On Arrowhead Stadium: "That's one of the loudest venues I've been to. It's one of the loudest outdoor venues I've been to. Their fan base is really into it. That's why we work crowd noise here is for that reason. It can become very loud there."
On scouting Brady Quinn before the 2007 Draft: "We did have him out here. We visited with him. In fact, John DeFilippo, our quarterback coach, and I were together with him, and John put him through a pretty rigorous interview process. I thought he did a fine job in the interview process. He was extremely bright, understood football. Based on what the coaches had told us, and his interaction, he really seemed to love football. He was always around it and involved in the extra stuff before practice and after practice. I was very impressed with him."
On whether there was sentiment that he could have been a Raider: "At that point, I don't know. It was still a pretty good battle because on tape there was a pretty good competition going on that said you really have a chance with any three of these to make it work. I couldn't say that any one early on in the draft process, at quarterback, setting himself apart."
On what he expects to see this week: "It's like last week. We kind of mentioned that this is the second week in a row that we're facing a team that had a bye week. So, we're going to get some un-scouted looks like we did last week against Jacksonville. We've got to stick to our rules and our protections and our run game to overcome something that we haven't seen on tape. From a defensive standpoint, these guys really fly to the ball. They had a tough game against Tampa Bay, but outside of that you see 11 hats go to the ball. They've got good athletic speed. They're very talented. They've got six first-round picks on the starting 11 on defense. I see a very talented defense."
On what he sees from Stanford Routt this year: "They've been playing a lot more man in their scheme because of Stanford this year. They're using his man skills, his coverage skills, and he's still doing a very fine job as far as one-on-one coverage. That's increased a lot from their scheme in the past because of his ability to cover man. He's done a very fine job."
On how much freedom he gives Carson Palmer during the no-huddle: "As much as he's willing to take. There's a good communication going on right now. It's like a third base coach giving the signal. There's sometimes where he'll wave me off, or something like that. That's okay, because he's running the stuff that we've practiced the most and the stuff that we're most comfortable with. I want to be there to aid him and give him some suggestions because there's a lot on his plate as it is as a quarterback in the no-huddle. It's really worked out well as far as the communication process goes to try to identify from maybe my perspective, 'Okay, here's a blitz from a certain side, or a certain coverage, so this would be the best play to put us in.'"
On if he's comfortable with the amount that the team is using the no-huddle: "I think it's good right now because it's like any offense. If you do one thing all the time, in this league, the defensive coordinators and the defensive teams will start preparing for it and have specific things that will defeat that. But if you have that as a weapon and you can use it at different times in the game, then they have to prepare not only for no-huddle, but for the regular part of the offense. It's a good change up. It'll catch a defense by surprise better than if you did it all the time."
On Palmer's decision making at the line of scrimmage: "One of the things is we make sure we have certain plays in where we don't go all the way to five seconds left. From an operations standpoint, we'll have certain plays in where we call and we'll go right up and let's go. We'll get it done with 20 seconds left on the clock to keep a defense honest. There are certain go-to plays in the pass game and the run game that, no matter what the defense presents, we have either the protection that can handle it or the run-fits will handle it. He'll know if he's inside that 15-second zone if he's got to call one of those plays that handle any defensive look that they present."
On how Palmer responds to adversity: "Unbelievable. He's been one of the finest guys I've been around. We've had three games this year in the fourth quarter where we've had to work from behind. He's really kept his cool throughout all this. Not only adversity from the score in the game, but he's had some tough hits he's taken. He bounces up. He doesn't say a word about what we're doing or why we're doing this. He just goes, 'Alright, what was the problem? How do we fix it? Let's move on.' He's one of the coolest cats I've ever been around on game day, handling adverse situations. It's enjoyment to work with because he just goes to the next down, whether the last one was good or bad, he goes to the next down. That showed up in the Atlanta game, it showed up again this week, it showed up in Pittsburgh in the fourth quarter. It's a unique quality because it's hard to find that in a quarterback when a lot of stuff is coming at you."
On limited amount of time to make adjustments during halftime: "It starts in the second quarter. It actually starts before the game. One of our strategies is we'll maybe have a second half list of ideas that if we don't use in the first half, we'll make sure to apply in the beginning of the second half, as long as the defensive scheme hasn't changed. It starts before the game starts, we have this list of ideas that we don't plan on using in the first half, that we might use in the second half. Secondly, at halftime, the players come off, use the restroom, get a rinse, get rehydrated, and then after about two or three minutes in we have the offense broken up and the defense broken up and we say here's our list of ideas for runs and passes that we're going to start with. That starts occurring during the second quarter with John DeFilippo up in the press box, who's working with one of our assistants, Nick Holz, with some ideas that I had, and what they might see upstairs, to create a second half list. A lot of it's done before we actually start halftime."
