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Tony Dungy Monday Press Conference Quotes

  HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (general comments) “Doubtful that if it had been the 1958 Championship Game it could have lived up to the hype that it had.  I thought our guys did a good job of trying to keep it as the normal routine and going out there and playing.


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HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (general comments)

"Doubtful that if it had been the 1958 Championship Game it could have lived up to the hype that it had.  I thought our guys did a good job of trying to keep it as the normal routine and going out there and playing.  We're glad to go get a win, we're glad that it's over.  We didn't play as well, really, in the offensive and defensive phases as we'd like.  Our special teams, I thought, played well and gave us a big lift, but there are some things that we can do a lot better.  Two areas of concern that everybody seemed to have last night, and I'm going to address those.  Our running game, I will start out by saying again, what is not the problem is our two backs.  Our backs ran well, they ran hard, they made the right reads for the most part, they made people miss when they had a chance, ran over people and did a good job.  The Giants did a good job defending us.  They also have a plan that doesn't allow you to run a lot, or didn't allow us to run.  So we were content with how the game played out.  I think we'll run fine.  I thought our backs, again, played very, very well.  They pass-protected well, they didn't get beat all night on any blitz pick-ups, they caught the ball well, made big first downs catching the ball and did great.  So, we were pleased with them.  Our run defense was not very good.  There are a lot of reasons for that, reasons we have to address.  One of the reasons was not the fact that they are bigger than us and we didn't have Corey Simon.  We did a lot of things.  Number one, we have to give them credit.  They have two very good backs.  They run the ball well, but we did some things that we have to be better at.  We have to be better coming off the football, gap control, tackling better.  Some of that, we're not an excuse team.  I think some of it is my fault, because we didn't play our guys enough in the preseason, contrary to what (others) may think, we needed a little bit more preseason for some of our guys that didn't play very much.  And the rust showed.  Our gap control was a little bit off, we didn't rap up tackling, and when you're playing good backs and people that know how to run the ball, you have to do that.  So, we'll get that squared away.  I think we'll be better with the fact that we're playing more and we'll get more opportunities.  But we were a little hyper and we didn't hit the gaps properly.  We did some things on screens that we never do, taking the wrong gap and things like that, things that we just have to settle down and be better.  If we can make those corrections, make those improvements and just realize that we had a win but not the way we want to win, I think we'll be in good shape.  But overall, pleased to go in there and win.  They're a very good football team, with a lot of energy in the stadium.  We got up 13-0, and usually you feel pretty good in those situations.  We let them get back in it, which you really can't afford to do.  We have to be able to put the hammer down a little bit better in those situations.  You let a team score in a two-minute drive, it usually comes back to haunt you.  We have a lot of things to work on, but we're 1-0 and that's the glass half-full I guess."

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HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on how big the Colts' two-minute drill and field goal was heading into halftime)

"I thought, really, the biggest play of the game from our standpoint was Terrence Wilkins' kickoff return.  We had played pretty well, scored every time we had the ball, but they had the momentum, it was 13-7 and they were going to get the second-half kickoff.  The crowd was really electric at that point in time.  Peyton (Manning) and (Offensive Coordinator) Tom Moore came to me and said, 'What do you want to do?' And I said, 'Well, we'll see where we get the ball.'  If we had gotten it at the 20, we probably would have taken a knee.  Terrence returned it to the (38-yard line) and we felt like we could take a chance to try to get a field goal.  We get about four good throws and get

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