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            **BB:**  What do you have today?  

**Q: After what Joe Andruzzi has been through does it surprise you that he is able to still stand up there?

BB:** Well, I will tell you, Joe is a tough guy. There is no question; physically he looks better than he did last year. He a play out there in practice yesterday where it was an outside play that he was pulling to run and get in front of the ball carrier and I told him come back to the huddle. That is the best that I have seen him run in a couple of years. I am not calling him fast, but he is running better.

**Q: Is his tolerance for what he has gone through any different from anybody else?

BB:** I would say he is mentally about as tough as you are going to get. Joe can play through a lot. I think Mike Woicik had one of the best commentaries on Joe when we were talking when Joe had an injury, I forget when it was, it was a while ago. We said, 'How long do you think he will be out?' He said, 'Well whatever we think it is, subtract a couple of weeks from it and that is what it will be.' I think that kind of sums it up.

**Q: In your general experience have you noticed that players who come into the league like Joe did, like Orlando Brown, will fight to get back quicker?

BB:** I think the guys that make it I am sure there is a correlation there. I think there are plenty of other guys that never make it in the league that come kind of in that same scenario and then don't make it and then that is probably part of the reason why they don't make it because they just don't have the will or just can't fight through it like the players that you mentioned and I am sure a lot of other ones. You think about the guys that make it and say, 'Boy this is what these guys do.' There are plenty of other guys that are in that same situation and don't do it.

**Q: Do you see more of those guys?

BB:** There are plenty of them, sure. Honestly though, a lot of those players get weeded out before they get to us. It is the same thing, you get the star guys in high school and they end up not being that good or you get the guys that come out of high school that are big time and go to the college programs and never play. Other guys that aren't that heavily recruited come in and do better. A lot of that process filters itself out as you move up the level of competition. For some of those guys who don't have the type of determination and mental toughness, drive; whatever you want to call it, it gets harder each year and each step of the way. Sometimes they get discouraged before they finally get up to this level. I have had plenty of players, everybody has coached them, and you look at a guy and say, 'Boy this guys has got the talent to play, he could really be good,' and ends of never doing anything.

**Q: You have been coaching a long time…

BB:** Too long.

**Q: When you see a guy like Joe and guys like Ty Law who have played through an injury. What do people say about those guys?

BB:** That is why they are in this league and that is why they are the players that they are. Not just the fact that they did that but there are plenty of other days that they go out there and have to push through something else, a bad play, a bad break or something happens that might discourage other guys but they played through it. They have the mental and physical toughness to just withstand a setback and keep going. You have to have a short memory at corner. Everybody gives up at completion at corner. You have to have a short memory at quarterback. Every quarterback has interceptions. You have to put those plays behind you and be able to go on and still make a good play after that and not let it drag you down.

**Q: Does that physical toughness that Ty or Joe or any other player, can that be learned or developed?

BB:** Sure. I think we have all lived through those situations where you have a situation that bothers you and you learn to deal with it. After a while it is not that bad and then the next time you get something, it is 'Well this wasn't as bad as what I had before,' and you deal with it. I think that is part of it. A lot of the injuries in whatever the specific sport is are fairly common, multiple guys get them either on this team or whatever team it is or throughout the league whether it is baseball, basketball, whatever the common injuries are to that sport, and guys deal with them. The younger players come in and they see how other people deal with them. Then when they get them, if it is comparable, then a lot of times those guys learn from that and learn how to deal with it in the same way. Getting ice on something after practice and getting extra treatment and taking care of it and feeling a little sore and stiff after the games and after practice, that is the way it is. You just learn to deal with it. After a while it is like no big deal. You can almost look at it as preventative rather than treatment.

**Q: In 2001 Joe in the San Diego game came out with an injury and came back in and Ty Law did the same thing in the Jets game. Can you think of a situation where you thought a guy wasn't going to come back and he does in an incredibly short amount of time?

BB:** Sure. We've had plenty of them and I have had them through my career. You look at a guys and say, 'Well it doesn't look like he is going to make it.' Then he makes it. Even [Bryan] Cox. He wanted to go back in on that broken leg out in Denver. As ridiculous as it was, he said 'Hey what am I going to do? It's already broken. They can't break it again, so let's go.' When [Lawrence] Taylor sprained his ankle before the New Orleans game, I forget which year it was, but he rolled it in practice the Friday before we played the Saints. It was a gruesome play. He stepped right on the guy's foot and totally flipped his ankle right over and landed with all of his weight and he was running full speed. We looked at it the next day when he came in Saturday morning and said there was no way. We played him Sunday night. He played.

**Q: How did he do?

BB:** Pretty good. That was one of his hallmark games. When you look back at his career, not just the way he played in New Orleans, but the fact that he had the ankle injury on Friday and was over at the horse track trying to get treatment on a Saturday. [Laughter]

**Q: [Laughter] Do you have the type of scheme where you can move guys around on the offensive line and plug them in there? How are you able to patch it together? Is that a credit to Dante [Scarnecchia] or the players that you are scouting?

BB:** Well I think that Dante is as a good a coach that I have coached with. He does a great job and has coached a lot of different positions and just knows the game as thoroughly as anybody I have been around. I don't think there is any question that he does an outstanding job with those players. Again, when you only take seven or eight linemen to a game, it would be rare for a team to dress more than eight linemen. I think the number you would see from week-to-week on just about every team in the league is seven or eight. You have five spots and you back them up so that is 10. Somewhere along the line somebody has got to double up in one or more positions. I think every team in the league has to face that. You just have to decide how you want to do it. I have been in situations where you have a sixth man so to speak and no matter who gets hurt, that guy would go in and either he would go into the spot where the player was lost or he would go into a couple of spots and then that might bump somebody else in somewhere else. But you would have barely six guys to play five spots. There are other teams and other situations where you have a swing tackle and then you have a swing guard and one of your guards play center so you get your seven that way. Sometimes you carry a pure center in the game and have a swing guard and a swing tackle or some combination like that. There are a lot of different ways to do it. The bottom line is somehow you have to do it because it is hard to carry 10 linemen into a game and back up every position one-for-one. It is hard to do it. In preseason, that is one thing. In the regular season, there are just too many other needs.

**Q: Have you guys experienced more movement on the line the past couple of years than the average team around the league has?

BB:** You would like to not have any. We've had some, more than we would like to have. A lot of it has been at a couple of positions. This year unfortunately with Mike Compton who had been a consistent starter for us there at left guard for the precious years. Now we have to undergo some kind of change there. Fortunately or unfortunately, I guess, with the way things have gone, Damien [Woody's] flexibility between center and guard which he has played a lot of both of those positions in the last couple of years has enabled us to make the movement more comfortable. At least guys have been there and he has worked with [Matt] Light and has also played right guard. Joe has worked with both of them. You just have to try to make it work there. It is not what you want, you would like to have the same five guys out there every week, every year, like Philadelphia has had for three years in a row. That is the ideal situation.

**Q: How frustrating is it when you have a guy who has a lot more talent than say a Joe Andruzzi but every little nagging thing puts him on the injury list?

BB:** I know what you are saying, that is a tough one. Look, nobody wants to be on the injured list. These guys, they start in March and they do the offseason conditioning program and they lift weights and do extra stretching, and do everything in the world and then you get into training camp and you get into the regular season, there are a lot of other big, physical guys hitting them to, sometimes something breaks down. When you go through all of that training and you go through all of that work to get to the point of playing, nobody wants to go out and say, 'I worked hard for four months and now I have a hangnail and so I am not going to play this week.' I just don't think that is the mentality. You don't get that far having that kind of mentality. Sometimes, stuff happens. It's unfortunate, it really is. I don't think that any of those guys that are on our injured list or probably on anybody else's injured list, they are not happy about being there. It is not like there are saying, 'Okay well this gets me off the hook.' You don't as hard as they work to get to that point to then look for an easy way out.

**Q: How do you get guys to develop that threshold for playing with pain?

BB:** I think that there is a certain mentality that you have to do that. On the other hand, no matter how tough you are, there are some injuries that I don't care how tough the guy is, there are some things that you can't play with. That is another set of circumstances. I guess the way I have heard it and I think it is probably true is there is a difference between pain and injury. If you are injured, you can't play. If there is pain, then we all have to deal with that. I am sure that every player in the league goes through that at some point or another where there is some discomfort and that is part of the game. But there is a fine line between that and serious injury and opening up a player to re-injury which is that last thing in the world we want because the only thing that is any value to us is players that are healthy. If they are hurt they can't help the team, they can't help themselves. It is in everybody's best interest to avoid that.

**Q: Over the years I am sure that you have seen guys who have played through pain and that is something that is not unusual…

BB:** No and not to cut you off there, but my first year that I came into the league with the Colts in 1975, the middle linebacker was Mike Curtis. About six or seven games into the season he was traded and Jim Cheyunski was our middle linebacker. We won like the last eight or nine regular season games, I forgot what is was, and ended up going 10-4 and winning the division that year and lost to Pittsburgh in the playoffs. Cheyunski was a guy that we had gotten from Buffalo and he had bad knees. When we got him, there was kind of a split feeling between, 'Yeah he is a pretty good player, but his knees are so bad, he is never going to be able to play.' And the decision was made, 'Well, we got to get him because we lost Curtis because they traded him, so we have to get him. We have to do what we have to do to get him and get him out there.' So Cheyunski never practiced on Wednesday. He never practiced on Thursday. He went out there on Friday and did the walk through's and probably did about 10 plays in practice every week. He played hard and played well on Sunday and I am thinking how is this possible. How can a guy really not practice, and it wasn't like he was with us in training camp either, but go out there and play as well as he did on a consistent basis week-after-week. Then he would come in on Monday and couldn't walk and then start the process all over again. By Friday there was enough oil in his joints where he could go out there and take a few plays and then play on Sunday. I don't know how he did it then and looking back on it I still don't know how he did. But I learned a lesson right there that first year that guys are different. Some players can draw from their experience and take mental reps and convert it into physical execution on Sunday with less practice time. They can also take a situation where you look at a guy and say, 'This guy can't even walk,' and then somehow he plays. Again, he played on a division winning team. It wasn't like we just lost and we were just terrible. He played well and the team played well. I found that out my first year. That has stuck with me all the way through. You just don't count guys out and everybody is different. I am not saying that everybody could do what he did. Some can and I am sure some couldn't. That is what separates individuals.

**Q: I am just wondering if you had a tougher team than this one you have now. Is this one of the more tougher teams that you have been around?

BB:** I think we have some tough guys on the team. I really do. I think that it has been that way for a couple of years. I think that we have them and I think that they show that. I am not saying we go out there and do everything perfectly all of the time but I think that we do have some guys that have a high degree of physical and mental toughness which is what it takes to deal with some of the things that we have to deal with.

**Q: Your practices have probably been significantly altered by the injuries you have had.

BB:** We've had to cut it back.

**Q: Does that get easier for the group to adjust to it as it goes along? They say humans can adjust to anything.

BB:** I think we are doing what we can do. I think you get to the point of diminishing returns and when your players who are going to play a majority of the game at their position are also having to run all of the scout team plays because of the lack of numbers. Something has got to give. I remember when I was in Detroit. We were in a situation where we were pretty banged up and Fritz Shurmur was the defensive line coach and Jerry Glanville was the linebackers coach and I remember we were sitting there in a staff meeting and we were having a similar discussion to that, 'Here is what we normally do,' and I remember Fritz saying, 'Look, we can't do that. Let's cut the plays in half, it is more important for us to get quality plays and be fresh and ready to go on Sunday than it is to leave it out here on the practice field. These guys are going to play hard, they are going to give us all they've got, let's give it to our opponents on Sunday and not leave it out there on the practice field on Wednesday.' You know, he was right. We were banged up and we didn't have a great team that year or anything, but we played as competitively I think as those guys could play in that situation in 1976. I really learned a lot from that situation because I think the way he analyzed was right and that is what we did and I think it was the best thing to do.

**Q: How did Mike Cloud look in practice?

BB:** Mike was okay. Mike was okay. He took some scout team plays, and ran some stuff off cards and tried to get into. In a way, he's got fresh legs because he hasn't gone through the grind. On the other hand, he's coming back off an injury and has missed some time. It's kind of a little bit of a contrast there for him. I thought Mike moved around okay. It looks like we'll see what the residual effects are today and tomorrow, in other words whether he stiffens up or this is the best it is going to look and then it's going to get worse or whether this is what it was and it's going to get better or whatever and put a few days together here and try to make an evaluation.

**Q: Does [Kevin] Faulk have a chance to practice today?

BB:** I would say Faulk is day-to-day; he didn't practice yesterday. I think he's a little better today. We'll see where he is.

**Q: How many throws do you see Tom [Brady] making in the last two or three weeks that have been significantly altered by his shoulder or his elbow? When you look at the game are you seeing a number of throws that are different as a result?

BB:** No. I don't think so. I don't think so.

**Q: How about ball handling? He had a ball slip out.

BB:** Oh, in the Jets game?

**Q: Yeah.

BB:** Right. You know, I just don't think he had a good grip on the ball in the play. One thing, I usually meet with the quarterbacks every week and when I've met with them the last couple of weeks, the big thing that I've emphasized with all of them, and it's the same thing looking back through my notes last year it's the same type of thing, what happens I think to all players, but particularly quarterbacks because their mechanics are so critical to their execution. It's like a golf swing. There are a hundred things you have got to do, and do them all right. And if you do one thing wrong, you've got a bad shot. Punting and passing, those real skill positions in football, I think are similar to that. So you go through training camp, and in training camp, you have a lot of times double practices and part of those practices are devoted to fundamentals and you are concentrating on a lot of little things like your footwork and your ball handing and your shoulders and your elbow position. And then you get into the regular season and you start getting into game plans and you start getting into scouting reports and when the weak safety is two inches this way, it's going to be cover eight; and when he's over here on the guard, then that's going to be three; and when the mikes here, it's this; this is mike will blitz; when the end is over here in a wide alignment…you start getting into all, a million things like that. We've got this play called, we're going to check that and so forth. And then sometimes the fundamentals start to backslide a little bit. Again I am saying it with a skill position, like quarterback, it happens at defensive lineman and offensive lineman too. They are so worried about what blitz they are going to run and who's got who and when am I going to air it and when am I going to man it. Then they don't take a good set. Or they don't use their hands correctly, like they've been trained to do over and over and over again in training camp, when you can fundamentally work on those things day-after-day-after-day-after-day.

**Q: Was this a week where you visited fundamentals?

BB:** For the whole team. Not just…the quarterback is a part of that…but I think this is the point of the season, that maybe third, fourth, fifth week in the season, where if the players aren't careful and the team's not careful that your fundamentals can start to backslide a little bit from where they were at the end of training camp or the beginning of the season. And because of all the other things that are going on, the game planning, the scouting reports, the adjustments, and all that type of thing, that gets emphasized more than the fundamentals. You have to try to keep a balance there. Again I am saying that with quarterbacks, I am saying that with a lot of other positions as well, that fundamentally now is the time where we really have to stay on top of that.

**Q: On two of the interceptions it seems as if another shot would have been preferable? Did he just make the wrong type of throw, the wrong decision of trajectory, or was he unable to make that throw?

BB:** Well, I think he can make the throw. He threw an 85-yard touchdown against the Redskins in the first game. He threw a pass to [David] Givens. He threw the ball there to Givens in the end zone. I don't think you can make a better throw than that. I don't think that it's a question of him physically not being able to make the play. I think it's a question of the overall decision making on the play and specifically the route and the throw and the coverage that were in place on the plays that you mentioned. Given all that happened, there were problems…certainly the quarterback has the final say because he has the ball. There were other problems within the play besides the quarterback and the throw itself as there are on a lot of other interceptions as well. And the quarterback certainly is accountable as a part of that too.

**Q: What do you think Tom [Brady] learned from last Sunday?

BB:** What do I think Tom learned from last Sunday?

**Q: He made a comment, 'I learned more about myself in the last couple of weeks and more in the last 24 hours. And I am trying to realize what this is all about.'

BB:** Why don't you ask him that?

**Q: Well, I'm gonna…I just want your opinion on it.

BB:** Um…I think it probably would be better if he addressed that specific comment to exactly what he was referring to. I don't know. I think that…speaking just personally, I learn something from every game. I learn something from every season. And this is 29 of them, unfortunately. There is always something that, if you are objective, I think there is always something that you can take out of the game in terms of strategy, preparation, maybe decision-making, time-management. Whatever it is, if you are a quarterback there's other things. If you're a coach, there are things. Whatever position you play. If you are defensive coordinator, there is something else. I think you can always take something out of every game. Even a preseason game. And if you don't take something that is brand new out of it, you take something that reinforces what your beliefs are or what your strategy should be and you do that to keep yourself sharp or reinforce what you would do in that situation or similar situations when they come up again. So that's…to me it's a learning process that goes on every week, every game, every season. Whether that is exactly what he is referring to or not, I don't know.

**Q: Is Tom one of the tougher guys you have been around?

BB:** Yeah. He is. Yeah, mentally and physically. I think that is a strength, definitely a strength.

**Q: Has Tom proved to be one of the tougher guys?

BB:** Tom is to me, one of the types of players that looks forward to practice that likes to go out there and work and throw and work to get better. I've never seen him really try to get out of anything. If anything, Tom would like to throw 50, 7-on-7 passes everyday. He would throw 7-on-7 until the receivers stop running. That's the way he likes to do it. You have to manage that as a coach. You just can't do that. But if it was up to him, if you said, this is what we got to do, 'No problem Coach. Let's run some more. Let's flip them over and run them the other way.' He can never have enough of those plays. He's always looking to jump in there and take plays even when we have a rotation. You can just see him, not that he doesn't wait his turn, but you can just see him itching to get back. 'Gee, I would like to run that play.'