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HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on his reaction to DB-Mike Doss' situation) Monday, May 31, 2005
"I talked to Mike this weekend and got his explanation of things. It was very, very disappointing to us. It's certainly something we take a dim view of, something I'm not happy about. We had a discussion about it on Thursday as we broke for the weekend and the responsibilities that we have. It's just very, very unfortunate. I'm certainly not going to comment on the legal aspect of things, and we are going to let the legal system handle that part of it, but we have team regulations that, in this case, have been broken. We are going to look into it and get the facts, and we are going to deal with it very, very swiftly and we're going to try to do our best to make sure this doesn't happen again."
HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on if the legal system will take its course first) Monday, May 31, 2005
"Not necessarily first. We will get all of the facts and we will determine what of our team rules have been violated. Then, we'll make a decision on how to best handle that. But it will be significant and it will be swift."
HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on what penalty the team could hand down to Mike Doss)Monday, May 31, 2005
"I would prefer not to get into any type of 'what-ifs,' but we have things in our book and guidelines, and we will check with the NFL and the Collective Bargaining (Agreement) in terms of what we can do. But I think we all understand that this is not something that the Colts condone and it's not something that we need to have happen."
HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on if you have to constantly remind guys of situations) Monday, May 31, 2005
"We do talk about that and that's the thing that disturbs me. It's not really the third incident we've had this offseason, but it will be portrayed that way because things all get lumped together, and not saying that's wrong. That's what happens, and I think that's something you take responsibility for when you become part of the team as a coach or a player, that you are no longer an individual. So, 'When I do something, it reflects on the Colts.' We know we have a responsibility, and we take that very, very seriously. That's something (Colts Owner and CEO) Jim Irsay does, (Colts President) Bill Polian does, I do and I think all of our players do. So, we want to just make sure that these things are not the norm and we take every precaution to make sure they don't happen."
HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on how much he worries about what guys do away from football) Monday, May 31, 2005
"Everyone is like family, and you worry about everyone all of the time. We take a lot of measures to make sure that we get players who execute good judgment. We think it's important the type of message we send to our young boys in the community what we're all about. It's troubling, and we do take those precautions, as I said…there are some things that happen that you have to minimize the chance of them happening, and part of that is using good judgment. We talk a lot about where we need to be, what time we need to be there and what we need to be doing in our off-the-field activities. I'm not one that tells guys they can't go here or there or they have to do certain things on their off time, but we do, it's a responsibility we take seriously."
HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on if this bothers him because of all that he does in the community and speaks out on) Monday, May 31, 2005
"No, it's not that. It's the responsibility that we have as Colts. We have a lot of young people that look up to our guys. And I say it in the community very often, that I don't care what or who of our 53 guys a young man holds up as a role model, he can be safe knowing that he's holding up a good person. And I'm not making any comments on Mike Doss as a person. Mike's a good guy, but again, we take that responsibility very seriously and we think that's just as important as the ability to play the game."
HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on what was most disappointing about Mike Doss' situation)Monday, May 31, 2005
"I guess the disappointing thing to me is that we talked about this very situation on Thursday when we broke that, 'Here's the situation: four days off, holidays, here are some of the things that could happen and let's make sure that they don't.' So, that was disappointing, but it's always disappointing when we have guys involved in headlines that are on the sports page but not for on-the-field reasons. We have so many guys that are doing so many positive things, rightly or wrongly, that don't get reported. This will be something that's going to be a story for a few days and take away from what 99 percent of the guys are doing. So that's the disappointing thing to me."
