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HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (general comments) Monday, December 10, 2007
"It's nice to be talking to you from in the playoffs. I didn't realize that last night when I was at the podium. That's always your first goal, so that was a nice added benefit of yesterday's action, and something that we're very happy about. Now we have other goals that we can reach in the next couple of weeks and starting with clinching our division this week. So that will be the focus, to go out and play another good game against Oakland, see if we can improve and win our division and guarantee ourselves a home game. I was proud of the team last night. I think we caught Baltimore at the right time after a real emotional, tough loss on Monday night. We talked about going out there and getting off to a fast start, playing hard and see if we could take some of the wind out of their sails knowing that they had had such a tough Monday night. And that's exactly what happened. Our offense moved the ball early. We converted a couple of big third downs on the first drive, scored, our defense got a takeaway, and that really set us off. Watching the tape, I was really impressed with how hard our guys played. We had a lot of young guys in, especially in the second half, and the guys on defense played hard. Offensively, I thought we protected the ball well. It's very critical to play against them turnover-free, and we were able to do that. Special teams-wise, we played hard and did some really good things. We had the one return that is always disappointing. It seems like we'll have seven or eight coverages do well and had one get out on us. But all in all I thought we did play hard with energy, we played pretty smart, and it was a good win."
HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on if the offense finally got back on track) Monday, December 10, 2007
"I thought we'd been playing better the last few weeks. It probably started in the second quarter of Atlanta where we got some things rolling, made some plays, and then kept it going against Jacksonville, and really had four touchdown drives in that game against a real good defense. Then last night, so much of it is poise and identifying where they are and picking up blitzes. You know if you do that you're going to have some chances to make big plays. But getting everybody involved has been good to see. Us moving the ball and scoring in different ways and different people contributing, I think we are hitting our stride at the right time."
HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on the reason for the offense getting back on track) Monday, December 10, 2007
"We went through a stage there when we had Marvin (Harrison) out, Dallas (Clark) was out for a little bit, and we're moving people around and guys are playing in different spots. We've been able to settle down. Anthony (Gonzalez) has gotten comfortable in his role outside and we're running the ball well. I think guys understand what they have to do. We are looking forward to getting Marvin back and being able to slide Anthony back inside and really get to our full complement, but I can't say enough about what guys have done who have stepped in. Charlie Johnson, Michael Toudouze, Kenton Keith, Bryan Fletcher, it just seems like everybody who's gone in has contributed."
HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on averaging nearly three yards per carry the last three games) Monday, De
