Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Buccaneer Quotes, Oct. 25

Head Coach Greg Schiano)

(On the team's injuries)
"[We are] a little bumped up. [Tight end Tom] Crabtree tweaked his ankle a little bit. [Safety Keith] Tandy [has] an ankle [injury]. [Cornerback Johnthan Banks] he's going to be sore, but the nice thing is we have a little bit of a break here before we play again. We'll get everybody feeling better, hopefully [safety] Dashon [Goldson] will be feeling better come next week. Maybe even [running back] Doug [Martin]. We'll see."

(On wide receiver Mike Williams' injury)
"I think it's kind of always aggravated. He has a condition, it's just a matter of can he play with it."

(On what the defense needs to improve on)
"The two previous games it was about balls going over our head, it was deep passing plays. Last night was about loss of leverage on a scrambling quarterback. We had three sacks and we missed six other opportunities to sack the quarterback. We just need to keep the proper leverage. Granted, we're not going to make all six of those, because he's an incredible athlete, he's going to make someone miss. But it sure helps when we approach it from the proper leverage because you're forcing him back into other folks. That, I think, was the biggest breakdown on defense last night."

(On linebacker Dekoda Watson's injury)
"I don't know what the prognosis is there, we've got to wait and see."

"Have I lost the locker room? No. Are they listening? Yes. Are we getting everything we need out of them? Well obviously not because we are 0-7. There's different levels to that question, but ultimately we have good guys in that locker room, we've got 61 guys in that locker room that I believe in and I really strongly feel they believe in me. Does belief get tested when you have an 0-7 record? Absolutely. I'm sure it gets tested both ways, when someone misses a play. At the end of the day, I know these guys are busting their guts to do it. Why we make a mistake? I always look first at myself. Somehow we didn't communicate clearly enough, whether it's the importance of it or the urgency that has to be done or the technique to do it. Because I'm a coach, I always look at the coaching first. I think, when I was a player, I always looked at the players first. When you have good people, that's how they approach it. When you have guys that aren't, then maybe they look elsewhere. I think the people that we have in our locker room and the people we have upstairs in the coaches' offices, they're all looking inward right now to figure out how we can get this thing going in the right direction. There's a lot of football left. We've got nine games remaining and we'll take each one at a time."

(On how he can keep the team's morale up)

(On what the team needs to do to improve)
"Football players at this level are very intelligent, they understand the business. Look at the coaching changes in the league. Half the team or more is different. It's not just the coaches who change, when the coaching change occurs, the players change. I think we all realize that it's a performance based business. Players and coaches, we are paid to win. That's what it's about. We owe it to our fans, our city, our community to win. That's what we are paid to do. When you don't win, there's consequence, no doubt. We need to get our wins. I said it the other day, we'll get our share of wins, I believe we will. Right now there's only nine left, so it's not as many as you'd want, but we've got to get our share and we've got to do that starting this week. I know I said that before this [past] game, and we certainly didn't get it, so that's frustrating to our fans. I don't stand up here and – sometimes I think people say 'He just keeps going and going and going.' The other thing is you could just crawl up and say 'Ah, we can't do it.' I don't believe that, I believe we can do it. I do understand the fans frustration. I have some say in how to fix it. Our players have some say. The fans don't. All the fans can do is watch and take what's out there and lately it hasn't been good enough. I understand their frustration totally. We've just got to give them a better product, and that's what it's about."

(On what changes the team can make)
"You sit back and you say 'ok' – I think the biggest thing is you look at what are you doing well? There's a lot of games that early on, we believe we should have won. What did we do well to put us in a position to win? What did we do in these last three games where it wasn't as tight of a game, or at least this last one? Take what you do well, build on it. Things you're not doing well, either cut them out, because you just can't do them this year, or, how are you going to fix them, how are you going to make them better? That's what we have to do a good job of this weekend. And then when we get our players back on Monday, how are we going to approach that? That's our job as coaches. As I've always said – since I've been here – it's usually not one thing, right? It's an accumulation of a lot of different little things. You play a game that 11 people have to fit perfectly, and that's hard to do. Very rarely do 11 players do exactly what they're supposed to do. That's our goal, that's what we strive for on every play. Some plays, if you look at them, you're running this defense, you're running this play and five of the 11 are getting it right over and over and over again, well then maybe it's the play. Maybe it's the way we are coaching it, maybe we've got to change it. This will be another opportunity to really self-examine and again try to get it right. We've had some opportunities to do that. I think we've made some right decisions that made us better. We've got to make more. I think we have to look at exactly what Mike [Glennon] is capable [of], because Mike can do a lot of things. [We need to] make sure we're playing to his strengths in every way because that's two games in a row now without an interception. He's operating I think – at the end of the game we threw the ball on every down. Take that out and just look at the plays before that. He's efficient, he's doing what we ask him to do. When you know you're going to get that, now you're going to build around that."

(On the number of passes by quarterback Mike Glennon)
"Well I do have faith in him, I don't want to back away from that, so that's part of it. But even the Atlanta game, we were down, we had to come back. So the two of the three, we were down. The one, we had 86 plays, so we got a good number of runs as well as the high number of passes."

(On if he is confused by the variety of struggles in the team's play from week to week)
"No, because you don't have time, you know? Afterwards, you maybe look back, you're sitting down having a soda and say… but that's what makes it a game, you know? Again, I said it's hard. You've got 11 guys [who] all have to do their job, coaches have to get it right. There's a lot of moving parts, and [with] good teams those moving parts kind of just flow and teams that are struggling, they kind of bump into each other a little bit. We need to smooth it out a little bit more, shine it up, and be more efficient. But you're right, when you look at it, there are some road bumps that usually you don't have to see."

(On how good Carolina is)
"I don't know. I mean, they beat us pretty good last night. I think I said last night we got licked. I thought we cut down on the penalties, we didn't turn the ball over and they beat us 31-13, so we made our share of mistakes, but my hat's off to Carolina. They played well against us, that's all I can judge."

"Well, I don't know. What are they in, seven games as well, right? They're 4-3, so it's a long season. You let it all unfold, but Ron's a good coach and like you said, they have good players and they're playing well now. They're on a little bit of a roll.. We've been there too, been on a little bit of a roll, so we'll see. It's a long season. We've just got to worry about the Bucs."

(On if the Buccaneers are better than the record shows)
"Well I think you said you are what your record is. That's the old saying in pro football, right? No. Again, if you look at the games we truly believe that we should've won, in my mind that's where we are. Now there are some games that – last night we got licked. You can sit there as a coach and say, 'Well, if we contain this guy and we do this,' but well, we didn't. They did and we didn't. Those other games you say, 'Come on, that shouldn't be,' but it was. So, at the end of the day we're 0-7, that's who we are. You are what your record is. Do I think we are more talented? Absolutely. Do we need to do a better job, all of us, coaching and playing? Without a doubt, because that's our job. Our job is to win and we owe it to this community and that's what we're going to set out to do, and we're going to keep grinding until we get it."
