Members of the Houston Texans spoke to the media following Friday's practice.
Head Coach Gary Kubiak
OLB Connor Barwin
CB Johnathan Joseph
Head Coach Gary Kubiak
(on the team's health) "We're full go today. Everybody is back. (CB Johnathan Joseph) is fine, took a full allotment of practice, expect him to be ready to go. (WR) Lestar Jean is the only guy that was still out. We should, barring any problems, should have everybody available other than Lestar."
(on if it's a relief to see CB Johnathan Joseph back practicing) "Yeah, I thought that's where we were heading, but you never know until he gets back out there. So unless he comes in sore tomorrow or there is a problem, he sure looked pretty good at practice today."
(on if T Ryan Harris will play Sunday ) "You're going to see him. I don't know how much. We're going to continue to play seven guys. We have a plan in place where he will come like the third series or something like that. It probably just kind of depends on how things are going, how fresh we think (RT Derek) Newton is, how (T) Ryan (Harris) is playing. We're going to play seven guys and keep an eye on him and see how that comes out. We hope to take about 20-25 snaps off of Newton and (RG Antoine) Caldwell each week."
(on if it's tough playing against a quarterback with a limited body of work) "Well we've seen a lot of this young man because he's played so much in the preseason through the early course of this season. We haven't personally seen a lot of him. We saw (Matt) Hasselbeck last year for the most part, but we know what we're facing. We're facing a guy that can make a lot of plays off schedule. That concerns you anytime you're facing somebody like that, so containing him in the pocket, making sure that we stop the run game, which is always important to us defensively, will probably be a big key once again."
(on how important it is to have CB Johnathan Joseph playing) "It's very important. He's a leader back there on the back end. He's our, the old saying, the shutdown corner on each football team. He's our guy. It's very important and he's been playing extremely well. He played a lot of snaps. We had a lot of football snaps in the last two weeks offensively and defensively. Defensively we were in the 80 plus last week. Offensively we've been there for almost two weeks now. It's really just being smart with guys and he showed us today that I think the rest for the last two days was important the way he practiced today."
(on teams playing special attention to DE J.J. Watt) "They will pay special attention to guys, but I think the thing for us is we're pretty balanced. We're balanced on each edge with (OLB) Connor (Barwin) and (OLB) Brooks (Reed). So to say I'm going to turn this way or turn that way in your protections; I think that's hard to do. The other thing is we're playing a lot of nickel, a lot of dime because of three wides and those types of things. Now this team is playing a lot of three wide receivers sets so when we get into our dime and nickel packages, (DE) J.J. (Watt) plays a little bit of everywhere. If anything, that helps us move him around."
OLB Connor Barwin
(on if it's tough to prepare for Titans QB Jake Locker because they haven't seen a lot of him) "I don't think it's any tougher than preparing for anybody else. I think one of the things that we do on defense is focus more on what we do, be good at what we do in our week and preparation. Understand what they do, but we focus more on what we do than trying to prepare for every single thing that they can do."
(on if he thinks teams have keyed in on him) "No, I don't think so. I think the first couple of games; we played at Jacksonville which they're keeping a lot of guys in now on protection to help (Blaine) Gabbert out. I think Week One (Ryan) Tannehill was throwing a lot of quick-game which made it hard to get there from the outside. I think we've had opportunities and obviously me and (OLB) Brooks (Reed) haven't gotten there as much as we've wanted, but I don't think it's necessarily that they're keying on us. It's just what offenses have been trying to do to protect the quarterbacks early on in the season."
(on if he senses that teams are focused on him) "I don't think that's the issue quite yet."
CB Johnathan Joseph
(on how he feels) "I'm feeling fine. Obviously I missed Wednesday and Thursday. I was a little sorer than I expected on Thursday, came out today, did everything. Should be fine to go Sunday."
(on how important it is to get a full workout in before Sunday) "Some people tend at times to not go out and want to practice all week and just come out and play on Sunday, but for the most part, if you want to be good on Sunday you got to get some work during the week so you can feel comfortable going into the game and give your teammates and coaches confidence as well."
(on if he's limited at all) "Not at all. Yesterday was just more preventative. I'm just being smart about it, using the extra day."
