Q&A with HERM EDWARDS - 9/19

[BP]

Sep 19, 2007, 3:15:18 PM

HERM EDWARDS: “Hot today and that’s the way it’s supposed to be over the weekend. So, it was good for us to practice in the heat.”

Q: Having Jared Allen back is great but was he rough, did he have a few cobwebs?

EDWARDS: “He’s been working out and been in the meetings, so that’s not the problem. It’s just conditioning. Now, he was pretty fresh today, ‘cause he hadn’t practiced in two weeks. He had fresh legs. The key will be how he feels tomorrow. He’ll be a little sore tomorrow. But he did a good job, was excited about playing, back practicing with the guys. He practiced hard today.”

Q: Must have been good seeing him out on the field today.

EDWARDS: “Oh yeah, whenever you get another good football player back you’re always excited. That always helps us.”

Q: Does it help at all that you scrimmaged these guys in training camp?

EDWARDS: “Not really. It’s a wash. It’s vanilla. Most of the guys didn’t even play. Some of their starters didn’t even practice against us: the two inside guys, the corner, some of our guys didn’t participate either. You kind of got a feel for guys, but no.”

Q: What kind of mood were your guys in today after starting 0-2?

EDWARDS: “They’re good. We went through this last year. But you can’t panic, can’t worry about what happened to you in the past. You’ve got to look to the future and who we play this week. It’s the first home game we’ve had in a long time. It will be good to play in our stadium, but that alone won’t help us. We have to stop shooting ourselves in the foot.

“We told them today we’ve given up 20 points in two games on just miscues. It’s not tackling a guy, gave up 10 points last week on running a kick back, then runs the next one down to the 20 [yard line]. That’s 10 points. The prior week it was fumbling the ball on the 25 and they kick a field goal. Fumble another ball and they run it back for a touchdown. That’s another 10 points. That’s 20 points – a gift.

“You can’t do that. We’re not good enough to do that yet. No team really is, but I know we’re not. So, we have to stop making errors. We have 14 penalties already in two games. That’s way to many – that’s seven a game. We were the fifth least penalized team in the league last year. We’ve got to straighten that out.

“We’ve turned the ball over already six times in two games. That’s three a game. Now, we’ve taken it away five times. But when you do those things you’re asking for trouble.”

Q: Penalties are very un-Herm like. A little undisciplined?

EDWARDS: “That’s exactly right. Losing their focus. You can say some of it is because of a lot of youth, but eventually they’ve got to get away from that. We can’t keep saying that. If you’re a five-year player or a rookie it’s all the same. It all counts.

“We’ll get it straightened out. We have to get it straightened out because we don’t play that way.”

Q: Can you run down your injuries?

EDWARDS: “Right now, Kennison is out, McIntosh we held out. But [McIntosh] will practice tomorrow. I held Larry out. He’ll practice tomorrow. He could have practiced but I just held him out. Wesley was a little sore.”

Q: ‘Cause he’s going to carry the ball 40 times this week?

EDWARDS: “Just rested him. It was a tough game against Chicago – a physical game. The ground was very hard, too. A lot of those guys have some aches and pains. You know, Larry took some shots. He played against a good defense.”

Q: Jackson, the Vikings QB, turned the ball over four times last week. He’s a young guy but how do you keep him in that mode of questioning himself?

EDWARDS: “He’s a young player and young players make mistakes. You know that. Hopefully they learn from each week and they don’t repeat them. That’s the risk you take when you play a young guy and when it’s a quarterback especially. You control a lot of things that happen in the game. You do have the ball in your hands. I think last week was a learning experience for him.

“He probably wished he hadn’t made some throws. He was trying to make some plays. Sometimes when you’re a young quarterback you feel you have to make all the plays. Brodie kind of falls into that category.”

Q: But that’s a choice you made with Brodie, that he wasn’t ready to be a starter.

EDWARDS: “Yeah, but we had a veteran in Damon who played well. But that comes along with the territory. You don’t want it to become a weekly thing or it gets you in trouble.”

Q: Defensively, they scored three touchdowns on defense. Is scoring a touchdown on defense on a turnover just kind of happenstance? How are they so good scoring on plays?

EDWARDS: “They’ve gotten them in some key situations. Generally, they’ve gotten them close to the line of scrimmage where no one’s in the way for them to be tackled. They do a good job in creating negative yards. They’re number one in the league in creating negative yards. We’re number four.”

Q: I know this is just the third game but isn’t this an important game? This team hasn’t even won a game since December 31st and after this week you go back on the road and play maybe the most talented team in the league.

EDWARDS: “No doubt. It’s a home game and you want to make sure you win the ones at home. That’s for sure. This is one we need to win for a lot of reasons. You’re exactly right. We haven’t played well. We’ve turned the ball over. We turned the ball over in the last game of the [2006] season, in the playoffs. We turned the ball over and didn’t score a lot of points. We’re kind of still on that track right now. When the calendar switched we didn’t get off that track. We’ve taken the ball away but we’ve given it right back. We need to win a game.”

Q: Was Jared Allen working with the first team today?

EDWARDS: “Sure was.”

Q: We know a lot about Adrian Peterson around here. How much does he jump out at you?

EDWARDS; “Ooooh, he’s a talented guy now. He’s is very talented. Strong runner. A great cut-back guy with great speed. He’s going to be a handful now. Peterson can run.”

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Q: Penalties are very un-Herm like. A little undisciplined?

EDWARDS: “That’s exactly right. Losing their focus. You can say some of it is because of a lot of youth, but eventually they’ve got to get away from that. We can’t keep saying that. If you’re a five-year player or a rookie it’s all the same. It all counts.

“We’ll get it straightened out. We have to get it straightened out because we don’t play that way.”

When you never take any chances on offense you don't get many penalties you dumbass.

I thought another Herm thread was needed to lighten the mood around here a little more.

Disclaimer: Once again my apologies to Mrs. Sperm Edwards for posting this thread, I know your husband can't control himself.

[Thor99]

Hi, Sooth!

[Sperm Edwards]

I just like how when the team isn't penalized a lot it's b/c of Herm's genius & when they're penalized more, it's the players losing their focus.