QB-PEYTON MANNING (on being named to the AFC Pro Bowl roster with RB-Joseph Addai, DB-Bob Sanders, C-Jeff Saturday and WR-Reggie Wayne) * *
"It's great. I'm real happy for all of the guys that made it. Obviously Jeff, Reggie and Bob all had outstanding years. I'm glad to see Joseph making his first one. I know he's excited about that. You always like to see guys that have great years get to go. Like Coach (Tony) Dungy told the team, we had a lot of guys that we thought could have gone, whether it's Dallas ( Clark) or Gary Brackett or Marlin (Jackson) and Antoine Bethea, a number of guys. But we certainly still appreciate how they play."
QB-PEYTON MANNING (on what goals are left now that the Colts have the No. 2 seed clinched)
"I think it's our job as professional football players to continue to work hard and to get better and to go out and try to play our best and win this game on Sunday. It's our job. Like somebody said around here once of the games, 'You ought to play for free. You get paid to practice.' So that's the mindset right now, is to have a good week of practice, to improve on some things we need to improve on. With all of the young players that we have and the new players, it definitely makes it easy to focus on getting better. You can always talk about another route or talk about another protection concept, and you're always into practice because there are so many new things to learn. So that's kind of where we are and getting ready to try to beat Houston."
QB-PEYTON MANNING (on the importance of protecting the ball)
"I had a coach in college that told me that the most important thing about each play is that you possess the ball at the end of that play, which is kind of a simple coaching point, but really that's more important than getting a first down or even a touchdown, is that you possess that ball at the end of the play. So certainly as a quarterback you want to do your job to protect it when you're throwing it or protect it when you have it in the pocket. It's something that we emphasize and something that's important every single week. It's important at the end of the game to say we did a good job protecting the ball because turnovers can really hurt you."
QB-PEYTON MANNING (on it being different for a quarterback protecting the ball, and how you can protect it when you're going down and not turn it over)
"You just try to protect it. Sometimes you have to know when to say, 'Okay, you got me this time. We'll try to make up for it on the next play.' You definitely want to try to have two strong hands on it in the pocket when you have it. Like I said, be smart, and once guys get around you, be sure you can hold onto it."
QB-PEYTON MANNING (on improving the running game)
"I think offensively we can improve in a lot of areas. From last week's game and the overall execution, you want to try to get back to being a little more balanced if we can as far as being able to run it on first down effectively, to drop back and pass and throw in a little play action. All three of those things kind of feed off one another. So overall offensively, we'd like to improve this week and play better against
