grantpaulsen.com » Blog Archive » ‘Skins Top Eagles: Post Game Quotes

‘Skins Top Eagles: Post Game Quotes

December 22nd, 2008

The Redskins beat the Eagles 10-3 on Sunday in a defensive struggle at FedEx Field. Here are some of the quotes I gathered from various players during interviews in the locker room after the game.

Laron Landry:

On the final play:
“About two plays before that they tried to run the same route, and I broke that one up. The number-one receiver kind of came in and set it down, he didn’t run straight through so I took the deep one away because I thought he was going to go over the top again. But I saw [Reggie Brown] turn his shoudler so I just broke down ‘cuz I knew where the goal-line was. They had to score a touchdown so I was playing the goal-line, ready. I just broke straight down and I knew if he didn’t cross me, game over.

On where the hit ranks on the Landry hit-ometer:
“Ahh, man. I really got started off to a slow start since the start of the season with the hamstring injury and everything like that, so I’d give it about a 4.

What about the Mushin Muhammad hit last year… where does that rank?:
“That’s like an eight because I got fined. When I get fined, that’s when it’s a good hit. If I get fined for it then it’s a good hit. All my hits have to get fines in order for them to be good. If I hit somebody and they get up real retarted and come Wednesday or Thursday when I am sitting at my locker a FedEx package comes to me, I know I’ve done my job. So I’ll wait until Wednesday or Thursday to see if I get my FedEx package and then I’ll get back to you on that hit.”

On his hit earlier on in the game on DeShawn Jackson:
“I could have intercepted that ball but I didn’t even see that ball come across, I just hit him. I didn’t even look at him because I knew I was going to leave him for dead.”

On his mindset prior to the final play:
“That’s how you have to play because they had to get a touchdown. They couldn’t throw another check down because they didn’t have any timeouts. They needed a touchdown. I played the goal-line, I saw him turn his shoulder for the dig, and so I just broke down on him.”

On betting with Chris Horton:
“We bet in practice for interceptions. He owes me like $500 and matter of fact I need to get that. Thank you for reminding me because I need to collect from him on that.”

On what the defense needs for next year:
“I’m not looking for any new guys or anything. That’s up to the recruiting staff, but I think we’ll be a damn good team on defense next year if we just keep the same guys. It doesn’t matter who you bring in, we just gotta play with passion and heart.”

On if not making the pro bowl bothered him:
“I didn’t talk with any of the guys about that. For me, I just wanted to come out here with the mentality that I am just trying to kill everybody. I’m sorry for saying that on camera but that’s my mentality. I just want to come out here and give it my all and end the season on a good note. I mean, we should hang our heads down because we’re not going to the playoffs but we still gotta finish it off strong.”

On what should be expected from him at free safety moving forward:
“Coming into this season I knew that I was going to have a great season. I knew that I had worked hard during the offseason, got real big, got stronger and faster. I always work hard to get stronger, faster, bigger, the whole nine. Just to come out here during training camp to pull my hamstring like I did and for it not to heal right was kind of frustrating. But I look forward to doing the same thing I did last offseason. I’m going to come back stronger and faster. This time when I feel something I’m going to let somebody know, that’s what I should have done this year.”

On whether or not he’ll challenge Portis to another race in the 40-yard-dash:
“Oh yeah, definitely. But I need to get D. Hall. We’ve got something going on. I’m not worried about him. See the thing is for me, it’s not how I start it’s how I finish. See, if I see somebody in front of me I am going to get him. That’s how I like to run, I’m going to go get him. I’ll be god damned if I’m going to let someone beat me in a 40.”

Chris Cooley:

Thoughts on the win:
“I think a lot of things went our way today. We got a big turnover that gave us great field position and set up a touchdown for us. Sometimes that’s what it takes to win a game, is just to have some breaks go your way. I think that sometimes you create those and I think that’s what we did today.”

On being eliminated from the playoffs:
“Everybody in this locker room had the idea that it was going to be very, very tough to make it into the playoffs. We still wanted to come out and finish strong. I don’t think there is any kind of a damper after that game. Everyone is excited with what we accomplished and we are going to look forward to finishing very strong.”

On setting a new personal record for receiving yards in a season
“I’m excited that I can help the team out. At this point though, it would be nice if we were in contention.”

Reflecting on his role in the offense this season:
“I would compare my role more to what it was when Joe Gibbs ran the offense. I’m kind of an underneath guy. We try to get me involved five or six times a game, and try to get me balls on the short stuff. It’s been a great role for me. I feel excited that I can be so productive as a part of this team.”

On his back-to-back pro bowl selections being the start of a long run:
“I hope so. I feel pretty confident in my abilities to catch the ball. I’d like to keep getting better and better.”

On how he can improve:
“Overall consistency is an area. I can just become a much more consistent player. I know that I have the ability to make plays for this team but I just want that to happen more often. I want to get all of my blocks. I want to run all of my routes the right way, better than I did this year, and that is expected in the first year of a new system so I’ll work on that for next year.”

Fred Smoot

On next weekend’s final game:
“Hopefully we can go into next week’s game with momentum and win it and just end this season with a great taste in our mouth. That’s our plan. Any time we can go out and defend our field and defend the Redskins we are all going to give it all.”

On being happy for Coach Zorn after the win:
“He’s been through a lot, especially for this being his rookie year of coaching. He’s been through the ups and downs of the NFL already. We had a lot of early success and then we had some late troubles and he’s been through a lot and just to get this has to kind of refresh him.”

On the tackle at the goal-line to save the game:
“Actually for the coverage we called it was a great play-call. They ran real deep on vertical routes and just stopped a guy right at the goal-line. I was in cover-two so I was in the deep right corner and I seen him stop so I just took off running. I knew one thing: if he caught it he wasn’t going to catch it in the endzone.”

On Jim Zorn’s future:
“To be a first audition coaching in the NFC East, I thought he had a pretty good year. We underachieved and I think we could have done better but I think he did a great coaching job. Hoepefull us, as players, can take a little bit of pressure off of him.”

On the rumors that Zorn could be let go:
“I think that’s jumping the gun and I think that the people that started that talk was you all, the media. I don’t think anybody at Redskins Park is saying anything about that and he knows that. We can’t worry about that, we just need to keep on going.

On the team’s effort on Sunday:
“Coach did a great job of reiterating this last night at a meeting in telling us to just be what we are. You know, we are the number-five defense in the NFL and we don’t think a lot of people know that. He told us to go out there and have fun, and not to worry about messing up. He just told us to go out there and play and have fun.”

Deangelo Hall

On the defensive effort:
“We just came out here and played football, you know, bottom line. Our coach, Coach Blache, showed us the defensive highlight tape and we just tried to get that killer instinct back. I think the guys came out and we all fought hard and we definitely wanted to win this last one at home. This is definitely the most intense we’ve been since I’ve been here.”

On the final play at the goal-line:
“[Landry] had a good break. He was able to see the receiver and make a break and he made a good play. That’s what it’s about. Going out here and making plays and I think this was the first time we’ve gone out there and made the plays that we needed to make.”

On re-signing with Washington for the long term:
“I hope so. At the end of the day it’s up to the front office guys to make that decision, but the reason I came here was that I wanted to be here. It’s up to them to make that decision but I definitely feel like this is a good fit for me. I like it here, I like the city, I like the fans, so we will see. There’s only one more week so we’ll see.”

On Jim Zorn:
“He’s a great character guy. He knows how to get his troops motivated. A lot of the fire in today’s game came from a speech he gave us last night, and he’s just a good coach. He’s a guy that I want to play for, that I want to help win a championship. He gets everybody motivated and gets everybody thinking about the right things.”

Clinton Portis

On critics saying the Redskins were going to quit:
“That’s the best thing about this team. I wish the critics would always count us out because when they start talking good about us we fall apart. We seem to always be motivated to beat the odds all the time. So all the critics out there don’t say anything good about us. I think once you start singling people out and adversity comes into a locker room people come together. When you are fighting together and you are playing together as a team, then you are playing team ball, and when you have that going that’s when you win.”
On the win helping Zorn’s status:
“I don’t know. I don’t get into that. I think that once we figure out the system and get everybody on the same page and our young guys blossom into what they are capable of blossoming into, then I think everything will be great.”

On getting back in the endzone:
“It was great but I had to act like I had been there before. I really wanted to spike the ball, spin it on my head, jump into the crowd, come back and walk it out but they are throwing flags for everything. I just went over and gave it to my mom and it felt good.”

On when he decided to play:
“I came out and ran before the game [to test myself]. I really didn’t think I was going to play but then Santana told me that he thought I looked like I was moving good and then Ladell told me ‘tell me what you are going to get me.’ I think once you get the vibe of the locker room and guys start to talk about depending on you and everybody is looking around [to see] if you are going to get dressed and play. I couldn’t let my teammates down.”

On what next weekend means to the team:
“We still need to go to San Francisco and finish our season on a positive note. That way we can go into next season feeling good about ourselves.”

On what setting a new season rushing career high would mean to him this year:
“It would just mean that I stuck with it, you know, becuase I have all offseason to rest. If I can find a way to come out and perform and do that, there is going to come a day where I can look back and enjoy that. Right now it’s just about fighting with my teammates, staying around for my teammates, trying to help out my teammates.”

Mike Sellers

On playing next weekend with nothing on the line:
“We’re professionals and we get paid to do a job. We still have a job to do, even without the playoffs. We’re competitors and we are going to go out there to win. We’ll have to come out fighting.”

Does hurting the Eagles’ chance to make the playoffs make this win mean more:
“It means more because McNabb said that they were a better team and they should have won the game after the last game. We didn’t forget that.”

Demetric Evans

On McNabb’s comments from earlier in the year:
“I wasn’t thinking about that. At the end of the day we just wanted to come in and win our last home game. We wanted to give our fans something to cheer for and get ourselves something to build on for next year.”

On next weekend’s game:
“It’s going to be business as usual. We’re just going to try to go out to the west coast and get another ’w’ man. We’ll try to finish up 9-7 and start to get ready for next season.”

On whether or not today’s performance was the defense’s best of the year:
“I don’t know what the total yards were but we definitely did a great job and got a great game out of our punter. He was booming them and he was great in helping us out today.”

On holding Wesbtrook in check:
“We knew we couldn’t let him beat us and we just did a good job by spying him and getting hats to the ball when he had the ball.”

On Jim Zorn:
“He’s done a great job. He’s had us ready to play every week and it’s just about us going out and performing. Today was a great illustration of what this team is capable of doing when we are all focused.”

Stephon Heyer

Assessing game:
“Offensively we wanted to put more points on the board to give ourselves a little bit more cushion. The defense played their butts off and they saved us. I take my hat off to them. They really worked hard. As an offense we did fairly well except we need more points, but a win is a win.”

Negating Philly’s Pass rush:
“We game-planned like we always game-plan. We didn’t do anything differently but we came out there with more tenacity this week, maybe. Knowing that they have a tough rush defense that was kind of our game-plan this week.”

Still not scoring points:
“You can’t always put it in the defense’s hands and I think we’ve done that a little bit too much throughout the course of the season. We just have to continue to play hard and as an offense we have to find a way to put points on the board because that’s the name of the game.”

On being eliminated from the playoffs:
“We had a feeling that we were a long shot coming into today anyway. We have to play hard this next week and then come back after offseason and try to make a run at the playoffs again. We came in knowing that we were out of it today and we played hard and we won, and we have to do the same next week.”

Posted by Grant Paulsen Filed in General, NFL, Washington Redskins

Comments are closed.

‘Skins Top Eagles: Post Game Quotes

December 22nd, 2008

Recently

About

Search

Categories

Archives

Blogroll