McNuggets: Broncos get the day off

Denver Broncos head coach Josh McDaniels celebrates beating the New England Patriots in overtime after their NFL football game in Denver, Colorado October 11, 2009. (REUTERS/Mark Leffingwell)

Notable quotables from Josh McDaniels the Monday after the Broncos’ thrilling 20-17 overtime victory over the Patriots. Hat tip to the Broncos PR staff, as always.

HEAD COACH JOSH McDANIELS

On the Broncos not practicing today

“That is normally part of the year as the year goes on. You try to give them a little bit of extra rest and also give them a little reward for playing a tough game, physical game. (We are) just trying to give them a little bit of a bone as we head into a long week because we are going to have a long week: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday practice (Monday night game). As the season wears on, you don’t want to give (the day off) to them right away. Obviously, there are plenty of things to correct. In fact, we have an extra day this week which will give us the chance to look at the film on Wednesday from this game without putting us too far behind the eight ball in our preparation for San Diego.”

On if Denver’s training camp style is similar to New England’s and if it helped the club with conditioning

“I don’t know the answer to that question because I don’t know if they have changed (their training camp). I think they changed what they did. I think they went two-a-days—I don’t want to speak on that. I am not really educated enough on what they did this year, but I thought our players played hard. I didn’t feel like our players were tired in the second half. I felt like our conditioning, certainly, has played a role in our ability to play better football in the second half than what we have played in the first half. (The Patriots) were playing hard. I didn’t see a huge drop off in terms of their conditioning level or the fact that they were tired or anything like that. They were playing a lot of people and so were we. We were running guys in and out of the huddle on defense as were they. They used a lot of people on offense, (which was) the same kind of thing as what we did. I think there were a lot of people that played, and we executed our game plan better in the second half than what we did in the first half. I don’t think it had a huge thing to do with conditioning and training camp and that stuff. We just did a better job of trying to execute our game plan.”

On the Broncos’ halftime adjustments

“We didn’t change a whole lot. There were a few minor things that we talked about doing, but for the most part, we really missed some opportunities in the first half offensively and needed to a better job of communicating, getting lined up and playing the right call defensively. There were a number of snaps where we weren’t ready to go. We have to do a better job in terms of the staff getting our call in there, giving our players an opportunity to get lined up and play the right call. Our guys have to do a better job of communicating once they see the (offense’s) formation so that we can all play the same call. Some of our mistakes were definitely—you can credit them to New England’s game plan because they did force us to make some adjustments on the fly to some of the things they were doing. Then, in the kicking game, that is probably about as poor as you can play in the kicking game and win a game in the National Football League, I think. It was disappointing. Our special teams have been strength of ours so far this season and certainly weren’t yesterday.”

On if being a head coach in the NFL has lived up to his expectations

“It is. It is a lot of fun. I think once you boil it down to what it is, I get to come to work with a bunch of great people: great players, great owner, I love the staff we have put together here. You get to compete against the best coaches and players in the world. It is a great challenge. There is a lot of fun involved in it. We try to have fun during the course of the week and, then obviously, hopefully, we hope that we have prepared hard enough so that we can enjoy it on Sunday. It is always more fun when you win. It is (living up to expectations). It is everything that any coach would want it to be. It is challenging. It is difficult. (We) put in a lot of hard work, time, preparation, but then the reward is worth it when you come out on top.”

Denver Broncos' Matt Prater (5) celebrates with teammates after kicking a 41-yard field goal in overtime to defeat the New England Patriots 20-17 in an NFL football game Sunday, Oct. 11, 2009, in Denver. (AP Photo/Chris Schneider)

On if he has more confidence after defeating New England on Sunday

“I think that I have always had great confidence in what I can do. Whether beating one team or another gives you more confidence or whether losing to somebody gives you less confidence, I don’t know if that is really the case. What this past week proved to our football team is that when we prepare hard and we play hard against another good football team, who is also well coached, that we have an opportunity to win if we play a little bit better than they do. I think that may give your team confidence, more confidence, in certain ways, but I really think we have got a confident group here from top to bottom. The players are confident, I think. I think they trust our game plans, and I think we trust them to execute our game plan. It takes a lot of hard work. It takes a lot of working together to beat a team like that yesterday, and it will take that the rest of the season because every week it is somebody new and the challenges are different. I wouldn’t say it is a ‘coming out party’ at all because I don’t feel any different. I don’t feel any differently today than I did yesterday or the day before or the months previous.”

On QB Kyle Orton’s progress this season

“He works extremely hard. He put in a ton of time last week. He was here late, real late, every day. He threw himself right at it as soon as he got here. (QB) Chris (Simms) did the same thing. They were kind of working together. Mentally, he is very capable. He grasped our system and the way we call games and how we use our offense and the kind of mental burden we put on the quarterback. He grasped that really quickly in the spring. We went into training camp with a lot of confidence because he really knew the offense by then. That is a credit to him in terms of how fast he could get up to speed on that. With each week, he gets better and better. He still made plenty of mistakes yesterday, and we want to go back and fix some of those things and do better than what we did yesterday. He was a key player for us yesterday. We put a lot on him. As the game wore on, it became a little bit more pass oriented than run oriented, but we tried to stay as balanced as we could. We just felt like with what was happening on the field that that dictated that we throw the ball a little more than run it yesterday. Kyle was up to the challenge.”

On Orton’s improvement from the preseason

“Really, there was nobody here that was discouraged about the way he played in the preseason. The San Francisco game, he played fairly well except for three plays. I know those were all turnovers, but we tried to fix and coach off of those things. (He) went to Seattle and had a nice game. Everybody remembers the left-handed, fourth-down desperation toss. Other than that, the guy played really well. (Against) Chicago before he got injured, he was playing fine. He just builds every week on what he has done and works hard to try to get better. He knows he is not where he could be if he continues to improve. There are plenty of things that he could fix and get better at. I think if he gets better, than we are going to get better. I think that is his attitude.”

On what allowed WR Eddie Royal and TE Tony Scheffler to have better numbers vs. New England than in previous games

“I don’t think we have changed really anything that we do. That is the nice thing about what we try to do offensively is we haven’t moved our players around and put them in one spot to get ‘that guy’ the ball. We have great trust in—if (WR Jabar) Gaffney is playing the X (receiver)—they played a coverage that told us to throw to the X yesterday, and we threw it to him on third-and-three and he converts for a first down. Eddie is the X late in the game, (and) he gets a slant for a first down. (WR) Brandon (Marshall) is the X down there in the red zone, (and) they tell us to throw to Brandon. He is open. He scores. They let Tony have some space yesterday, and Kyle read the play out the right way and went the right place with the ball. When our offense is running really well, you will see a lot of different people touch the ball. It won’t just be one guy here, one guy there. Yesterday, obviously, we threw it more so there were more opportunities. I think the guys kind of felt good because the ball kept going somewhere new, but it wasn’t because we were calling plays to try to stuff it in there to Tony or stuff it in there to Brandon or Eddie or Jabar. They told us to go there with the defense. Kyle read the play the right way and threw it to the open guy. The good thing is we have people that can get open. When they cover four of us and the other guy is open because he did a nice job against single-coverage and we read the defense the right way, that is how a productive pass offense works. I think our guys really understand that now and are really into it. It was fun to see.”

On Scheffler’s role in the offense

“Tony has been very patient. Eddie much the same way. Yesterday with some of the things that we were doing against their base defense, we liked the matchup when we had Tony out there on a linebacker. Tony did a nice job of exploiting that. He caught a few balls last week and the week before. He has just kind of been building and building. He knows his role in the game plan every week and does a great job of executing it. Again, he is one of those guys that when you give him space, he gets open, he has good hands and he catches the ball.”

On completing multiple passes defended by New England CB Shawn Springs

“We didn’t go in there saying, ‘Let’s go after Springs.’ We went at (New England CB Lee) Bodden on the last touchdown. I think it was more just kind of hash mark related. The ball ended up on the right hash sometimes, and we went over there to the single receiver because of the formation we were in and it kind of dictated it. They have got good corners, and we have good receivers. We were going to challenge them because they were trying to do some things up front and took away our running game. They left their base defense on the field when we went to our three-receiver sets quite a bit. There really wasn’t a whole lot of space in there to run the ball, so when we did that we tried to attack them in the passing game. It required us to go out there and throw on the corners.”

On why more coaches don’t act as excited after a win as he does

“I can’t speak for somebody else. I don’t know the answer as to why other people may or enjoy or celebrate or share that with somebody else differently, but I grew up the son of a coach and losing stinks. We work too hard to not enjoy the wins or we work too hard to try to minimize any success we might have in a weekend. My kids and my wife don’t get to see my most days, and they are over there in the corner. It is fun for them to see us win, and it is fun for me to see them enjoy it. The stadium was great. It has been great every time we have played there this year. The people are awesome. It is just… I don’t know. I let my hair down yesterday.”

On keeping the Broncos focused

“We are going to show them the film of this game on Wednesday and all of the mistakes that we made and talk about how much better we need to play in order to continue winning. (We) jumped offside on a punt return and gave them a first down, roughed the punter, missed a field goal, choose to return the ball from eight yards deep, offensive penalties, the defense (couldn’t) get aligned—Believe me, I don’t know if I have enough time in the squad meeting on Wednesday to show them how many things we can do better the next time we go out. As long as you understand where you are and what you are dealing with, which is we have won five games, (but) we didn’t play our best football game yesterday. I think we played maybe one play better than they did, just a little bit better, and that is why we ended up winning the game. Certainly, we left a lot out there on the field in every phase. We can coach better. We can play better, and they will see that on the film. I don’t have to create that, and no coach on our staff is going to have to create it either because we just watch the film and that is the proof.”

On his emotional reaction to the special teams penalties

“At that point in the game, you don’t want to make a mistake like that because when you are talking about a one-score game and an opportunity to get the ball back in good field position, that could be the game. That could very well be the game. Sometimes on gameday, it is better to listen to what you are saying than how you are saying it. That would be my message to the rest of the staff. I think they know that already.”