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Head Coach Tony Dungy Press Conference Quotes

  HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (opening comments) “For us, a big win yesterday, playing against a very, very good football team, a team that was hot, on a five-game winning streak and playing at their place.  It was a tremendous atmosphere.


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HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (opening comments)

"For us, a big win yesterday, playing against a very, very good football team, a team that was hot, on a five-game winning streak and playing at their place.  It was a tremendous atmosphere.  Again, we didn't play perfect but got a lot of things done.  Our offense really rescued us, and of course, Adam Vinatieri kicking the ball well.  But there are a lot of positive things from it, and I liked the way our team is responding to challenges.  I like the way we're winning in different ways.  Our offense pretty much took the challenge, knowing what type of game it was going to be and how Denver was going to try to play us, that it was really going to be a game for patience and poise and I thought we did that well.  We had a couple of penalties and a couple of things we had to overcome.  They weren't going to allow us to throw deep balls and get quick scores, so we were going to have to drive the football and we had the confidence that we could do that.  They executed really well, especially in the second half.  We were able to finish off some drives, and of course Reggie Wayne had a big day.  So that part was really good.  Defensively, we played pretty well in the first half, gave up a couple of passes on some bootlegs, one dash-throwback that Coach (Mike) Shanahan brought out from the old days.  We hadn't really worked on that one.  That was a big play for them to get their first touchdown drive going.  The second half, they came at us offensively, ran some plays that they have in their arsenal that they don't run a lot and they changed some blocking things, and we didn't really respond quick enough.  We made a couple of plays, had a couple of stops early in the half to get our offense the ball and we got the stop at the end of the game.  We'll continue to improve, and I think as we do that—we're going to have to—and guys play a little bit more, we'll get better.  All in all, we came through September and October the way we wanted to.  We went to a couple of tough places to play, played some first-place teams and came through it okay.  So, we feel pretty good where we are right now."

HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on the offense playing better in the second half, but if he sees it as glass-half-empty and they should be playing better in the first half)

"Not necessarily.  The thing for us is people don't always play us the way they play other teams.  So you prepare all week and you go in feeling like you have an idea of what you're going to get.  Sometimes we get that and sometimes we don't.  The thing I like about our team is that they don't really panic.  When we get in there at halftime and we sit down and talk about what we've gotten, what we think we're going to get in the second half, the plays we're going to emphasize, we do a pretty good job of adjusting and doing that.  So, even yesterday, when it's 14-6, we said, 'Hey, we've been here before against Tennessee, we've been here against Washington.  We can just make these adjustments, here's what we're going to run.'  And they felt pretty good about our ability to go out there and score in the second half."

HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on if RB-Joseph Addai should create a buzz yet)

"He should create a buzz, he's a good player.  He's everything we thought he was.  When he was drafted, (there was) no question about it, and he's going to be a very good player.  But I think we have the best of all worlds.  We have two guys (Addai and Dominic Rhodes) that can do a lot of things.  They both are running well and catching the ball well, they're both pass protecting well, and we're able to keep them fresh.  I think we'll continue to do that."

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