HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (general comments) * *
"These are always the toughest days of the year, no matter when it is, if it's the last day of the regular season, the last day of the playoffs, or whatever. You have that team meeting and you reflect back on the first team meeting that you had in July to get things started and all the excitement and anticipation, and you reflect back on all the work that was done, and then it's always the disappointment of the season ending. We're no different today, a very disappointed group of guys. It's tough sometimes to reflect back that you did have a good year, that you did do a lot of positive things, you saw a lot of growth and a lot of improvement from your players because you had the disappointment of not winning that last game. And it's even probably a little more disappointing when you don't play your best or what you feel is your best. But a lot of times when you don't play your best you have to give that credit to the other team and feel like maybe they did something to cause that. I have to give a lot of credit to San Diego. They came here in tough circumstances, they lost a couple of their key players, had some people banged up, and they stayed after it. Even when they got behind in the fourth quarter, they came back with some backup guys in there and played well enough to win. So we have to give them credit. We're a little disappointed, but in this game you don't get do-overs, you don't get repeats and you don't get second chances. What we have to do from here is do what we've always done, come back in March and start over from square one and get ourselves ready to have a great 2008 season. I think that's the attitude in our locker room right now. We have a tremendous group of guys to work with, couldn't be prouder of a group. We had to fight through some adversity at times this year and we had different people in and out of the lineup, but I thought we hung together as a team and we played very good football for the whole regular season, but unfortunately not good enough in the playoffs.
"Yesterday, we had a good plan. I thought offensively we had some good things for their rush, and we kept their rushes under control for the most part, but we said we wouldn't be able to turn the ball over. We actually got in scoring territory four times that we didn't get any points out of, and that was a big part of our loss. But I thought we had a good plan and executed it fairly well other than the turnovers, and then the last time we were down there where I elected to go for it on fourth down. Defensively, it wasn't our best game. We tried to take away their running attack, did a fairly good job of that, but they hurt us in the passing game, hurt us on third down and made some big plays which we hadn't given up all year. So that was uncharacteristic of us. I thought our special teams probably played to a standoff. (Mike) Scifres got a great punt off on the last punt of the game that they needed, and that forced us to start that two-minute drive backed up a little farther than we wanted to. But all in all, I thought they played hard, we played hard. I think they executed their plan just a little bit better than we did, and it was a disappointing end to the season.
"As far as my situation, I know a lot of people want to know. As I said before the game, my wife and I will sit down and evaluate this week and talk about it, talk it through. We'll probably do a lot of praying about what we want to do. I haven't met with (Colts Owner and CEO) Jim Irsay (today), I met with (Colts President) Bill (Polian), and we'll probably come to some decision this weekend and be ready to move forward on Monday one way or another. So that's kind of where it stands. I'm hoping to be back, but we'll see what happens."
HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on what would persuade him to continue as coach of the Colts)
"There's a lot of things that would. Number one, working for Jim (Irsay) and Bill (Polian), what we have here, the group of players that we have. I still enjoy it very much. I love coming to work. I'm not burned out at all. So all those things are really, really positive, and if there's any place you want to work, it's here.
