On facing veteran Ronde Barber: "Enjoy is definitely not the right word. I've played against him a handful of times over the years and nickel, dime, safety, wherever he is…I looked at his age today and he's 37-years old, but he absolutely flashes on film. There's good football players across the board on defense. Up front there's good football players. There's a really good young linebacker that's a rookie. There's a fifth or sixth or seventh pick of the draft that's starting at safety, but he absolutely flashes on film. He makes plays. He's great in coverage. He makes a couple unbelievable interceptions off of tipped balls. He'll come up and tackle Adrian Peterson and stuff him. He's everywhere. He makes plays. He's playing as good of football as I've seen him play."
On if he can relate to Barber's new energy with a new system: "For sure. I'm sure they're for awhile he's going on year 15 or in year 15. Things can get kind of monotonous with the same coordinator, the same defense over and over and over again. And then a whole new playbook that you actually have to study, you have to take home with you. I'm sure he was at a point in his career where he knew the defense inside and out and probably didn't look at the playbook very much. Now, with a new defense, new coordinator, new calls, new position, I'm sure it's energizing for him. I know I've gone through a similar thing, but you can't tell. It doesn't look like it's his first year playing safety."
On if they look at the Buccaneers rush defense ranking: "Without going too much into our game plan, we're never going to just abandon the run. They are very good against the run and they've struggled a little against the pass. They've had some big plays happen to them over and over again. But it's a good football team and that's the first thing Coach Allen said was, 'don't look at their record. Don't look at statistics. This is a good football team, a lot like us. Started off slow and got some momentum and has good players, has good coaching.' And they're hot. They're very hot on offense especially. Defensively, if you've got four guys that can rush the passer like they do, you can't just go out and throw the ball every play because those guys are going to get to you. They're too good up front, but we're never going to go into a game and completely abandon the run game. We're going to pick our spots and definitely go in and be physical and run the ball, but when we have our shots downfield, we need to hit them this week."
On working with receivers after dropped passes: "The first thing is that's football. There's going to be stretches where you catch the ball phenomenally and guys are making one-handed grabs and going up and high-pointing the ball and the ball is not touching the ground. There's going to be skids where a guy just has a rough game or group has a rough game. In my experience in my career, that's football. That happens. But I think unless you just don't have good hands and we don't have any guys that just flat out don't have good hands, all of our guys have good hands, nothing needs to be said. Every good football player knows when he dropped a football. The last thing he needs is a quarterback being in his face screaming, yelling, pointing at him. If something needs to be said, it needs to be said, but for the most part, our guys can all catch the ball really well. They all know as soon as the ball hits the ground when it's one they should have caught and when it's one they shouldn't have. I'm not the type to jump down somebody's throat and be all over them. Our guys respond well. I know Dmoe [Denarius Moore] had a couple drops, but he'll make a couple of phenomenal ones this week that will make up for last week."
On if the receivers will go to Palmer first: "You get the 'my bad' and it goes both ways. I miss guys too, so that's football. That's part of the game."
On what they have to do to improve in the red zone: "A lot. We've had a number of opportunities, especially last week, to get down there. One where we just kneeled it, but we had five opportunities and it's not something we're satisfied with. We won the game, but we've already started working on it. Normally you don't work on red zone on Wednesday and we started talking about it as an offense. But you just have to find ways to get better. You have to find out what went wrong and correct them. It's a simple answer. It sounds simple and it's not obviously or else we would have corrected it, but we're going to continue to work at it and grind on it and get it to where it needs to be in the red zone."
On if it's encouraging that they're able to move the ball: "No, we want touchdowns. As much faith as we have in Seabass [Sebastian Janikowski] that if you cross the 50, he's in his range, we want to get seven points. We've been fortunate; our defense has played so well that we haven't needed seven points every drive. There's going to be those games where the other offense is on fire and you better score 70 percent of the time when you get down there if you want to win the game. We need to improve on it. We will."
On the offense doing better in the second half: "I don't think there's specifically one thing or one reason. Sometimes, I know the week before, it just took us awhile to get going. We were making a lot of mental mistakes. That wasn't the case this week. It just took us awhile to get going, but it's something we need to improve on also. The red zone percent, our third down percent and starting a game fast, coming out and scoring seven points on the opening drive, is something that we continually work on."
On Moore's success in the red zone: "He just kind of has a knack to get in the end zone. I know the touchdown he had down there against Atlanta it didn't look like anybody could score from where he had the ball and where the defenders were on the field. He can contort his body and dive and he can run full speed at angles. A lot of guys have to be going straight ahead. He can be running at an angle full speed, which makes him difficult to tackle. The last home game against Jacksonville, the one he got in on, didn't look like there was room for a touchdown there and he kind of cut up field and contorted his body. I guess just really his body control and being able to have a knack and nose for the end zone, he's just kind of one of those guys."
On getting the running game going in the 4th quarter in Kansas City: "At the end of the game, when you're up a couple of scores and the game is out of reach, you typically get defenses that, I don't know what the right word is, but maybe their effort isn't as high as it was in the first half or first three quarters. They were tired. We had been moving the ball pretty well on them and they had some turnovers so they would go to the sideline and get right back on the field. We weren't holding back. We weren't just playing for the win and trying to kneel the ball and control the clock. We were trying to run the ball on them and a little more will, a little more effort, a little more drive, and we got some big runs out of it."
On if he thinks that successful run game can carry over: "That's what we need to. We need to build on that momentum. The way we move the line of scrimmage and dominated the line of scrimmage at the end of that game, we want to come out and do it in the first quarter, the first series of the game."
