Tony Sparano's comments following Thursday's practice
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
4:28 PM EDT, September 25, 2008
(On Vonnie Holliday not being at practice Thursday) - "Vonnie had a personal, family issue back in Atlanta to attend to. We gave him today off."
(On the status of Coach Jim Reid) - "I really don't know much right now. Obviously what I do know is Jim is in surgery right now. It's a personal matter, him and his family, but he's in surgery and we don't have any further update right now."
(On who is taking Jim's role with the outside linebackers) - "[Defensive Coordinator] Paul (Pasqualoni) will be in the outside linebacker role for now."
(On Jim Reid's contributions to the team this season) - "I think Jim has done a tremendous job with those guys. That's an interesting room in that you've taken a few defensive linemen and you turn them into linebackers. The move with Joey (Porter) from one side to the other side; he really started as a 'Sam' and now he's playing 'Will.' That's a pretty tough transition and I thought Jim did a tremendous job getting his guys ready every week."
(On if there is a concern that this will become a prolonged situation) - "I think it's just something that right now Paul (Pasqualoni) is going to probably handle. I'll take a peek at it as I know more information."
(On if he can provide information any information on which hospital he is at and what kind of surgery he's undergoing) - "Not from me."
(On if his condition is life threatening) - "I'm not going to get into that really right now. It's him and his family and I'd rather keep that private if I could.
(On the decision to give players a day off tomorrow) - "I've really seen what I needed to see. This was not something that I went into the week saying, 'Hey, I'm going to give them Friday off one way or the other.' It was just kind of something that I thought, 'Let me see where they are and what we do and how much work we can get accomplished here.' Today we were actually out there longer than I anticipated; we did a little bit extra out there today. They practiced, again, very well and very fast. From a physical standpoint, we've been in pads for two days now and they practiced physical. I thought that was good. We weren't on the ground much; they got after each other pretty good. I thought it was a good opportunity. You look down the road at 13 weeks in a row here, and you don't play a Thursday game and you don't have one of these Thanksgiving deals where you can get a little bit of a breather in someplace. It's just 13 weeks in a row now, so I think you've got to take the opportunity when you can to try to rest your team."
(On if everything on his checklist for the week got done to his satisfaction) - "Everything on my checklist got done. I had one big area that I thought I needed to get to tomorrow and I got it today. By getting it today that was really something that I thought was important for us."
(On what area did he get done today that was on tomorrow's schedule) - "It was our '22' personnel area really, the 'Big' package. Meaning, we have two tight ends in the game from an offensive standpoint and two backs, and defensively, matching up against that package. As we got on in several weeks, you just don't get enough of that out there; enough time to work it and enough time to work against it. This gave us a good opportunity to work on that package a little bit."
(On how important was the performance of the defense in the win over New England) - "That was really important I think. I think that the defense played very, very well. Again, I said after the game I thought that the game plan was executed really well. I meant both sides of the ball. Certainly, I thought, defensively, we executed really well. What we didn't want to do was allow big plays; we didn't allow big plays. We controlled the line of scrimmage, I thought, in the run game for the most part. There was a run that came out of there maybe early second half, I believe it was, that popped out of there. Again, that was one of these fundamental issues that way that we needed to get squared away. Other than that I thought we did a pretty nice job, specifically on first and ten putting them in some long situations."
(On how much of the gameplan for the Chargers has he worked on, or if he's going to wait until after the Chargers game Sunday) - "No, we've been working yesterday, today; we'll work tomorrow, then spend some time that way on San Diego. When we take the field on Monday in practice, it will be full San Diego practice."
(On if Jalen Parmele is back and the release of Will Billingsley) - "Yeah, actually what we did is we released Will and brought Jalen back on the practice squad. Will has been released and Jalen took his place on the practice squad."
(On if the rotation of players on the field is a way of preventing injuries) - "Yeah, from a rotation standpoint, particularly in your interior, your defensive line I think, your secondary, those are the guys. The amount of running that a secondary player has to do during training camp, or a defensive lineman, the amount of banging that it takes with him during the course of a training camp, if you have guys that you can rotate, and we talked about this, you start to develop a little bit of a play count in your head. You see it in practice; you see it start to happen a little bit that way. I've kept my eye on that pretty close, particularly with our bigger guys. How many plays is it before I do start to see a dropoff? Before I do start to see fatigue? Those type of things. I think that's where you get hurt. You get hurt when you're tired. You get hurt when you're not concentrating. Those type of things. From our standpoint, we keep them on a pretty good play count and we were able to get some of these younger players in and out of the game a little bit."
(On the staff's conviction that injuries are not just misfortune) - "One of the things that we tried to make sure that we stressed to our players is that, from our end, injuries are a way to lose in our league. The teams that get injured, the teams that are hurt a bunch, the players that don't practice, all of those things, it's hard to recover from those type of things. Especially when you're dealing with 53 players and a couple of practice squad guys, that type of number. It's awful hard now when you get injured, or you're in the training room and you're not out at practice to have success out on the field. Our players have bought into that."
(On showing new looks with rotating players in and out) - "Yeah, sure, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Our defensive line, when you look, we take six guys to the game, they all play a good bunch. They have a lot of plays in there. A player like Randy Starks in the game the other night played 34 or 35 plays. I think (Phillip) Merling played 40 plays. (Vonnie) Holliday played 26 plays. (Jason) Ferguson, because of the way the game was going, they were in so much 'Nickel,' so much 'Half' personnel stuff at that point, that Ferguson probably played a little less in this game than normal because he comes off the field in those packages. But all of a sudden Quentin Moses played 19 plays and so on. Charlie Anderson played a bunch of plays in this game. That's where that comes in a little bit and I think if you have those kind of players, those kind of role players, you can't be afraid to use them. We haven't been afraid to use them right now in the first three weeks. I think it will help us down the road."
(On if there is a message he gave to players about having three days off) - "Yeah, 'stay home.' I was pretty clear to them, I think. I think they got the message. The bottom line is you do want them to be able to relax, get away from football for a little while. That's what the bye week is for. Spend some time with your family if you can. Get healthy, get in here, do what you need to do. It's interesting, the other day we had a day off on Tuesday, and I always check with my strength coach on the days off just to see if anybody came in. All of a sudden the weight room was full of people, just full of players coming in, training room, taking care of themselves, getting in and doing a little bit extra. There were players like Joey Porter who's been in this league for a while doing these things. I think we'll see some players around here knowing that."
(On the depth of the pass rush and having a lot of guys having pass rush abilities) - "Yeah, I think so. These guys have been doing a nice job throughout practice and throughout the games pushing the pocket a little bit. When I say pushing the pocket, it doesn't have to be the fast guys. Yesterday I brought up (Phillip) Merling and (Kendall) Langford, but Randy Starks has done a nice job in three games, he really has. You start to look at the number of plays Randy Starks has played and look at how he's factored in those games with number of tackles, tackles for losses, an interception, all of these things. All of a sudden, a sack, he's getting his hands on people. I think that kind of depth if you can get it and you're not afraid to use it it's going to help you down the road, it really is."
(On if he agrees with Justin Smiley calling Phillip Merling a 'gamer') - "Yeah, he really did. It's unbelievable with Phil. His demeanor is one in which from a practice standpoint, it's not like he's a lousy practice player. You guys asked me this question a long time ago, 'Coach, are there guys that you see them in practice, and all of a sudden when you go to the game, they change?' Yeah, he's one of these guys that changes when he gets to the game. His demeanor in practice is pretty good and you can get Phil going. Phil and Jake (Long) get going every once in a while. They create this thing on their own in practice where they push each other pretty good and you like to see it. When you get out there in a game, all of a sudden this guy is a different guy. I love it because his motor goes and you'll see him flying around, he's downfield making tackles, he's pushing the pocket, he gets mad when he makes an error, he knows it. You get young guys that play with that kind of effort and are that conscious of themselves that way and the mistakes that they make, you're going to be okay."
(On what he's seen from Anthony Fasano and how has he improved from when he had him in Dallas) - "What Anthony has done for me is that I think the way he's improved is his attention to detail in the areas that he knows he needs to improve on, which would be blocking, pass protection, his on-the-line blocking. What Anthony did well for us in Dallas was he always caught the ball very well. He has outstanding hands; if the ball is near him, he's going to catch it. He played in the backfield for us in Dallas a lot, so doing those kind of things were not natural to him, but it certainly wasn't something he wasn't familiar with. On the line of scrimmage, well that was all kind of Jason Witten doing some of those things. And protection was something that was very new to him. I think those are the areas that I've seen the biggest improvement with him that way. The other area, and I like it and I hope it keeps going this way, is his run after catch. He's catching the ball and looking to run with the football now and that's something that I didn't see in Dallas."
(On why they wanted to bring Anthony Fasano here) - "He's got the makeup, clearly. He's tough, always has been. This guy's played hurt a bunch. He's very smart. He's very disciplined. He has the makeup; he's exactly what we look for."
(On if there is a part of him that regrets showing the 'Wildcat' formation so early in the season) - "I felt like at this time, there wasn't an issue really when you're sitting there when you're 0-2. In my mind, the whole reason for this was just to give our players something that they can kind of put their arms around and think that, 'this is our deal; this is going to give us an advantage one way or the other.' It's not really a short term fix. It's something that as I've said, we have several other pieces to this puzzle if we want. We may not use them, we may use them, it just depends on what we see and how we do it. It's not something you can just roll out there every week and say, 'Here we are, we're in this deal.' It's not something that's going to work. Eventually you're going to have to line up and do what we did during the course of this past game. That's execute on third down, execute on first down, do some of those things. We happened to make some big plays in this package. One of Ronnie Brown's runs, I believe, was a 10, 12-yard touchdown run that didn't have anything to do with that package; it was just a good solid run. At the end of the game, we weren't in 'Wildcat' when we're trying to win the game. That's Ricky Williams making some good, hard runs in there. That's what you're looking for."
(On if the 'Wildcat' was just a way to get the team going ) "I think what it was, was you're looking for ways to create space, to create confusion and to create indecision on the defense. That was a defensive football team that in my mind was brilliant; a brilliant defensive football team. So they see things. They see formations. They handle it very, very well. You keep throwing the same thing out there, they handle it very, very well. So in my mind I just thought this would be a good opportunity right now to throw something out there that I knew the players would put their arms around. I knew they'd be fired up to get into this thing a little bit. It would create some angles for us, without a doubt within our interior. It would create space based on what I've seen in what we had studied on film and from that standpoint there that was really what we tried to do."
(On if the opposing team employed this formation against you, would the defense be ready to defend against it) - "Only because we've seen it in practice. But I don't know, I'm not going to stand up there and say that and then somebody does it to us and we give up a 70-yarder."
(On if he's surprised about all of the national media attention that the 'Wildcat' formation has gotten) - "I'm not surprised at anything anymore. Yeah, I guess. We were just trying to win a football game. I think what's interesting is a lot of people want credit when all of a sudden we won a football game. But when we were 0-2 that line was very short."
(On if the quarterback is at risk in the 'Wildcat' formation) -- "Sure, he's got to protect himself. He knows that. I just told him to duck and get on the ground as fast as he could if all of a sudden (Rodney) Harrison or somebody like that was running after him. But yeah. I mean he's live out there, so sure he's at risk. No question about it. He's a receiver, no different than anybody else. He can get jammed. He can get banged. He can get all those things for a little bit of that few yards out there."
(On his plans for the next three days that the players off) - "Study football. I'm going to study football here tomorrow and then I'm going to take off tomorrow night and go watch my sons play on Saturday. They're playing at the University of Delaware this weekend and that will be a real treat for me."
(On if his sons start at Albany) - "My one son, Tony, is a senior defensive end. He starts and Andrew is a center and they rotate in and out with a senior there. Andrew's only a sophomore, but he plays probably 30 plays a game."
(On if he's going to tell the coach to play them) - "I sit as far away as I possibly can. They know exactly where to find me. I'm the furthest guy away where nobody else is. I don't sit around many Monday morning quarterbacks."
(On what he will do now that people recognize him)- "They're not going to recognize me in Delaware."
Team-released transcript
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/football/pro/dolphins/sfl-sporanoqa092508,0,1980217.story
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