**
Head Coach Gary Kubiak**
(on if WR DeAndre Hopkins has progressed in the protocol stages of his concussion) "Yeah, he's doing good. He has not been totally cleared to return to practice. That could happen tomorrow. I want to say he's in like stage four right now. He did do a lot of work today with the trainers."
(on if there's a chance WR DeAndre Hopkins will play against Dallas) "Yeah, I think there's a good chance. I'd like him to play a little bit. That'll be up to the doctor's. We'll see where we're at because we've got what 48 hours now."
(on if OLB Whitney Mercilus practiced today) "He did not. He did not practice with us, but I'll tell you this, he worked harder than we worked in practice. All we did was we went out in hats and basically had an hour jog through assignment-type stuff. We wanted him to get real good work, so he worked with trainers, puts his pads on and di much more than we did. He's doing fine."
(on if OLB Whitney Mercilus will play against Dallas) "No, I don't see that happening. I don't think we make that decision with such a short notice here and, the fact we're going there on turf, I think we'll just be smart and we'll use our time and get him ready to go for San Diego."
(on FS Ed Reed's status and if he knows any more) "No. Like I said, I think we're waiting until we get through this week. He had some injections that it takes like three-to-five days, my understanding, to kind of know where you're at. I know we had a big meeting today just talking, Kap (Head Athletic Trainer Geoff Kaplan) and (General Manager) Rick (Smith) and talking about where he's at. We feel good about his progress and, like I said, I think we're going to know a lot when we get into the weekend and move forward."
(on how WR DeVier Posey has been over the last few days) "He's been good. He practiced today. I'm going to play him in the game. It'll probably be a brief appearance, but he needs to just get out there and get his feet wet so to speak. He'll probably play about 12 plays. Get hit. Get tackled. All that confidence he's been working on, just make sure he's ready to go. But he's good."
(on if there is any way to characterize how many guys are truly on the bubble after the cuts made today) "Yeah, that's tough. We're obviously going to play all of our young players in the course of the game. For me to sit here and try to narrow that down, what the big decisions are to make, but I told the guys after practice, there's usually eight-to-10 guys that make the football team on this game. It's interesting because it's very close. They go out there and they're going to get to play a ton of snaps, and they'll separate themselves. They'll show you. Looking forward to getting them involved. A great environment, very competitive environment on the road and see how they respond. Hopefully, it lets us make some of these final decisions we have to make."
(on if he feels good about how the preseason has gone) "Yeah, I feel good about it. I'm obviously concerned about some of the missing pieces as far as time on the field. (RB) Arian (Foster) time on the field. (OLB) Whitney (Mercilus) time on the field. (FS) Ed (Reed's) situation. We understand (DE) Antonio (Smith's) situation, that's something that we're dealt right now, so we understand that situation. You'd like to have all those pieces working together all the time and it usually doesn't happen. I think, when you look at the big picture, we could be missing a couple of faces due to injury and obviously Antonio and his situation, but, for the most part, we have gotten through our preseason fairly clean. Hopefully, we're ascending the whole time, you want to be as good as you can be at the end and hopefully we're ascending form Week 1 on."
(on if FS Ed Reed is ready for Week 1 and if he'll feel comfortable putting him in there) "Yeah, we definitely do. It's really Ed's call because he's been through this process before. Ed's played a lot of football. Ed doesn't need to go out there and play Cover-3. He's been doing it for many years. That's not a problem. It gets down to him having confidence in what he's doing, feeling confident. Obviously, we're in this for the long haul, so we want to do the smart thing. But we're listening to him and he's been through it before, and everything he's doing has held up. We feel like he's in a good place right now and then we'll see exactly where we're at at the end of the week."
(on if he's 100 percent comfortable starting FS Shiloh Keo if FS Ed Reed is unable to play Week 1) "Oh yeah, yes I am because that's the way we've worked him there the whole camp. Our whole camp's been dedicated to those guys getting ready to go in play and start if that's the case going into San Diego. Our team, we talk about it all of the time, we're going to miss players, but our expectations never change. We expect to be successful. Whoever goes in there, they have a job to do. That's the way we've been working all camp, so we're very confident in them."
