TITANS HEAD COACH KEN WHISENHUNT PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT - August 25, 2015
(on how the team is recovering from Sunday's game)
We've got a number of guys that are sore, banged up a little bit, that we held out of practice today. But the guys that participated worked well. I was impressed. We're not even 48 hours from the game and they were out here moving around well, so that's good.
(on how Justin Hunter fared in the first two games)*
Well, I think we've been pretty clear about Justin (Hunter) and what he has to do and that really, where it's going to show up is in the games and establishing consistency with that. I've been very impressed with what he's done in camp and his body of work to date and we're all optimistic that that will continue.
(on Justin Hunter's production in games)
I think sometimes you have to be careful about what you base on preseason production. There have been a lot of guys that have led the league in preseason production and not played, so I think you base part of it on what you see in the games, and how that translates from what he's been doing on the football field. He's had a really good camp, I've been impressed with what I've seen from him in the games, and obviously, we'd like to see that continue.
(on if Delanie Walker has benefitted from his rest during preseason)
Maybe on the back end a little bit that will help. I know that we had talked about, coming into camp, making sure that we, for lack of a better term, had a pitch count on his reps in camp. This conveniently worked out that way. I think he's gotten enough work to stay engaged and he's worked through that. I think we feel very good about where he is right now.
(on how the team will handle game preparation going into Friday's game, given the short week)
It's hard; they do a lot of different things. When you normally have a week to prepare for them you can break a lot of things down and talk about a lot of things. Where we are right now, you run the risk of overwhelming your players with the type of information that you give them. We'll look at some things, we'll talk about it a little bit, but we won't have the benefit of a normal third week of preseason where we get a chance to really game plan them and prepare that way. We know going in there it's going to be tough, and we're going to try to simplify it a little bit and hopefully go in there and play with the same intensity that we did Sunday.
(on if he expects Kansas City to treat this as a dress rehearsal of a regular season game)
Yeah, I'm sure we're going to get a lot of stuff from them. They do a lot of things offensively, a lot of formations, movement, a lot of different plays. Defensively, they give you multiple looks with different guys trying to create matchups. Those are the kind of things that during the normal game prep, you study and you work hard on them and to really be able to do that in two days, really one day of practice is difficult. At least we have a little bit of working knowledge from having played them last year so we have some cut ups of us playing against them, so we'll get a sense of that. It's going to be tough, there's no question.
* (on if there will be a difficulty in trying to evaluate his young players versus their veterans)*
Well, you know those youngsters, if they play for us, they're going to have to play against some front liners potentially at some point. You get a good chance to see them then. It's not going to be easy, but some of the guys will rise to that occasion and you'll get a chance to evaluate them. I think we'll get some one-on-one match ups, so we'll get a chance to see how some of our players can hold up against some of theirs. Some of those might not be the best if we have our third tackle going against Justin Houston or Tamba Hali, but that's the way it goes sometimes. We had our seventh tackle going against those kind of guys last year, so maybe we'll do a little better.
* (on Eric Berry's return to the NFL)*
I have a tremendous amount of respect for that young man. I know he played in the area, and having played against Kansas City, been in that division, played against him, what a fantastic player he is. Whenever you heard the report last year of what he was going through you obviously felt for him. I'm glad to see him back on the field and playing. It's a testament to him, his courage and his strength. It's good for football and good for him.
* (on why Zach Mettenberger was absent from practice)*
He was sick. I think it may be a food poisoning thing, something like that. In risk of being contagious, we sent him home. On a short week we couldn't afford having a bunch of guys sick. No, it wasn't anything else.
