Head coach Gary Kubiak spoke to the media after practice Friday afternoon.
Head Coach Gary Kubiak
(on today's practice) "We practiced good. (There was) a lot of enthusiasm…we practiced really well, nothing different though."
(on the teams' injury status) "(TE) Jeb (Putzier) will be a game time decision we will work him Sunday morning before the game. That'll be a game time decision, everybody else is fine and healthy; so we're ok."
(on improving third quarter production)"Anytime you struggle on any phase you go back and you dissect what you're doing. We tried a couple of different things over the last few weeks and we'll try another one this week. It really gets in your head and it's in our head right now, and in our players' (heads). But we'll address it and that's all you can do as a coach and as a football team say we're not doing this well. We're going to try something different; we're going to do this different this week. So we're doing that, I love the way we responded last week, that was the key. And you're always searching for four quarters as a football team and when you find it that's when things start going good. So we're going to keep battling until we find it."
(on whether it is something that can be fixed)"I'm sure you can. I've been doing it one way for years and years. We've tried a few things different since I've been here. It's about playing, it always comes back to playing and it really hasn't been about what we're doing, in my opinion, just kind of how we're doing it. We tend to have some lapses in the third quarter, be it dropping the ball, busting an assignment or having a big penalty on the defensive or something on third down, those type of things. It's a matter of playing though those things and playing through the fourth quarter."
(on last week's success carrying over) "Definitely. I saw some confidence in our players from a standpoint of what we did in the fourth quarter last week. That's a battle, one challenge for this football team and boy we've got a lot of them. But we're out there searching for that fourth quarter football game and when we protect the ball and we play solid football then we give ourselves a chance each week and if we get sloppy then we get ourselves in trouble. I think we all understand that and that's our challenge each week as we go forward."
(on the amount of changes in formations and numbers changing each week) "Yeah, we're pretty drastic from week to week. I think in this league you've got to be that way. People are too good. And it's also challenging for your players. If your players get lax in what they're doing, if I walked in here on Wednesday and gave them the same plays I gave them the week before they're probably not going to be as locked in when they go home at night. So that's part of coaching. I wan them studying and then busting their tail, and then I have to figure out at the end of the week what they're doing well. I know that has been a new challenge for (QB) David (Carr) and I think that will make him a better player because it'll make him work a lot harder."
(on whether he quizzes QB David Carr) "I sit down hit him every Saturday night and I go through the game plan and I make the calls and he has to give me everything right back, exactly what he's doing, where each person is, and just really challenge him in front of his peers, and also make him put together a list of questions of some things for me in the game plan that maybe check with me on these things in the game plan that maybe don't make sense to you. We all kind of do that as a group. When we're all set and done we feel like we have covered quite a bit. He's done a very good job with that. He's getting better every week."
(on what other players are at that meeting) "Well, I do it in front of the quarterbacks first and then we do it in front of the offensive football team in the next meeting, so David's getting his share of meetings this year."
(on whether he does this meeting or offensive coordinator Troy Calhoun) "Well, that's me with him, but that's the way I've always dealt with them guys. I think its important that their teammates see that they're preparing as hard as they could possibly prepare. So when their teammates hear him spitting stuff out verbatim and they hear him answer questions and they watch him studying, they sit there and they see him sitting there at that table on Saturday night they know he's paying the price to be successful. That's the way you earn the respect of your teammates."
(on QB David Carr's command in the huddle) "Well, I'm not in the huddle, so I don't know, but we're getting good feedback from our players as far as his growth in the huddle and really, to me, the only way you can have command of that place on the field is when you have command of your job. He's doing everything he can to have total command of what he's doing, and then that frees him up for that player who says, 'Hey, David, what do I have on this or what's going on here.' And I think that's starting to happen for him a little bit."
(on how much feedback he gets from Carr during games) "Well, we definatelty have an idea of where we want to go, but were getting to the point where (I say), "Hey David, I like this and this. Which one do you like?" And hey, he's the one that has to go run it so if I give him an either or and he says, 'I like this call,' then we go with that. I think he's finding out how much I trust him to make some calls in situations where you can't turn the ball over. Last week against
