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HEAD COACH MIKE MUNCHAK
(on the how the team is feeling about the Ravens coming to town)
That's the nice thing about the league, you play one seven days later and get a chance to redeem yourself. It's our home opener so there is a lot of excitement for that and the opponent brings a lot of excitement because we know how good they are and we better be ready to play or it could be a long Sunday.
(on how they are similar or different to the Ravens teams from years past)
Defensively, I think they are very similar, they have Ray Lewis there so you think that they are the same old defense. They have (Ed) Reed still on the back end, even though they have young guys other than him. He is still making plays and he had a couple of picks last Sunday of their seven turnovers so they are still doing what they have been doing. Find a way to get the ball back, be physical, (Terrell) Suggs had three sacks and he has been there for a while now. So on defense you see the same thing, playing hard and physical. Offensively, I think the difference is now they have a quarterback that can make plays. I think in the past they were winning games 10 to six, 13 to 10, nine to six, whatever the scores used to be, and they relied solely on the defense. Now with (Joe) Flacco, (Ray) Rice as the running back, they have some weapons that can put points on the board so that makes them double scary I think.
(on if the Ravens were the most impressive team on opening weekend)
Well they are the ones we are studying so I would say they are the best ones on tape just because Pittsburgh was in the Super Bowl last year. It was a big division game and they had a huge day. I think what started it was they came out on the first drive when they scored in four plays. I think when you break the first run for 50 yards against the Steelers, I think you get very confident on what may happen the rest way and that's what they did. I think they scored in four plays. They got seven on the board, got a turnover and got out 14 to nothing and I think they just took it on from there. They off to a great start and that's what we need to do this weekend.
(on how much looking at week one film will help with week two preparation)
Well you hope the stuff you watch on tape, offense and defense helps you play better. You realize how important it is to play a full game. Why that didn't happen, I don't know. We practiced well and we knew what we were doing and we went out there and I guess you give the other team credit for making that happen last weekend. We have to put that behind us and just play football. Go out and do what we are supposed to do and just play better.
(on how Leroy Harris and Eugene Amano played in week one)
We were OK, talking about those two guys protection wise were fine. Leroy (Harris) had a holding call that ended up hurting us right before the half. Probably his worst play of the game was that call. Again, we passed blocked more than we did anything just because of the situation so it's hard to judge a lot of things after one game and for the offense, less than 50 plays, to get too carried away with what a lot of people did. If you go by numbers, the only guy that posted numbers was the receiver with whatever he had, 140 yards and two touchdowns. The bottom line is we lost and that is the only stat we lost and we have to change that this Sunday.
(on if Jason Jones and Derrick Morgan are on pace to be back this Sunday and what that will do for the team)
I think if they are at full speed, which again they are not going to…they should be available to play yes. They practiced today, they weren't limited in any way which is a positive thing and of course you want two of your top guys back. We went into that game without two defensive linemen that are big time players for us, it will be real good to get them back.
(on how tough it will be for Chris Johnson to get going this week against a stout rushing defense)
Well I think again, it's a tough opponent like you mentioned and it's something that you just can't get frustrated with the fact that this is a team where you are not going to get a lot of five-yard runs. It's going to be when they give us a run, just like the last time we played them in the playoffs, I think he had 80 yards in the first quarter. He had a couple big runs. That's what you have to realize, they are going to make it hard to do things, then there are going to be opportunities to make plays and we have to make them and that's what we did not do last weekend. If you watch tape there are plenty of places where we could have made plays and we didn't. This weekend's the same way, when you run the ball, you can't go out there saying well you got to do certain things because all of the sudden you get down on yourself when that doesn't come. We may get the big run in the fourth quarter, third quarter; I don't know where it's going to come, but you have to assume that we will get enough opportunities to do that in the run game. We will have to be patient with that, but it's not going to be something where we hand it off 10 times in a row just to get him 10 carries. Again, those runs will come in this kind of game.
(on the how he would classify this game and if there is still animosity between the two clubs)
We know it's not a division game but it's as close as it gets for us, just like we play Pittsburgh in a few weeks. The fact that we were in their division for so long, especially more for guys like myself, Bruce Matthews, (Michael) Roos now, a couple of these guys played these guys at least twice a year then. A lot of these guys weren't around, they just look at the Ravens as another team that's in another division that they have heard about and watched. I think for the organization that's a lot different. We know that they have knocked us out of two games in the last 10 years in the playoffs. We beat them once in the playoffs, they beat us twice. We know the rivalry that went on with Eddie George and Ray Lewis and that whole group back in the day, but they aren't here. This is a new Titan team and some of their guys are still hanging around, but the game hasn't changed. It's going to be physical game from beginning to end, they are going to try to get things going, they have a lot of personality, they play hard, and they try to take you out of your game and make mistakes and that works for them and has worked for them, especially on the defensive side of the ball. We just need to go out and play our best. We are highly motivated and we should be. We are going to have a sellout crowd, we are at home for the first time, it's the first time for fans to see us up close in a real game and there is no better team to beat than these guys.
(on if he plans to use three running backs this week)
Yeah, I think that's something that we will consider just because of (Chris Johnson) being early on in his second game of playing and I'm hoping that we do get to run the ball quite a bit, but depending on how we are at other positions, that will always determine if you carry three running backs or two.
(on if he plans to give a history lesson about the history of this rivalry)
Some of it, this is the kind of game, and I think Pittsburgh is the same way, I think I see them as the same for us so you don't have to talk about it a lot. I think people know and their reputation precedes them and then you kind of do talk a little bit over the week just about the games we have had with them. When you talk about turnovers for example, we lost two games against them in the playoffs where if you look at the stat sheet, we won big but they beat us in the turnovers and that's what they did last week, they had seven turnovers that they got and they beat Pittsburgh quite handedly. The two games we lost to them were close games but we turned the ball over and they didn't and we lost. That's probably for most games, but it definitely showed up in our history with each other.
(on if he feels a team makes its biggest improvement from game one, to game two)
I hope we do, I hope it follows that way and you hope it goes from there through your second game, your third game, and so on. I wish were coming from a winning perspective after last week, but we definitely assume we are going to play a lot better than we did last week and we are playing against a pretty good opponent, so we better play better or it's going to be a long day for us.
(on if he ever considers getting more vocal with the players)
I think you always do that. I think individually, not just myself but the individual coaches, the coordinators, we all do it different ways. I go in there at halftime and they are getting after the guys pretty good. If a guy needs that, I think a coach needs to do that. If he doesn't, then I think you treat guys differently and certain guys need that and a lot of guys don't. I don't think there are any magic words that are going to make some guy play better because their coach said this so I decided I'm going to play better. If that worked then someone would have written a book about it and made a lot of money about the magic words that you can say to a team. I think it's more about refocusing them. I think that's the biggest thing when you get off course is to refocus and then when you do that something good does happen and you get something going, you get a break, you get a play. Kind of like what happened with Kenny's (Britt) play where he went 80 yards. I wish we had drawn that up at halftime. We drew it up just like that, we didn't block the linebacker, so Matt (Hasselbeck) hurried up and he flipped the ball and we scored. That was the 80-yard play that kind of got us going again on offense and all of the sudden we all believe that we can win that game and it took that play to get that going. You just never know what is going to happen in a game and that happened to be the play that finally got us going and you wish that happened in the first quarter. If something has happened early, maybe that game is a whole lot different.
(on if he has any concerns with Javon Ringer and his timing after missing so much time)
You always are, you are going to have some, and I just think that he is a different type of runner. He is truly a zone runner so I think it may be a little easier for him but he was here for all of camp. He went through three or four weeks with us, he is going to be rusty in pick-ups and timing all of that, that's why we are hoping he gets a lot of that in practice.
