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NFL: COLTS: SITTING DOWN WITH DUNGY

A Weekly Conversation with Colts Head Coach Tony Dungy

/noticias.info/ By John Oehser - Colts.com

Each week during the 2006 regular season, Colts Head Coach Tony Dungy will discuss topics pertinent to the Colts with Colts.com.

Question: A 17-16 victory over the Buffalo Bills Sunday in the RCA Dome. As has been the case on several occasions this season, it has been striking since the victory just how dissatisfied people can be with a victory in the NFL. Were you pleased with the victory? Disappointed? What?

Answer: I was disappointed we weren’t a little sharper, but I looked up in the middle of the third quarter. We were ahead 17-10 or 17-13 and they flashed the scores and I was like, ‘Wow, New England is behind. Baltimore is behind.’ Everybody who was supposed to win was behind. Now, that game (Buffalo), they (the Bills) came in with a plan of how to play us and it worked well. We had one play (a fumble return by cornerback Terrence McGee for a Bills touchdown) that was about a 10-point swing in the game. All of a sudden, if you don’t have that 10-point swing and the game is 13-3 at halftime and we get the opening kickoff at halftime and score, it’s 20-3, it’s going to be a completely different game. But that’s what happens when you have a 10-point swing. The stats are that when you give up a defensive turnover for a touchdown, you lose 90 percent of the time. We gave up a defensive score and a kickoff return to the 12-yard line, which gives them 10 points basically. Those things you can’t have happen, obviously, but we were still able to win the game. Did we play terrible? No. We just had about three plays that you can’t have happen.

Q: Did you feel through the game like the Colts were in control?

A: We never felt like they were going to score a lot of points. You always feel like, ‘Hey, even if they score with the last fumble, we’re going to be within one score and we have a lot of confidence our offense can score in that situation.’ It was nerve-wracking, but you felt good about it. The other thing is I’d seen Buffalo on tape. They’d been 13 points up on New England in a game they could have won at New England (in the season opener). It wasn’t a surprise. It was one of those games where you wish you’d played a little better, but it shows you how one play can make a difference.

Q: That’s sort of the way Buffalo plays, isn’t it . . .

A: They had been in a lot of games. Their Green Bay game the previous week had been the same way. Green Bay went up and down the field, up and down the field, dominating the stats. They (the Packers) threw an interception at the 1-yard line and fumbled the ball going in and lost the game. That’s the way they’re playing. They’re going to play a lot of close games and they’re going to win their share of them.

Q: In the off-season, the primary message you sent this team was, ‘You can’t worry about January during the regular season.’ You must be pretty pleased that that message seems to have been received . . .

A: I think we’re doing the things we set out to do. It wasn’t like, ‘OK, we lost to Pittsburgh, so we have to revamp the whole thing and figure out a way to beat Pittsburgh.’ We never targeted on one team. We never targeted on anything except what we always do, which is, ‘Let’s get off to a good start. Let’s build. Let’s play better each month. We should be playing better football in December,’ and that’s the message that I believe these guys believe in.

Q: It would have been natural to expect a letdown . . .

A: I guess there was more on the line last year than in the 41-0 Jets game (at the end of 2002), but it’s the same thing: you look at everything that was done in the course of the season. You don’t just look at the last game and say, ‘Oh, the season was a failure because we lost the last game.’ You say, ‘OK, here are the positives from it. Here are the negatives. Here’s what we have to build on.’ That’s the way these guys took it. That’s the way we’ve approached it every year. I never really had a doubt that we wouldn’t come back in the right frame of mind.

Q: You follow what outsiders say about teams pretty closely. If there was a theme around this team entering the season, what was it?

A: I think the theme among the media was, ‘They’re going to be in the playoffs. Will they have enough whatever you want to call it to win in the playoffs?’ That’s the only thing the media is concerned about. I think you lose the focus of the season if you think that way. I’m sure the same thing was said in Pittsburgh, ‘Well, can we repeat? Are you going to win another Super Bowl?’ Well, you’ve got to do well in the regular season to give yourself a chance to get to the Super Bowl. In Cincinnati, it was the same thing, ‘You’ve got to beat Pittsburgh. This is the one team you have to beat when you get back in the playoffs.’ If you’re not careful, you can fall into that trap. To do all of that, to be able to achieve your goals, you have to get there. Getting there, in the NFL, is still the toughest part of the battle.

Q: If history shows you anything, it’s what you just said is exactly true. This year has shown the same thing. That’s just one of the truisms in the NFL isn’t it – that it’s just hard to get there year after year . . .

A: No question. People always talk about the team that loses the Super Bowl not making the playoffs. Many times, you can get lulled into that trap of, ‘Hey, we went all the way to the Super Bowl. We lost to this particular team. What do we have to do to beat that team? The only way we can make next season successful is to get to the Super Bowl and win it.’ That’s putting the Super Bowl way, way too early. The way to get to the Super Bowl is to take 19 good steps. That can be lost sometimes. I think that does happen to some
Super Bowl-losing teams and it could happen to a team like us, who has had a couple of good regular seasons and hasn’t won in the playoffs. That’s a thing I think our coaching staff has done a great job of guarding against. We haven’t said this or that doesn’t matter, because it all does matter. The off-season program, the mini-camp, September – that’s how you get yourself ready.

Q: The other preseason theme was, ‘What in the world will happen without running back Edgerrin James?’ You just never believed the offense was going to slip because of the loss of a single player, did you?

A: That’s my feeling about everything. That’s why I was glad to see us play better run defense (against Buffalo) without (safety) Bob Sanders. I don’t want people to feel like, ‘Well, if Bob Sanders is in we’re going to be able to stop the run and if he’s not playing, we can’t.’ That’s just not true. I think our offense always has had that philosophy. We’ve had a game without (wide receiver) Marvin (Harrison). We’ve had games without the tight ends. We’ve had games without (wide receiver) Brandon (Stokley). We had games without Edgerrin before. We got off to that 5-0 start in ’03. Edgerrin was out three weeks in a row. You just can’t look at it that way. I don’t think our guys do, no matter how important that guy us. My second year in Tampa we were playing Miami. We were 3-0, playing Miami in Week 4. It was our first big game. (Defensive tackle) Warren Sapp and (linebacker) Rufus Porter got hurt and they weren’t going to play. I told the team, ‘You know what? Those guys aren’t playing and we aren’t going to miss them.’ We won the game and after the game, Sapp told me, ‘I’ve got to get well. You act like I don’t even exist.’ I said, ‘No, that’s not the case, but I can’t let the team feel like without you and Rufus we can’t win.’ That’s the message you want to send, that the next guy is just expected to go in and do that job.

Q: The defensive line had four sacks Sunday. Has this been a difficult year for the unit in the sense that there have been so few pass-rushing opportunities?

A: Sacks have always been a function of score, time in game and the way you’re playing, of course. But when you’re ahead and the whole second halves of games teams are in must-throw situations, it becomes much easier. People have really gone out of their way to not put themselves in that situation against us. We’re getting a lot of 2nd-and-long runs. We’re getting a lot of third-down runs. We’re getting a lot less opportunities to rush. You have to make them count and you can still be effective. That’s what I think our guys are learning, that you can have a very good game and maybe you didn’t get a sack.

Q: There were several occasions Sunday where the Bills faced 3rd-and-long and either ran or threw short of the first down . . .

A: They just ran the ball and kicked a field goal or ran the ball and punted.

Q: For a defensive line, that could hardly be more frustrating. You coach them all week, ‘Get to third down . . .’

A: And there’s our time to go. And it wasn’t. But you have to adjust to that and know that that’s the way that particular game is being played.

Q: You have said several times this season you like that the team is being tested. Overall, do you like where the team is right now?

A: I don’t like some of our breakdowns in fundamentals and our tackling in the kicking game is not good. We fumbled the ball twice and we had some penalties. You don’t like that part of it, but I do like the fact that we’re in the fourth quarter of games and we’ve got a calmness on our sideline of, ‘Hey, get them stopped. We’re going to be in good shape. If we get the ball back with X amount of time, we’re going to be in good shape.’ I like that part of the mentality that’s developing.

Q: Last week, you made the point that the team was undefeated and still hadn’t had safety Bob Sanders and wide receiver Brandon Stokley healthy for a significant stretch. You usually don’t make that sort of point. Why then?

A: I think it’s just the way it is. Not that one player can’t do it, but we really haven’t had our three-wide receiver package. We’ve had our tight ends in the slot, but we haven’t gotten the nickel matchups where we get other people’s defensive backs in as much we have in the past. And on defense, Bob does allow us to do different things and play different ways. I was just making the point we haven’t had all of our packages in. Our players know that and they understand we have a little gas left in the tank. When the situation is right . . .

Q: Next on the schedule is the Dallas Cowboys. Maybe no team in the NFL is as discussed as Dallas – to the point where from an outsider’s point of view, there can be a sideshow element. Is that a factor when you play them?

A: It can be. What it does, really, is test how well you focus. You have to focus on what’s important. We have to focus on what they do and what we have to do to win the ballgame. Because you can always get focused on a lot of other things if you’re not careful. It will be a test for our veteran guys, for sure.

Q: This is not exactly news, because it has been this way since 2002, but playing on the road is a comfortable situation for the Colts. You said recently you maybe play better on the road than at home. Why is that?

A: I don’t know why. Everybody paints us as a dome team, home team, noise and all of that. I think our guys, maybe because of that – because of that little chip, that everybody thinks we’re going to have trouble on the road – they know it’s going to be a little bit tougher. They zero in, focus in. But we do seem to play better, especially the first half of the game – we seem to play better on the road than we do at home. notas_de_prensa_archivo