 |
| Minnesota Vikings Coach Brad Childress Is Optimistic About Slow Start |
Good work today; you guys won’t be here, but we’ll get a little extra work tomorrow with these guys all working together. They’ll have their day off Wednesday. Tonight they have Taste of the NFL and they have their NFL life skills seminar at 2:30. We got a few things we like to get done during the bye week. Everybody came back none the worse for wear. I had a chance to watch a little college football and a little pro football. It’s a long season. The big thing is to continue to improve and I think these few days will help us do that.
Q: How wide open do you think the NFC North potentially is?
A: I would say that about probably every team in the NFL. Before it’s over, if they don’t have issues now; Kansas City is the only undefeated team and I’m sure there are issues no one is aware of. It becomes a war of attrition at times; who’s healthy, and who’s not. Certainly the NFC North is always competitive. It was a game last year; it’s always going to be in there being fraught with different things. We’re playing a couple pretty good divisions in our crossover, so I would expect it to be a pretty good battle.
Q: How pleased are you with the defensive line at this point?
A: I think they are doing okay. I think the edge pressure has been decent. Jared Allen has seen a variety of different looks. As important as anything I would tell you would be the pocket push, pushing up the middle. Quarterbacks can step up from edge rushes and not giving them something clean where they can step in to is as big as anything. I think we’re doing a decent job with that inside push as well.
Q: What’s it like having only three weeks of film to look at during your bye week?
A: It was different from the standpoint of body of work. You don’t have as many plays to look at and see situational, for instance snaps on the goal-line, which we had an unbelievable amount throughout the course of last year. There’s not that much evidence there yet, so people will go back to last year to look at us. We’re doing a decent job of running the football right now. We want to continue that. We want to throw in a couple of areas there. Like I said before, pass game needs work and we’ll continue to address that and look at that.
Q: Are you surprised you got a call from the league addressing Jared’s “roping”?
A: I was. It was Friday before the game. Somebody must have called it to somebody’s attention, but it has been going on for a long time and everybody was certainly aware of it when we started this season. It wasn’t on the DVD that we get for rules changes. Ed Hochuli was very good about it before the game just in my conversations with him. They weren’t going to try and make an issue out of it.
Q: The league said he [Allen] can’t go down to the knee?
A: I think you can’t go down to the ground to celebrate. It’s the same as you can’t go down to the ground in the endzone to celebrate after a touchdown.
Q: What do you look for when a team comes back from a bye week?
A: It’s important that they have a fresh attitude, fresh outlook and that they come out here and don’t forget everything they knew before the bye. I thought we had a pretty crisp practice today, just kind of getting back in the saddle. I just look for them to come back with the right mindset, come back ready to work, come back ready to improve, not to come back and just hang out. We’ve got work to do. We can only do work on one opponent right now. As I mentioned to you, offensively we face a number of 3-4 teams here, one after the other.
Q: The Jets are getting Santonio Holmes back for this game. What does he bring to the offense?
A: They already do a nice job of running the football; Jerrico Cotchery is a good player and Braylon Edwards is a very good player. The more weapons they have, the more variables. They have a very good tight end; I think he gives them more of those explosive components. He’s a good player in his own right.
Q: How impressive is it that they [Jets] only have one turnover through four games?
A: That’s huge. They don’t put themselves in trouble.
Q: What is the status on Visanthe Shiancoe and John Sullivan?
A: They are working through their different muscle issues. They are making progress and they stayed all last week and actually treated last night. They’re coming.
Q: Are you surprised at how successful Ladanian Tomlinson has been this season?
A: No, I thought he was still a pretty good talent. Live-legged. I know they are changing it up with Shonn Greene a little bit. He’s got football instincts and he’s still got the physical wherewithal to be able to make you miss and he’s quick enough to square around the corner and run between tackles.
