Q: Excited about having Justin Tuck back?
A: I'm excited to have Justin as well as Prince on the field. It's a welcome relief.
Q: Do you think Justin will play this week?
A: I'm going to wait until after the practice tomorrow because I like for him to get three days in before I say something definite, but he looks good right now.
Q: How difficult has it been to see a guy like Justin on the sidelines?
A: Harder than I can explain. When you have a guy that has talent, knows how to play and he's your captain and he's on the sideline, that's very difficult.
Q: He said he doesn't want to come back and be a distraction or disrupt what the defense is doing. Is that just silliness?
A: Yeah. No comment.
Q: How is Prince coming along physically and mentally?
A: He looked good in two practices. He really had a good break on the ball today. He's been taking some scout team looks for us and really had a nice break on the ball today and looked very good. He is rusty. This is the second practice [back from injury] and he's only had three practices [as a Giant]. It's going to take him a little time. I'm very excited to see him on the field working.
Q: Is he ready to play on Sunday?
A: We're going to try to get three days out of him and I'm not saying he's ready to play right now, but he's working for us.
Q: Elaborate on how you feel seeing Justin on the sideline.
A: You feel bad for the player because you don't get time back. That's one thing in this game, you don't get that time on the field back. So it's more that you feel bad for the player more than anything.
Q: Selfishly is it helplessness, frustration?
A: It's always frustration on my part if your best players are not playing.
Q: Will he help your run defense?
A: No doubt about it.
Q: Coach Sparano said he's preparing to see four D-ends from you. Is he smart to expect that? Have you ever had four ends like this on one team?
A: Well, one, I haven't had four healthy ends the whole year so I don't know if I could prepare like that. We did do that a year ago. That was effective for us. We're just getting some guys back and we just hope that we can get snaps out of them and that they can play this week.
Q: If Justin is a go, is the plan still to reduce Jason's snaps by 10-15?
A: It just depends on Justin. Again, you want [Jason] to play as much as he can play, but you want him to play as effectively as he can play. It's going to depend on Justin.
Q: Who starts?
A: Haven't decided yet, really. We're just happy to have them out practicing and really haven't made any decisions like that. [Justin's] been out for a while and we're looking at timing and just getting back into the grove and he has done a good job in practice with timing. We're trying not to overwork him, but we're trying to get him good, positive work. We'll make those decisions probably Saturday and we'll go from there.
Q: Who has the advantage when an interior offensive lineman is going against a D-end?
A: When we do things like that, most people or most of us as coordinators, we're looking at matchups. We're trying to find favorable matchups in situations. That's more of a situational tactic more than anything else.
Q: Do you have to pull back and not try to do too much despite having all of these guys back?
A: Oh believe me, we won't try to reinvent the wheel. We'll just try to get better at our base fundamentals and things that we didn't do well in the first six ballgames. We felt like after we looked at it that we might have tried to do too much in the first six games. We tried to simplify some things and hopefully our communication will be better and we'll be better as a defense going into the second half.
Q: Simplify some things…
A: Just communication-wise. We faced no-huddle situations and we tried to revamp our communication and terminology for that. We just tried to make it more player-friendly after the break. Hopefully we did that. Like I said, we're not trying to reinvent the wheel, but we're just trying to make sure that we're all on the same page and that we can play as fast as we possibly can play.
Q: Did the wristbands work?
A: We didn't get no-huddle situations to use our wristbands last time, but we will carry them throughout the season. The problem will come up again pretty soon, I'm sure.
Q: Can you talk about the pass Prince broke up in practice?
A: He was on the look-squad. The receiver was running a 10-14 yard out cut. Prince was in a backpedal. Eli threw a laser. I mean he threw it in there. Prince saw it, he put his toe in the turf and he broke on the ball, I mean he knocked it down. He was ahead of the [player] maybe a yard. Everybody was like, 'Wow that was nice.' We wanted him to intercept it because you're always looking for [turnovers], but he knocked it down and everybody was excited. People were jumping up. The team was excited to see him come out and make a play like that. But then the coaches, we said, 'You have to intercept that ball.' It was good to see him do that.
Q: He had to do some extra pushups.
A: Yeah he got some extra pushups. No doubt.
Q: Do you remember the receiver?
A: No, I'm sorry I don't.
Q: I'm sure you were excited.
A: Oh yeah.
Q: From time to time you tend to get excited in practice.
A: I was very excited about that one.
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