McDaniels: No Trade Talks on Marshall, Moreno Could Play Thursday

Quotes from the Coach! In order to fulfill our commitment of being your one-stop shop for all things orange and blue, we’re going to provide these to you more consistently. We need a catchy/clever/witty name though. I’d just run with ‘Deep Thoughts’ but that would imply telepathic abilities, which is silly. Help us out in the comments!

HEAD COACH JOSH McDANIELS

On if the Broncos are ready for Thursday’s game against Arizona

“We crammed everything we could cram into two days. You kind of see what your guys are capable of learning real fast because there are some new little things that we have to do based on what they do. Our guys adapted well to it in the last two days.”

On trimming the roster to 53 players

“(General Manager) Brian (Xanders) and I will obviously talk with the staff. We have been talking all of training camp. I don’t think it is good business to wait until the very end and then try to make a whole bunch of huge decisions at the end. We have been trying to evaluate that process ongoing. It is never easy to go through that from our end. I have let players go throughout the year this year, and that is never a fun experience because they come out here and they work hard. You kind of get attached to them. It is not going to be something that I look forward to. I can tell you that much. I am sure there is no coach that looks forward to telling players that they have to be released. It is part of this game. We have to do it, and we are going to try to assemble the best 53 guys we can.”

On how players’ performances in Thursday’s game against Arizona will factor into personnel decisions

“In some circumstances, it certainly will play a role. Everything that they are doing on the field tomorrow, we have a purpose for it for them to be out there, and they are going to play like they have a purpose. We are not taking anything for granted. We are going to look at every player. There certainly are a lot of things that could come into place (with personnel decisions) based on injuries and all kinds of other things that you need to make sure that you evaluate everybody properly. That is what we are going to do tomorrow, and they are going to play like that.”

On missing several players due to injury

“I am not glad we have injuries. Nobody is. I am hopeful that we will field the healthiest team that we can field next week when we go to Cincinnati, and I am hopeful that a lot of the guys that have missed periods of time during the course of training camp and then lately will be also ready to go. That is kind of where I stand on that. I can’t guarantee one thing or another, and I certainly don’t want to put expectations on players in terms of injury rehabilitation that aren’t attainable. We hope we can take the healthiest 53-man roster to Cincinnati, and the guys that haven’t been here, we look forward to having them back soon.”

On trade rumors regarding WR Brandon Marshall

“There are no discussions whatsoever taking place between the Denver Broncos and any team in the National Football League regarding Brandon Marshall. We are looking forward to having Brandon back on the sixth of September and starting our preparation for Cincinnati with him.”

On RB Knowshon Moreno’s status

“Knowshon is doing better every day. I am not sure if we are going to play him tomorrow. He would be capable of playing, but I am not exactly sure if that is the smartest decision. We are going to talk about that here in a few minutes. (We are) taking all of the information into account and making sure we do the smart thing for the player and make sure that we are ready to go next week.”

On if the starters will play in Thursday’s game against Arizona

“Our guys are going to play. (The starters) are not going to play into the second half or anything like that, but there are some things that we want to do better than what we have done. There are some little things that we want to make sure we go out there and try to accomplish. Everybody that plays tomorrow is going to understand the purpose for them being out on the field, and we have a purpose to try to accomplish some things that we want to get done and see tomorrow. We are looking forward to it. We are excited. It is kind of neat that you don’t have to wait too long to play another game. You play one Sunday night and turn around and three days later, you are getting ready to have the night-before-the-game meeting tonight. They will play. They will play tomorrow.”

On his goals for Thursday’s game against Arizona

“We want to improve on some of the things that we did poorly last week. Offensively, we would love to come out of the game with no penalties and no turnovers. Defensively, we did some good things last week in the running game (but) gave up a big two-minute drive, so it would be nice to get into a two-minute situation and play the situation better than we have played it the last two games because Seattle and Chicago both scored on us before the half. There are a lot of little things like that that we are looking forward to trying to improve upon and get better at. We will see which ones come up tomorrow night.”

On how much QB Tom Brandstater will play in Thursday’s game against Arizona

“He will play a long time.”