**
TITANS HEAD COACH KEN WHISENHUNT**
(on what he is thankful for)
I'm thankful to be in this city, working for this team. I'm thankful for the guys that we have. It's been tough from a record perspective, but the way these players work, the way these guys are preparing every week, and I really believe we're going to get over the hump. It's going to be a good thing. I'm thankful for a lot of things today. It's a great game that we're in, and I really appreciate the fan support, just when you're out in the community, how supportive they've been, even though it's not been a great year. That's a lot to be thankful for.
(on facing Texans ILB Brian Cushing)
He's a good football player. I think any time you get as many of those guys on the field, it makes a difference. He's a big, fast guy that understands their scheme. They did a pretty good job against us last time.
(on young players showing exuberance)
I haven't seen that as an issue. We've had a lot of exuberance with our guys. They've been working hard. * *I think we're all excited to see these young guys play and see what they can do. It's exciting to see Zach (Mettenberger) and Taylor (Lewan) and Bishop (Sankey) and Avery (Williamson) and all those guys doing some good things.
(on if they need to have a simpler scheme with the offensive line against the Texans)
We try to be, but they're going to put a guy in the gap, put five up there and try to make you man block it and do stunts. That's what they do. You're going to have to, at some point, run your offense.
(on the Philadelphia Eagles using stunts)
They're good at doing that. They've had success against a lot of teams doing that. They certainly did against us. Once that happens, that's not something that other teams haven't been doing to us, as well, you know that it's coming again.
(on the issue of communication with players who haven't started previously)
I hope not. We've gotten a lot of work this week on it. You get time in the walk-through. You get time in practice. You never know for sure what's going to happen on game day. I think we've said chemistry's an important part of this. Now we've changed that by inserting new guys into it. That's what we've got to go with. Guys are working hard to try to make that not an issue.
(on new players contributing to the run defense)
We need to do that regardless of who, whether they're new, young guys, old guys, whatever. That's something that we've got to be better in our defense. They had success against us last time we played. Other teams the last few weeks have had some success against us. We've got to do a better job with our gap fits and tackling. That's what you work on in practice. Hopefully that'll show up Sunday.
(on depth at safety with Michael Griffin's injury)
We're working other guys in there just to get us out of it if we have to get out of a game like that. We had some guys in the game last week that stepped up and did that and played pretty well, so you feel better about it.
(on Brandon Ghee playing at safety)
You work them through that, they get some of that in look team when they're going against the offense. You hear the word cross-train a lot of times, and that's what you're trying to do. You do it with linemen, you do it with receivers. You certainly do it with DBs from that standpoint. He played last week in the game, did a good job.
