Projo Pats Blog

Can you talk about what the addition of Wes Welker has meant to your team this season?
Wes has done a real good job for us. He’s come in and worked really hard. [He] was one of our off-season award winners. [He] primarily plays in the slot, although I think there are other things that he can do, but just the way that our team is, the way it fits together with our other receivers and our offense and so forth. He’s in there a lot. We had a lot of trouble with him in Miami, defending him, and we’ve tried to put him in some of those situations that we had trouble with in our offense. That’s sort of some of the things we’ve done in the past anyway, so it’s not like we redesigned the offense or anything. [We’ve] put him in the spot where we feel he can be productive and compliments our other players. He’s done a good job.

Offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels was just talking about your goal line package with Mike Vrabel and Junior Seau coming in. What are the advantages to that as opposed to Laurence Maroney behind Heath Evans?
I think there’s a lot of different players that could do different things for us. It’s just a question of really how you want to utilize your personnel and how to distribute everything, how you want to put it together. I think that’s something that we talk about on a regular basis and it’s an overall team thing - It doesn’t just come down to one guy, “Could one guy do this or one guy do that?” Certainly, but it’s just a question of how you want to put the entire team - put everything together and…There’s a lot of things that go into the decision, is what I’m trying to say. [There’s a] lot of things that go into the decision and we do what we think is best for our football team.

Is short-yardage something that Maroney needs to work on?
I didn’t say that.

Is it?
I think everybody can work on everything. I think that every player can work on every phase of his game. I wouldn’t - If Tiger Woods can go out and practice 14 hours on the driving range, I think there’s things that we could do, all of us, can do to be better. I’m not saying that. But yeah, I think Laurence can run in any situation. I think our backs have a lot of versatility.

In particular with Heath Evans, what has allowed him to succeed so much here? It wasn’t that long ago that he was released. What has allowed him to do so well here?
He’s a smart kid, [he’s] versatile, he’s got some size, he’s got some running skill, [he has] good hands, [he’s] intelligent, [he can] handle a lot of different assignments. [He’s] pretty athletic, for a big kid. I think he’s got a lot of things going for him physically, athletically. He’s tough and he’s smart. Those things all work in his favor.

You talk about Welker, Randy Moss, Corey Dillon - What are you looking for, other than talent, obviously, when you bring these guys in? What makes them fit into your system? They seem to have a lot of success when they come here.
Every time you bring a player onto your team, I think you want to have an idea of what you’re going to do with them, what you’re going to ask them to do and whether or not you feel like he can do it. Whether you draft them or sign them as a free agent or a veteran free agent or whatever the situation is, here’s what you envision this guy’s responsibilities being and what he needs to do, and then whether or not you think he has the skill, the make-up and maybe in some cases experience, depending on what that role is, to do it. There’s no magic formula for anything. It’s a very inexact science, for sure, but you try to identify what you’re looking for and then find people that fit that particular niche or role or criteria, however you want to look at it. If you feel like it will be productive, then you do it. If you don’t, then you keep looking. Sometimes you find guys that you think will and for whatever reason they’re not available or you can’t acquire them on your team for one reason or another. And then sometimes you get another shot at them at a later point in time. You say, “Hey, this guy would be a good fit here.” For whatever reason, you don’t get him - somebody else drafts him or you’re not able to sign him or whatever. And then maybe that opportunity comes up later on. Or maybe it doesn’t. It’s a regular process. We go through it on a - It’s very cyclical. We go through it many times during the year and then the next year we go through it again. Some of the same names come up; some of them don’t. There’s some new names.

How helpful is it to have a veteran reserve offensive lineman like Russ Hochstein to step in in the middle of a game?
I think all of our offensive linemen that play for us have done a good job. Ryan [O’Callaghan]’s played a lot for us. Wes [Wesley Britt] last year in the Cincinnati game did a real good job for us. Billy [Yates]’s played, Russ has played. It’s a good group. They work hard. They work well together. Dante [Scarnecchia] mixes them in in practice so they all get a lot of reps. They work together. When you’re just kind of watching the offense and you’re not really focusing all of your attention on the offensive line, you kind of don’t realize who’s in there. You might go back and look and say, “Oh, that was Wes at tackle,” or “t]That was Russ at guard.” “That was Billy at guard,” or Steve [Neal] or Logan [Mankins] or - I’m not saying they all look the same. I don’t mean it that way. I’m just saying in terms of execution that it’s not real noticeable when one player’s in there or one isn’t. They all seem to function and operate well together, and certainly Russ is a part of that unit. He’s played center and guard for us, even at times briefly tackle and tight end, in some multiple tight end packages, so he’s a versatile guy, a smart, tough kid and has played well for us when he’s had the opportunity to - As has Billy, as has Wes, Ryan and the other five guys. I think we’re very fortunate there. They all work well together. They’re unselfish, they work hard. Dante does a great job of preparing each of them individually and as a group and it’s a good group to coach.

Do you think that’s the goal with the offensive line, that they reach a point where they’re all interchangeable parts but there’s still execution?
As much as possible, yeah. You’d like to have that at every position on your team, where you have several guys and they can all go in there and play well, and if one player’s in there instead of another one, you’re still able to go in there and operate and execute the plays the way you want them to. Everybody knows what to do and you can be productive. I’m not saying there’s no difference between the players, but I’m just saying, you’ve seen all the games. There’s times when there’ve been different combinations in there through the years, back to when Dan [Koppen] got hurt a couple of years ago and the tackle situation. There have been different players there. It’s been pretty functional.

What do you attribute that to? Is it the level of the players that you bring in or the system that allows them to do well?
I think it’s a combination of things, but really it’s the players. I don’t think it’s the system, I think it’s the players. They work hard, they’re well-prepared, they have the physical skill to play and when they get an opportunity to play they play at a good level. Not perfect, but good and [they] work hard to get better. They’re well-coached, they take the coaching. When they make a mistake, they correct it, they go out there and get it right the next time. We usually don’t have the same mistakes repeat over and over again. That’s not good to have in any position, but there’s usually not too much of that on the offensive line. I think all of those things are important.

What kind of challenges is Pittsburgh’s front going to present to them?
Pittsburgh’s good on defense. They lead the league in pretty much every category on defense, starting with the most important one, which is points, so they’ll be a big challenge for us. It’s not just the linemen, it’s the linebackers, the DB’s blitz, they stunt a lot, there’s a lot of different combinations, you’re not always blocking the same guy. [Casey] Hampton [is] one of the best noses in the league. [Aaron] Smith, he does a great job. [The] linebackers are active. [Troy] Polamalu shows up there on the line of scrimmage and he’s a tough guy to block, so they give you a lot of combinations. It’s not always just a straight, one-on-one match-up. It’s guard or center or a tackle could end up blocking one of three, four or five different guys from play to play.

Do you find watching film that they blitz as much as they have in the past?
Yeah, they blitz. It depends on which game you watch, but I mean, yeah, they blitz.

Has their defense changed much under Mike Tomlin?
No.

Tom Brady said yesterday that there’s a lot of pride in the December record of this team, especially in the last three or four years. What is it about December that brings out the best in this team?
I don’t know. I’d like to think there’s a lot of pride taken around here in every game, including December. I definitely agree with what Tom said, but at the same time, we try to take pride in our performance every week, from game one to game whatever. That’s the way we do it - come in, prepare for the team, get ready to go, try to play our best on Sunday and try to win. That’s what we do every week. I don’t have any real formula for why, but the most important thing is that we maintain consistency there and we try to get to the highest level we can. I’m not saying we always do it -- we’re far from perfect, we make a lot of mistakes - but that’s what we try to do. We try to do it on a regular week. It’s not like we go along in October and November and say, “OK, we’re going to really change things here in December and try to start playing good football.” [We] try to play good football all year long. [We] try to coach well. We don’t always do it, but we’re trying.

You’ve often said if you’re not getting better, you’re getting worse. When did you first learn that? Was that something from your dad?
I don’t really remember putting it quite that way, but I think probably the first guy I remember saying that - I think probably one of the first people I remember really talking about that was Chuck Noll, saying you’re not going to stay the same. You’re either going to get better or you’re going to get worse. And at that time, they were pretty good, so it wasn’t something that you as a competitor wanted to hear, because the Steelers were pretty good as it was. You didn’t really - The thought of them getting a whole lot better than they already were was not a particularly pleasant thought if you had to play against them. But I think that’s probably the first time I remember hearing it, or words to that effect.

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