarterback; we just haven’t always gotten [to him]. Just like [Matthew] Stafford and a couple weeks ago even with [Matt] Cassel – we had a lot of hits on the quarterback where he hit the ground. They just weren’t sacks, whereas earlier in the year, they were. The ball is getting out a little quicker. At that same thing, we’ve got to do some things scheme-wise to free up our good guys and get them pass rushing.”
Are you rotating more of your defensive linemen into the game compared to previous weeks? (Mike Preston) “I don’t think it’s really more. We have really kind of rotated them all year. It may be a little more equal in the past couple weeks as we get down the stretch here. I think ‘C.B.’ [defensive line coach Clarence Brooks] has done a pretty good job of rotating them throughout the year quite a bit. It might be a little more even in the last few weeks numbers-wise. Each week has been different. Two weeks ago, we saw a Hall of Fame running back [Adrian Peterson], then we saw a Hall of Fame wide receiver [Calvin Johnson], and now a Hall of Fame quarterback [Tom Brady]. So, it has kind of been different types of things that we’ve put front-wise. Like a couple weeks ago, we were in very little ‘sub’ [packages] against Minnesota, so we needed more D-linemen. This week, we rotated them more for the pass-rush part of it. So, you might be right. I don’t know if the numbers are that drastic of a difference, though.”
What have been the keys to your secondary playing better and more consistently as the season has gone along? (Childs Walker) “Experience, confidence – all those kinds of things. We haven’t changed a whole lot, either. I think the more you get used to doing the same thing week after week after week, the better you become, the more confident you become. I’ve said it before, I just think that when you make a play in a coverage or whatever it might be, you just become more confident, and that covers you. If you don’t, then [that] is always in the back of your mind, [and] that is what you are thinking about. I just think we’ve played with a little more confidence lately.”
Do you think they had to actively rally themselves after the opener? (Childs Walker) “No. You guys are so far off on the opening game, you have no idea. You have no idea. I told you before, out of 67 plays, 60 of them we played Denver better than we’ve ever played them. We played seven plays horrendous, but 60 plays were good. When you watch the film, if I had taken those seven plays out, you would say, ‘Boy, that defense played really well.’ You can’t miss tackles, [and] you can’t give up easy scores on an easy coverage. We learned from those things. But we didn’t play horrendous in that first game as much as everybody thinks. Just like sometimes you go out, and we play the Jets, 19-3, or whatever it was. We found a lot of mistakes in that game. It’s never as bad as you think, and it’s never as good as you think. So, that first game to me was, yes, we gave up seven touchdowns, and we gave up a bunch of points, but it’s not indicative of what our defense was – nothing.”
On their first drive, the Lions moved down the field pretty easily. After that … That’s happened a lot of times. Can you talk about the process of in-game adjustments, or is it better execution of the game plan? (Pete Gilbert)“This game was a little different, though. We had a little bit of a communication problem from the helmet, not communication between players. We had a couple of busts on a couple calls in that very first drive that I just couldn’t understand. They were just really uncharacteristic. They were by veteran players, and we have never done it. And then, come to find out, we had a little bit of a helmet communication [issue] coming from the sideline there in the dome. So, once we had that straightened out, we played a little better when they actually got the call that we were trying to play.”
Tom Brady is on the injury report for New England. Does that change your preparation? (Adam Vorce) “That has been about … How many years has he been in the league? He has been on the injury report every week for 12 years. (laughter) That is nothing new there now. I was there six years, [and] I don’t think I ever saw him … I never knew he had a bad shoulder.” (laughter)
Against a quarterback like Tom Brady, do you feel like you have to show more looks, or if you show him something too much, that he will figure it out? (Clifton Brown) “There is no doubt that if you show him something too much, he’ll get it. The key thing is, though, yes, you can give him all the different looks you want, but you better make sure you can play the looks you’re giving him. You can be as clever as you want to be. First of all, he has seen it all, so there is probably nothing new coverage-wise that you are going to throw at him that he hasn’t seen. What you’ve got to be really careful of is thinking that you’re so clever that you are going to outsmart him, and then you can’t play the coverage you’re showing him. So, bottom line is, yes, you are always trying to disguise and do stuff, but when it’s all said and done, whether he knows it or whether he doesn’t know it, we better make sure we can play it.”
How important is it to get pressure on him without blitzing? (Clifton Brown) “Absolutely. You’ve got to be able to get pressure on him without blitzing. You can’t rely on that all the time; he will pick you apart. Just like [Peyton] Manning and all the good ones – there are just not that many coverages or many blitzes that you can come up with that they haven’t seen, and he doesn’t recognize. The better the quarterback, which, to me, he is the best at recognizing all that kind of stuff … He is really good, and the ball comes out extremely quick, so we’ve got to get pressure on him with the four-man rush.”
What do you think about the two receivers in particular – Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola? Obviously, you guys have faced some big receivers in the last few weeks, and those guys are not so big. (Matt Zenitz) “It is a total opposite from what we just went through in Detroit. I think you’ve got to be 6-5 to even play for them, and here, you’ve got all these quick guys and littler [guys]. Here is the other thing that they do so well is everybody can say, ‘Well, you can get up and jam them [because] they’re little guys,’ but they do such a great job of keeping them off the ball and then stacking the receivers and getting in formations that you can’t get your hands on them. They bunch everybody in there, so everybody can’t get up there jamming, because if you do, then when you get beat, the thing is over the top of you. They are smart. The playbook in New England is huge, and that is why every week, everybody says they do something different. Not really. It’s in their playbook. They aren’t dreaming stuff up that week. It’s just that they are going to this section of the playbook, running the same stuff, but from a different look or different formation. It’s just a totally different challenge than it was a week ago against big receivers. Now, it’s quick guys who can really pivot and get out of breaks and all that kind of stuff – just like [Wes] Welker was, like [Deion] Branch was. That is kind of the guys they have had for a long time.”
Lardarius Webb is somebody you will be dependent on to help slow them down. Has he come along as much during the course of the last few weeks as it seems like just watching from the outside? (Matt Zenitz) “I think he is playing better. I think they are all playing better back there. I think the safeties are feeling more comfortable with calls. I think Jimmy [Smith] is playing well, Lardarius [Webb], I think the world of
Corey Graham. So, I think all those guys have kind of stepped it up a little bit, and they are going to need to this week. This is a big challenge, and it’s such a drastic change from the last two weeks of big receivers and kind of the last couple weeks. It’s kind of going back to Pittsburgh a little bit, similar to their style of guys – not the same type of offense, but similar style. So, we’ve got to get out of that mode of the last two weeks. It’s a big challenge. It’s New England. They are who they are, and they are 10-4, or whatever they are, for a reason.”
