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October 28, 2007

POSTGAME: Joe Gibbs' interview transcript

On his thoughts about the game
From our standpoint, the Redskins standpoint, we just couldn’t get anything going out there today. I think that we have to start off by giving the Patriots all the credit, it’s a real, real good football team. Looking across there, I don’t know of a weakness that they have. I was hoping we could make some plays and get ourselves going but we couldn’t. It’s one of those things that you hope wouldn’t happen to you and it did. It’s been a while since that’s happen to us. It’s been a long time and our guys are going to have to deal with that and see if we can bounce back next week and play a real important game on the road again. From a Redskins standpoint, you give New England all the credit. I think they have a heck of a football team all the way down and I think they are extremely well coached all the way across the board. I’m most worried right now about Carlos Rogers, our corner. I think he got hurt there and we’ll just have to see what it looks like tomorrow, I’m concerned about that.

On if he thought that Patriots were running up the score
No. I have no problem with anything that they did. Nothing, no problems from me.

On if he considered pulling his starters
I think our guys have a lot of pride. They want to play, they want to come out. I was proud of the fact that we got down the field finally with the drive there with the offense. I took the approach [that] if they want to play, I’ll let them play.

On if the Patriots were better than he thought
I don’t think you could say enough good things about the Patriots. That’s kind of the way I look at it, you’ve got to give them all the credit. I just know they were real, real good against us. It’s up to other people to evaluate overall where they think the Patriots are going to wind up. But, like I said, they’ve got great talent, great coaching and I think they’ve got a heck of a football team. It will take a lot to stop them.

On this being a learning experience for Jason Campbell
I think our most important thing for him was putting him in ‘red ball’ and letting him do some things there. I think every snap he takes is a learning experience. He’s pretty young. We’re really proud of him and how far he’s come. It certainly wasn’t his best day or any of our best days, including me. When I talked to the team I said ‘hey, we’re all together’ and certainly I’m a big part of that. The Redskins are all together. We do something, we lose a game like that, we’re all together. That’s our emphasis and I think Jason Campbell, from his standpoint, going through a real tough thing like that, you don’t like it. That’s an experience that can happen to you. There are still things he can learn and I was proud of him to take us down the field at the end. I think every play he takes, every experience he gets is a learning experience for him and is very important.

On how the Redskins will respond to today’s loss
I think we have a lot of pride. I think we have a lot of character. It’s got to be played out to see how we deal with this. Next week’s game is very important to us, it’s on the road and in reality it’s cutting it close to getting things done by the end of the season and next week’s game is just as important as this one. It’s going to be a big game for us. How we deal with this? I don’t know. I think it’s something we have to play out and see how we all react.

On if he thought the Redskins should’ve been able to move the ball around more
I was hoping that we would play a lot better all the way around.

On communication problems on the field or with the headsets
There were issues. It’s a problem across the league. I don’t want to use that as an excuse for what happened to us today. We’ll just continue to the let the league know what happened to us today and we’ll just have to see how they deal with it.

On if he’ll explore different options in the running game
No, I don’t think we’re going to change any personnel. I just think we have to get ourselves going.

On Tom Brady
I think he’s very, very good at what he does. He’s got the experience and he’s got a lot of talent around him and I think he’s exceptional.

On such a devastating loss
Anything with evaluating our football team always starts with me. I just know that today we didn’t play a good football game and that’s the first time that’s happened to us in a long time. Hopefully it won’t happen to us again.

On if he thought the Redskins defense would respond better
I thought we would play better than we did, certainly. We came in here and we were hoping we were going to play a great ball game. We certainly don’t want to take anything away from the Patriots. In all three phases we were kind of together -- we didn’t play well, we didn’t make plays. Of course that starts with me.

On what he said to Coach Belichick after the game
I didn’t say anything. We just shook. It was a heck of a job.

Posted by Art Martone  at 9:47 PM | Permalink