On opening the season 1-2:

“Well, I think that we’ve showed a lot of good things that we were expecting. Then we’ve failed to execute at times when I would’ve expected that that would not happen. But it’s all about execution. We’ve got the players. We’ve got the schemes and I’m not concerned about that. The coaches are working hard and we’ve just got to get the players to execute. They’re the ones that are out on the field and they’re the ones that have to do it, and they know what they’re supposed to do. We’ve got a few young guys, new guys in there. We’re going to give them a shot and I think they’re going to play well.”

On if it’s frustrating not getting better results on defense:

“Yeah, it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating for the players and coaches and to see people sometimes make a mistake. They’ve been coached up on it during the week and during the week, they didn’t make the mistake and then they got in the game and they did. With young players, is it because it’s a little stage fright? Inexperience and that sort of thing? What’s the cause of it? That’s what you really bang your head against the wall on. I think that we’ve got some really bright spots with some players who are playing well and just going to play even better. I think our linebacking core is just a tremendous improvement. Where we’ve had problems, it’s basically been one player, just not carrying out his assignment. All he had to do was to do what he had been taught to do. If you have a busted play in this league, one player breaking down makes the whole defense look bad. But the other 10 guys can be playing very well.”

On the defense saying that defensive coordinator Frank Bush is putting them in the right place:

“Well I think that they have bought into the defense, the schemes. They say that it’s not a problem with the schemes. It’s not a problem with the calls. They just have to execute. In life, if you break it down to its smallest element of the whole universe, everything works well if everybody just does what they should do—each individual. It’s not different with a football team. All they have to do is just carry out their assignments. Sometimes, the players will try to do more than that and they just have to believe that all I have to do is do my job. With the talent that we have on this team, we’re going to win a lot of games, and we will. We will. I think they’re buying into it and they need to be a little more disciplined, and with that discipline, we’re going to get better ourselves.”