Head Coach Dennis Allen
Q: Have you fixed all the problems from last week?
A: We're obviously hard at work and working to correct those things. Those things happen in the NFL. I don't think there's anybody that's been in the National Football League that hasn't been through one of those days. We happened to go through it last week, but we've got to learn from it, we've got to put it behind us, we've got to move on and we recognize that we have a tough challenge this week and our job is to get prepared the best we can and go out and play like we feel like we're capable of playing.
Q: Are you expecting Pryor and McFadden to play?
A: I'm definitely expecting Pryor to play. McFadden's situation, I'm not sure on yet. He wasn't able to practice today, so we'll have to monitor him throughout the week and see when he's going to be available.
Q: How much of a weapon is Pryor's running ability and how much more of a complete quarterback do you think he still needs to be?
A: Number one, I don't think you can ever take away that athletic ability. That's what makes him special and we want him to continue to be able to use that athletic ability to make big plays for us and he's done a nice job at doing that. He's still a young player. This is his first year as a starting quarterback in the NFL, so he's still got a lot of things to learn, just like all young guys do. He's not a rookie, but for all intents and purposes as far as being a player in the NFL and starting as a quarterback, he's really kind of a rookie. So he's still got some growth that he needs to do from a pocket presence as a quarterback and he's worked extremely hard on that and he's been greatly improved as the year has gone on.
Q: What's been different between the Giants' first six games and the last two?
A: I think the biggest difference is they won the turnover-takeaway ratio in the last couple of ball games and I think we all know what a big factor that is as far as your ability to win football games and it looks like over the last couple of weeks they made an increased emphasis on trying to run the football and they've done a great job of stopping the run on defense and they've created takeaways on defense and they hadn't turned it over on offense. I think that really is kind of the biggest difference.
Q: Is there anything you can do with a west coast team coming to the east coast playing what for you is a 10 o'clock in the morning game? The Raiders have had a lot of trouble in this situation.
A: Obviously, that's something there's a lot of information out there on that. I try not to pay too much attention to that. I don't like to build in any type of excuses. I think our job as professional players is to go out and play a game no matter when they tell us to play it or where they tell us to play it and that's kind of the approach that we've taken. That's kind of the approach we'll continue to take.
Q: You'll come in on Saturday like usual?
A: Actually, when we do play the east coast games we'll fly out there on Friday. We'll go through our walkthroughs Saturday out there in New York and then get ready to play the game on Sunday.
Raiders QB Terrelle Pryor
Q: How's your knee doing?
A: It's good. I was running around today. I'm ready to face you guys.
Q: I'd give you pretty good odds against us.
A: I'm just joking with you. How are you guys doing?
Q: We were talking to Brandon Myers and he said you told him last year that you had never been really taught how to pass a football. Can you talk about your development as a passer?
A: It's just a lot of hard work. I firmly believe… I can use you guys as well. The more research you guys do and the more time you put into on what you want to write, an interview or story, it all comes into account. It has the same thing to do with a quarterback. So as much research as I do, as hard as I want to work, is going to determine the success of you guys or whoever is looking to have success. Every single day I was putting my head down and grinding and researching who can help me. I'm becoming better.
Q: I guess when you were younger you relied on your athleticism and were able to get by on that. Is that what it was?
A: Yes and no. It's kind of tough to really say because I only played one game last year with Brandon. I definitely became a lot more accurate and I'm understanding defenses and managing the game of football and I'm still learning game management as a quarterback and I firmly believe that if you keep on getting experience through film and being on the field, I feel you're going to become better and better.
Q: You guys have played a lot of good games this year. What happened last week?
A: They jumped on us. I think they scored every drive in the first half until the last… they punted maybe a minute or so before the half went out. Their offense was on fire. I think they had 600 something total yards. We've just got to punch the ball in. We never really had that problem of getting down there and scoring. We were pretty good in the red zone and then we just didn't punch it in this past week. As a whole team, we've got to play a lot better and we've got to keep the yards up because we were very explosive this past game. We've just got to get some points.
Q: Have you looked at the success running quarterbacks like Michael Vick and Cam Newton had against the Giants this year as something you can take advantage of or are you different from those guys?
A: I don't really go into the game thinking about running. I saw that stuff on Randall (Cunningham). His coach was telling him to run first and pass second. I can't really go in thinking anything like that. If it happens… They've got a very good, deep front seven. If something happens where I have to get out and make a play… But I want to sit back and see if I can find some guys downfield and get some explosive gains in the passing game.
