Q&A: Tony Sparano's day-after-game news conference
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
3:06 PM EDT, September 23, 2008
(On how he feels after his first NFL victory as a head coach) - "It feels pretty good. The biggest thing is to win a game like that, and win a game in your division. I think that's really what the most important thing is that this was a division game, and to have a chance to do anything well in this league, you have to win division games. To win one like that on the road says an awful lot about the guys in the locker room there."
(On why the "Wildcat" was so effective against the Patriots and if it was strictly the element of surprise) - "I'm sure it was the element of surprise a little bit, but I think the people handling the ball; I think in that situation you had some of your better ball handlers with Ronnie (Brown), Ricky (Williams), those type of people running around, (Patrick) Cobbs out on the field at the same time. But there is an element of surprise, no question about it."
(On if there was something in New England's defense that made them more vulnerable than the previous two opponents or was this option considered in the first two games) - "It just wasn't something that we talked about early on."
(On if the teams' preparation the past week provides him with motivation to prepare the same way in the future) - "Yes, but I've prepared that way, and so have our coaches every single day that we're here. I think our offense coaches don't leave here until 12:30 at night; pretty consistently 12:00 o'clock, 12:30 at night, so I think we prepare the same it's just this week was a little different week. We got after them pretty good this week and we challenged them and pushed them, pushed them pretty hard in practice this week, particularly on Wednesday."
(On if he wished he played this Sunday or if he welcomes the bye week) - "When you're fairly healthy like we are, you can always play Monday morning quarterback that way and say, 'Yeah, I'd love it to be down the road,' when maybe you are a little more bumped up as we get ready to go into a 13 week in a row deal coming up pretty soon. We'll take it right now. This is good. We get a chance to go into the bye feeling pretty positive. No different than a loss for us. We have this 12-hour rule here that runs around. We'll get this one over with and get on to the next one when we get out there in practice. We have a lot of things we need to get accomplished this week in practice."
(On his decision to send the defense out on the field first no matter what the outcome of the coin flip was) - "I think really what I was thinking is I wasn't to challenge the defense. I felt like it would be important offensively, either way, not really offensively, but from a team standpoint either way in that situation have the ball in the second half. I think when you're on the road like that in that kind of environment and the plan was hopefully to be winning and get the ball coming out in the second half. Limit their at bats a little bit that way if we can do that. And at the same time, if for whatever the reason you might have been behind, it gave you the chance to gain a couple more at bats that way. That's the nice thing about this rule right now. More importantly, just to challenge the defense out there. I really wanted to see them respond, and they did a nice job responding. Again, what wasn't planed was the kickoff. That's something we have to get better at right now. Our kickoff coverage, our special teams unit, in a couple different areas, we didn't play really well enough last night. And those things in a close game will get us beat."
(On his Gatorade bath after the game and what it was like for him after the game) - "Obviously, it was great. The most important thing for me was just the way the players felt. All that aside, the Gatorade thing, well that was the players having a good time and feeling good about themselves, so I felt good about that. I didn't feel great when it was rolling down my back, but I felt pretty good about it. At the same time, getting in the locker room with them and seeing; you spend a lot of time playing and thinking about that day. You don't know when it's going to come. As I told you guys last week, my team was 0-2 going into the last week. You spend an awful lot of time thinking about what that's going to be like and seeing it when you're in the locker room at the end of that, and seeing their faces and seeing how happy those guys really were. To see how hard they've worked and to see the reward was nice. But again, we have to keep it all in perspective right now. I understand that that's something, but we want to get used to being there."
(On if he's dreamed about that moment of victory) - "I think about it for the players. I really do. I think about it for the players and the organization. I've thought about it since the day I walked through the door here. Just the feeling of what it would be like to get a win and to get a win early and to do those kinds of things. It really didn't matter to me who the opponent was; I just wanted to win the game. I wanted to do this two weeks ago, but it didn't work out that way, so we got one and we're happy about it, but we're going to move on and we're going to look to get a few more."
(On if the 'Wildcat' formation has enough elements of surprise to keep using in future games) - "We've just scratched the surface of really what we were trying to do. We didn't go in there with 30 plays worth of what we're trying to do out of this package. This is not something that just came up and we scribbled on the board a couple days ago. It's something, that quite honestly; we had even some other people in mind for down the road, or earlier on in training camp and those kind of things. We kind of put it aside right now. I just felt like on the way back from Arizona that we needed to create space and create a little bit of enthusiasm within practice, something the players can put their arms around a little bit out there. It really wasn't about what they one way or the other what New England was going to do. Although as we started to study it, we've seen some things that we could pull plays from and put into place out of this package that we have. It was more, from our end, to get the right people on the field, get them a chance to touch the ball a little bit and to give the players something I think that could create a little bit of space."
(On if the 'Wildcat' formation was something he used before or was it brought in by quarterbacks coach David Lee) - "This is David Lee. David did a tremendous job with it in college. I used to give him a hard time about it actually. He would call me every week when I was in Dallas and he'd tell me how he was running all of this stuff and I'd give him a hard time about it. I'd say, 'Look, you got those two good backs back there, just hand them the football and let them run.' To David's credit, his mind is always going that way and I appreciate the offensive coaches being open to the ideas in the room there. The bottom line is we just want to win and I think that gave us an opportunity. If it backfired, who knew."
(On if David Lee's innovation was the reason to hire him) - "No, the bottom line is that David Lee is a hell of a quarterbacks coach. He gets the most out of young players, he really does. At that time, we had a couple of young guys here that we needed to make sure that we can get to come around too. The guy is a real stickler for fundamentals and technique. This is just something that came along with him and we were able to take advantage. We pull ideas from every coach upstairs, that's what we try to do."
(On his impressions of Chad Pennington's blocking skills) - "I told him in practice the other day, 'Just get the hell out of the way if you can, please. If you got to run off the field, run off the field.'"
(On the 'Wildcat' formation, which is primarily used in college, being successful in the pro game) - "It just happened to work. Again, there was some plays there that really were made by Ronnie (Brown) running the ball a little bit. One thing was kind of, all of a sudden there was nothing there and Ronnie made a little bit of a cut. What it does do is it helps free some people and if all of a sudden you start to over-pursue then some other things can happen. I thought Ronnie made some good decisions; it has a lot to do with the guy that's touching the ball and Ronnie made some good decisions."
(On if he liked Ronnie's decision of lowering his shoulder at the goal line on one of his four touchdown runs) - "I loved that decision. To be honest with you, all of that other stuff is window dressing. At the end of the day it's how you finish and Ronnie finished some runs yesterday. So did Ricky (Williams). I was really happy with the way both of them ran, particularly between the tackles."
(On if there was a feeling of desperation coming off the loss at Arizona) - "No, I wasn't desperate at all. Again, we were 0-2. I mentioned this last night, I just knew how hard these guys were working here right now as a team. I don't think it was desperate, any of those type of things. What I did think is, all along you're trying to create space and angles and doing those kind of things to help your people out a little bit. That's where the process began for me; how do we get angles? How do we create space? How do we do these things. Then talking with Dan (Henning) and talking with David (Lee) and trying to get to some of these things the way that we were capable of getting to them last night. That's all it really was. It could've been two plays in a game had it not gone maybe the way we wanted it to go. It just happened to go that way and the guys did a wonderful job of executing it, they really do. You have a running back back there taking the snap, you have a tackle that's a left tackle that's going over to play on the other side of the ball, here comes Ricky flying around, and this little exchange looks like it's an easy thing, but it's not an easy thing. Some of these things that took place out there, it took a lot of work, but more importantly we had to execute it and the credit goes to those guys."
(On what things he'd like his team to work on this week with a bye on Sunday) - "I really want to get back to fundamentals this week. Spend an awful amount of time on details, fundamental football. We'll spend some time talking about and practicing some situations that I think we need, third down being one. We were pretty good yesterday on third down; I think we were 4-9 or something in conversions or 5-9 in conversions. We only had nine in the game, which is a positive. We got off the field on third down, but it isn't something that we've done consistently. We need to spend some time there; we need to spend some time in red zone, some ways that you can lose games or two-minute situations. We're going to spend an awful amount of time at that, but more importantly, we're going to spend longer amounts of time in individual periods spending some time working on fundamentals. Where you put your hand as I said before, where I put my helmet, those things are important. Yesterday we found that out. We're going to spend time on special teams, a lot."
(On if there was something about this game that you wanted to get the ball to Ronnie Brown more) - "For me, it kind of happened last week in a couple of runs in the Arizona game, honestly. There was a couple runs there that didn't look like much, and I made the comment that I thought we were a block or two away in Arizona from making some big plays. Ronnie kind of got into the line of scrimmage pretty fast and he made a couple guys miss. I've just seen a little bit of a burst out of him in the last couple of weeks and I thought that this would be a good opportunity to try to get him as many touches as we can get him right now. That's why we did what we did."
(On the intricacies and benefits of moving Jake Long to the right side in some situations) - "It just depends on what they're going to do from an alignment. To be honest with you, a year ago Miami did some of that. They went unbalanced; they just didn't do what we did. You can look or you can find film, so we found film, made some adjustments and to see maybe what we thought that way. Sometimes you can get a team to, when you're unbalanced and the lineman moves over, that front can shift to the unbalanced side, which makes you a little shorter one way or the other. If you don't shift you're weak to the strength and if you do shift, you're weak to the weakness of the defense, which is the backside. Obviously, you need answers for both and I think we've created some of those answers. Who knows, the 'Wildcat' might be dead."
Team-released transcript
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/football/pro/dolphins/sfl-sparanoqa092308,0,5659419.story
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