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10 questions with Orlovsky

By Nick Scurfield
July 26, 2009 Comments (0) | Avg. Rating
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Credit: Bill Baptist
Quarterback Dan Orlovsky is looking forward to learning under coach Gary Kubiak during training camp.

Quarterback Dan Orlovsky was signed by the Texans on one of the first days of free agency this year to back up Matt Schaub. Orlovsky started seven games for the Lions last season, throwing for 1,616 yards, eight touchdowns and eight interceptions. The four-year veteran has been hard at work studying the Texans' offense this summer and is excited about his first season in Houston.

1. What have you been doing since the end of mini-camp?

"I got married on July 5. I went home for basically the week before the Fourth and that weekend, and then actually the day after we got married, we came back down and I've just been down here in Houston getting ready. I've just been working out the whole month of July, preparing for camp, watching a bunch of film. I've been excited to see how things are going to go. I like to try to get myself as prepared for camp as possible. That's kind of been my routine in years past, so I spend as much time as I can in the environment I'm going to be in." 

2. No honeymoon yet?

"No honeymoon. I did not want to go on a honeymoon and have to worry about eating right and getting in shape and throwing and stuff like that, because then it wasn't really going to be a honeymoon. So we pushed the honeymoon off to sometime next year. I'm fortunate that my wife was pretty understanding with that, but I'll make up for it next year, hopefully." 

3.  What did you think about the Texans signing Rex Grossman after OTAs?

"It's nothing that really concerns me or plays into my mindset at all. It isn't like in my first four years in Detroit there weren't any type of situations that would have potential to make me uncomfortable or put pressure on me, if you want to say that. I'm focused on what I'm going to do. I'm confident in what I'm going to do. And this is no disrespect to Rex, but if I'm worried about Rex, then I'm worried about the wrong person. My goal is to go beat Matt out.

"I'm confident in what I'm going to do. And this is no disrespect to Rex, but if I'm worried about Rex, then I'm worried about the wrong person. My goal is to go beat Matt out."

Dan Orlovsky
"And that's not saying that I'm here for that mindset, but my goal is to be the best that I can be. And I have to go and try to beat Matt out and become the starter to have that happen. I know what my role is supposed to be, but I know Rex is going to come in and compete. He's done a lot of great things in his career. But I'm just focused on myself getting in and listening to my coaches and doing what I need to do."

4. When you first arrived here, you said one of the main things that drew you to Houston was getting to play quarterback under Gary Kubiak. What has that been like so far?

"It's awesome. You don't know what exactly to expect when you're coming in to a new coach, but I had heard great things and it's been nothing but that. I know he's going to coach me hard, he expects a lot out of me, but I'm excited about it because I really think that he's going to bring out the best in me. I think he's going to push me to get to a point where I want to get to.

"So you take the good with the bad—there's going to be days when he's going to jump down my throat, and I've got to be able to handle that, and there's going to be days where he's going to want to encourage me. He knows what he's doing, he's really good at it, so I'm looking forward to it and I'm excited about what training camp is going to bring with that."

5. Has there been anything in particular that Kubiak has told you he wanted you to work on?

"Like I said, he's very demanding and expects a lot of me, and he's had some talks with me where he straight up told me, ‘Listen, I think you have a chance to be really, really good,' but one thing that he stressed was being consistent. You can have flashes of when you can be really good and then you can have plays and you look like a dummy. You try to narrow that gap to where it's not such a big gap between those two extremes.

"So that's my main thing going into camp: getting as consistent as I can, executing as much as I can, being completion-driven and just trying to listen to him as much as I can. Enjoying the game, also, and having fun doing it, but pushing myself to be as good as I can and almost pushing on the brink of trying to be a perfectionist." 

6. How much more comfortable do you feel heading into training camp after going through OTAs and minicamp?

"It's light-years. When you go out there for two weeks and you've never run a system before like that, you're out there swimming. You're at the line of scrimmage thinking and trying to envision a play rather than going out and executing. It's a reaction game, but it's a lot easier to react when you know what's going on rather than learning what's going on.

"So not only going through OTAs and minicamp, but having the whole summer to take scripts home and be in the practice facility or be at home just running through plays, trying to work my feet through plays, getting a real feel for things and envisioning things, there's a huge comfort level difference where I am now from where I was March or April."

7. What else have you done to mentally prepare yourself for camp and the season?

"I've done a lot of film watching this summer to try and watch how Matt has run the plays versus where the defense is. Not only that, but going back to watch how Jake Plummer ran stuff in Denver, Rich Gannon, Brad Johnson, because those offenses were very similar. I'm trying to watch those guys to get a feel of how their feet are for certain plays, where their eyes are going for certain defenses, stuff like that to try to get comfortable. And I think the more and more I'm up there nowadays, even in this last week or two running plays on air, the more I can envision things and the more I feel comfortable. "

8. What do you do physically to avoid being rusty on the first day of camp?

"Just throw a lot. Like I said, get on the field trying to physically go through the plays and imagining the plays. You're out there with a ball and no receivers doing play action or dropping back and getting a second or third read. I like to take scripts from previous OTAs and minicamps out there and just pretend I'm in the huddle. I line up like I'm in a huddle, I call the play. Then I break the huddle, I go to the line of scrimmage, I pretend the defense is out there and I just go from there.

"That's the big thing I do so that when I get out there that first day of training camp, I don't feel rusty; I don't feel like I haven't done this in a while. And then just staying in shape. I'm a big proponent of getting your body physically ready to go for the season and having it as healthy as possible and having your arm as healthy as possible." 

9. Have you gotten to spend much time with your new teammates off the field?

"Yeah, if I'm away from football, I spend a lot of my time hanging out hanging out with the fellas like Kevin (Walter) and Matt (Schaub), Chris Myers. We've been hanging out and playing some golf, going to dinner and stuff like that. With just getting married, we've been home in my free time a lot trying to situate our house, but we've been able to catch a couple of movies and go out to dinner."

10. Did you give Schaub a hard time about hitting a woman in the head with a golf ball last week at a tournament in California?

"You know what's crazy is Kevin Walter, who caddied for Matt, calls me the day he was heading out West and he was like, ‘Alright, I gotta go out there and watch Matt hit these spectators." Of course, we just laughed at it, and then Kevin calls me Monday morning and was like, 'Dude, you're not going to believe this.' I'm like, 'What?' And he told me about it and I was like, 'You've got to be kidding me.' He told me the whole story of how Matt hit the woman, made it onto the green and almost made birdie and all of that.

"So I saw Matt in the weight room on Monday and I had to bust his chops pretty good about it, which he was a pretty good sport about. Pretty funny."

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