We talked about this earlier in the week and I will say it again, they play hard. They are in every game. Every game is a knock down, drag out in this league. That has never changed and I don't think it ever will. I didn't want to say much during the week because of the nature of playing them, but I think Tony Sparano is a hell of a coach. He got his guys ready to play under really difficult circumstances. If you can imagine being up 15-0 and losing the game then having to come in here on the road the following week, I give him a lot of credit. He was on my staff at one time and I think he is a heck of a football coach. You have to take your hat off to the Miami team. They came in and played hard. We weren't as sharp as we thought we were going to be. The second half was better defensively. We played better and got some heat on the quarterback. We made some nice tackles and prevented some big plays. Offensively, we just had enough. I would have liked to finish the game better. I would have liked to have the ball in our hands. We came right out with a foolish penalty, which cost us. Miami is a relatively penalty-free team and we had to do a heck of a job with that. We got some penalties called that I wasn't pleased about. We didn't turn the ball over and that is two games in a row with that and that is an outstanding job. We got just one take away but it was big. Field position was created three times by our punter this week and that is a very good sign. I went for it on the long fourth down when the ball was on the 34 yard line. The wind kicking into that direction was most difficult and 40 yards was our distance that way. I thought it was a little too close to punt the ball so I was disappointed that we didn't convert that. Our punter came through with some really nice punts in the second half. The last one with Bush back there was a long, long punt and it was well covered by our gunners. That was one of those moments when you may have a lump in your throat but guys came through. I am very happy to win. We came in here wanting to be 5-2 and we are 5-2.
Q: Can you talk about Eli Manning's play?A: We knew we were going to get pressured and we probably got pressured 40-50% of the time. We did a pretty good job with that but it did cause us some issues in the running game. Eli made some big plays. We threw the ball a lot today. No turnovers, no interceptions and big plays when we had to have them. He once again did a very good job.
Q: How were you able to get so much pressure at the end of the game?A: You play long enough and you start to figure out the guy in front of you. We cranked it up because we had to and at that time of the game, we needed to be in position to put some heat on the quarterback and we did. We created some very long yardage situations that way.
Q: Did you miss an assignment on the bootleg by Matt Moore to score?A: No, they did a good job and it was a quarterback keep all the way. If we had been coming off the corner, we may have been able to stop it but we weren't. It was fourth and one and they hurried to the line of scrimmage and even though they hadn't shown it, we were pretty sure that was what they were going to do. Under that circumstance, we just didn't get that communicated.
Q: Can you talk about Victor Cruz?A: He is a big play guy. He is learning while he plays but he demonstrated once again the unique ability to get himself open and make a play for our team when we needed one. He did a nice job.
Q: How would you characterize the upcoming part of the schedule?A: Let's just enjoy this one first. One at a time.
Q: What happened on defense the first half?A: We had done that the week before and it was just difficult for us to get the ball back. That is one of the biggest problems. They had some sustained, long drives. They executed well and we didn't execute quite as well. I have to say that we played well the second half.
Q: Any update on Hakeem Nicks?A: Not that I can say, I have to talk to the doctors.
Q: What about Bradshaw?A: Same thing, I don't know.
Q: Can you talk about Corey Webster?A: He has drawn the tough assignments week in and week out and he once again did an outstanding job. Brandon Marshall is an outstanding, strong, physical wide receiver who can go up high for the ball. Corey battled in there and at key times in the games, he is able to come up with a big play.
Q: Was Brandon Jacobs' timing off today because he hadn't played in a while?A: We didn't rush the ball well and it is not one guy's fault. If you get some rhythm going, a lot of good things happen and we didn't have a lot of rhythm with the run today. We are going to need it.
Q: This was a tough game because it was a big game for Miami. How big was this game?A: It was a huge game for us, to be honest with you. There wasn't any bigger game and you take them one at a time. I thought this was very, very important because we want to be 5-2 moving into this part of our schedule.
Q: What happened at half time?A: As I told the team, that was the bad half and let's put that one behind us, let's do something about it. We planned on kicking off and stopping them and they drove down the field but after that it was much better.
Q: How much better does your team have to play in the coming weeks?A: We have to play better and we talked about this all week. We wanted to ascend and play better than we played two weeks ago today. We did that, parts of it perhaps, but certainly not the whole body of work.
