POSTED: Sunday August 19th 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SUNDAY, AUGUST 19, 2007 - Head Coach Brad Childress

Okay, not much new to report really on our injury front.  Hopefully we get a couple guys back this week.  Hopefully Khreem Smith and Erasmus James are able to take some snaps for us this week and rush the passer.  We would like to see them in some live snaps, and I feel like they will able to do that, although we will hold off until the end of the week, but that certainly is the plan.  I mentioned to you the starters will play a half here and then probably come out to start the third quarter.  I?d like to see them go through the process of going through halftime, readjusting, coming back out and playing both offense and defense.  Other than that we face a Seattle team that is a playoff team, who I can?t imagine - although Coach Holmgren has a great levelness about him - I can?t imagine they are happy with having 48 points scored on them.  I think Green Bay?s defense scored four defensive touchdowns, so I can?t imagine we won?t get both barrels from them.  But it will be a good test, and it?s always an interesting place to go play with a hostile crowd.

Q: Adrian Peterson, obviously 19 carries in the first couple of games.  Is that your plan all along since you know what Chester Taylor can do?

A: Yeah, we?ve been trying  to ramp him up little by little and see what we feel like he looks at well and give him a little bit more every week.  I don?t know that we?re necessarily shopping an exact number for him, but he is fairly adept with most of the stuff we are doing right now.

Q: Do you need to get a long look at Tarvaris Jackson in this game after what happened in the last one?

A: You mean do I want to throw it every snap this first half? No, I want to do what it takes to win the football game. That is the way we always head out. We?ll script those plays the same way we do, but it?s not like I am looking to see him throw it on his 50 plays that he is in there 50 times. I get to see that every day out here, so I have a decent idea.

Q:  Is it important for him to get the game snaps plays?

A: You can only get so many, and rarely is it that you are going to play one quarterback for the whole preseason. Typically you develop a plan, and I mentioned to you that we wouldn?t put our starters back in for the fourth quarter. That game had some interesting twists and turns, and about as far as I went was to give him a series in the second quarter.

Q: In terms of your passing game in general, have you gotten enough preseason work?

A: I tell you what, the next time I talk to you I will tell you the number of snaps we have thrown, I mean the number of balls and routes that we have thrown and the repetitions we?ve taken. I would tell you Kevin that we are playing against a pretty good defense really on a day-to-day basis when you think about it. Now you can say, ?Well you haven?t gotten live game snaps.? Really we are trying to practice at as high of tempo as we can to simulate that aside from the pile. I guess that would be my answer and you have to balance that.  Yeah I want to see those guys play against live play, but by the same token the goal is to get them better but yet get them healthy until September 9.

Q: As far as Adrian Peterson and Chester Taylor, anything that you have seen over the last week that would alter your plans?

A: No, nothing that I?ve seen. You know, Chester being the starter and Adrian being the change-up, and as I mentioned it?s all about coming out of this camp with a good idea of who we are as a football team and who we are as an offense and then individually, not asking guys to do something that we do not feel like they are very good at. That?s whether it?s within the offensive line or at wide receiver or running back, etc.

Q:  You are giving Robert Ferguson a look?

A: We were having him in (for a physical) here, and I had a conversation with him this afternoon.

Q: Are you looking to pursue him or are you just keeping a mind of what?s out there?

We are; you know (Darrell Bevell) has a pretty good feel for him from his days in Green Bay, and many of our scouts did when he was coming out. I?ve never had a chance to sit down with him eyeball to eyeball, so I enjoyed our conversation this afternoon.

Q: Do you expect Fred Evans back at a certain point?

A: Without knowing the nuances of the court system, again, I think he?s fighting through some paperwork here, and we?ve been in pretty constant contact, but there are a couple things paperwork-wise that they?re trying to get straight. You can?t fight city hall in that area.

Q: What are your impressions of the defensive line play after watching the tape?

A: I?d have to go back and check my notes, but most of the pressure was four-man pressure. Ray (Edwards) had a couple of great rushes, and (Kenechi) Udeze really pushed the pocket from the backside. Those guys don?t get any credit for that, but they?re basically the people that flush and make a guy make those kind of decisions. Ray had a pretty good spin move, and then Kevin (Williams) had a pretty good lick on D?Brickashaw Ferguson. He had the grape Crush hit-of-the-night there. They did a good job and they are generating that four-man pressure that we?re looking for.

Q: ?

A: We don?t sit down per say and go through all the sections. Do we look at the tape? Do we look at the Green Bay tape? I was just looking at it before I came down here, but we?re not as extensive. We?re taking plays from our training camp. In other words, we?re not trying to trick our guys. If we see a coverage that we think we can exploit, we?re trying to call a play against that coverage. If they don?t give it to us, the quarterback has a conversion option to go somewhere else with it. So it?s not as an extensive game-planning type of thing and really it?s just letting our guys play within the framework of our system. It gets specific from the standpoint of ? you saw us play with a lot of two tight ends the other night ? and we wanted to watch those guys play. You can do some things in terms of the personnel packages that you put on the field to see people play, so we had that in mind in a few instances where we could get double looks at those guys both front-side and back-side. But strategically, in the red zone, as much as I would like to be able to work on the red zone, if you?re only in the red zone an X amount of times it?s not like I can stop and ask them to spot the ball down there, so we have to get it out here.

Q: On the defensive side of the ball, what types of things are you looking for from E.J. Henderson in these preseason games?

A: I think he?s done a good job of that because you saw him with some no-huddle schemes and some empty schemes, and there always has to be communication. You saw people flipping a good bit in and out. They do a nice job of changing personnel on you. The one time they quick-snapped us, we got stuck with a nickel on the field with their regular personnel, which related to the play before that where they had 10 people on the field. They ran a guy on late; we had our nickel on, so there?s no infraction for having a lesser amount of people on the field. I was hollering at Jeff Triplette about it, and he said, ?No, they only had 10.? So we got caught with the nickel and the next snap we got caught in the red zone where they snuck us while we were trying to get a guy off. They ran a quarterback sneak; they got a 5-yard penalty on us because they knew we had too many guys on the field.

Q: Do you expect to play Tarvaris Jackson into the third quarter or will Brooks Bollinger get in?

A: Yeah, what I?m saying is the person that starts the game, and that will probably be Tarvaris, will play past halftime and come out after the half.

Q: The last field goal before halftime, how valuable is getting a situation like that in the preseason?

A: There were three opportunities in that game, and I?m drawing a blank, but that was one of them. There were three special teams opportunities that happened to us in that game that we coach against, that we talk about, that you see us try to simulate with me hollering, ?Fourteen, thirteen, twelve.? I think there was 33 seconds left when we snapped that ball. I want to say we had a timeout left. We didn?t end up taking it. But yeah, to get your no-huddle field goal team on the field and get everybody off and set up and have him drill a 54-yarder, about the only thing you would like is to get a couple more of those situations. But once again, that?s why you try to stage them (at practice).

Q: On Darren Sharper?s interception, was that more of a veteran freelancing type of decision?

A: There?s nobody freelancing out there. Freelancing is for freelance artists, not freelance football players. Eleven guys have a responsibility; now they have flexibility within that scheme disguise-wise, which we spend a lot of time talking about holding looks. Does the quarterback give any tells? Like in poker, is there a time when you can tell the ball is getting ready to be centered? They did a nice job of disguising, showing him one thing ? as a matter of fact one time you saw him have to use a timeout because we showed him one thing and we were going to do something quite different.

Q: How pleased are you with the progression of the team since you opened camp?

A: As I?ve said before, I think it?s incremental. I can?t tell you it?s leaps and bounds, but I see us getting better at things every week. This week it happened to be that I saw us taking a good look at the run game. I think it makes a difference that a guy like Steve Hutchinson is back in there. I thought our running backs took good looks at those, and you don?t do anything without those guys covering people up in the front and somewhere the wide receiver is out on the outside engaging people. I thought we made some progress there this week.

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