On preparing for Peyton Manning on a short week: "You're never really ready for Peyton Manning so it's a matter of getting on the same page and having enough coverage looks to hopefully slow down his progressions and challenging guys in coverage. That's what we need to do."
On the injuries in the Raiders secondary: "We've used a lot of secondary players this year so the good part is, and Brandian Ross did some good things this week, a lot of them have practiced a lot of different positions. So we'll find out as we go through the week who's up. I think [Director of Media Relations] Zak [Gilbert] addressed some of the injuries, where the status was with the injury report that you guys were handed. The good part is we've had a lot of practice already. So we'll see who can do it. This week's practices are already kind of scripted and they're not as long as a normal week as well."
On if Coach Allen will be involved in game planning this week: "Dennis and I talk frequently all the time anyway. But this is a personal matter for him and a lot of times when you get into the short week, you've done some work ahead of time on this opponent and it's somebody that we've seen before, so we've done some work ahead of time together."
On if he'll talk to Coach Allen during the week: "Right now the plan is, myself, I won't bother him today."
On Coach Allen's involvement in defensive play calling: "When I took the job with Dennis, it was because of who Dennis Allen is. He's special as a person and a coach. He's outstanding. We have discussion throughout the week and on game day about everything that we do."
On if playing call is all Coach Tarver on game day: "We have discussions throughout the game."
On what happened on Trent Richardson's 21-yard catch and run: "Our guys, we made an adjustment, and we didn't make the right adjustment. When he moved up in the pocket, we lost our eyes on Richardson."
On where the adjustment was made: "That adjustment was made on the field based on the call. There was a motion on that play and we adjusted to the motion and then we didn't re-identify coverage after that."
On Omar Gaither: "He did some things communication-wise that were pretty good. He talks and he communicates with the guys. You'd like to have him longer in the system before he gets to have his first start for you. There are some plays that he knows and will make going forward."
On defensive players lacking a sense of urgency: "I would disagree on the defensive side. On defense I thought we played with passion. Doesn't mean we were correct all the time, but the guys were flying around on defense. But with anything, you have to execute the calls as well."
On giving up big plays: "It is a team, coaching staff and player, we just have to work together to understand why and how. We have to take better angles down the field is some of it. Some of it, they've happened in zone, man, and they've happened in every call known to man, so it's a continuing process to have the guys understand where their help is and have guys understand how to take angles and go from there. Sometimes younger players, when they come out of the stack or different things, don't necessarily take the correct angle based on what's going on."
On defensive line pressure: "I thought we hit him well. I thought we did a good job pressuring the quarterback. There were four batted passes that were pretty good; they caught one, the other ones we knocked down. We have to continue to do that, getting our hands up. But we hit him. We hit him. There's obviously some things you can do a little better, but some of our pressures and our stunts were executed very well. It is and will continue to be how the rush and coverage work together. We have to keep getting on that same page and working together on that."
On Ron Bartell's reaction to being taken out of the game: "He reacted as a pro because he's a professional. We appreciate that about Ron. When he came back in, he performed better when he came back in. We really wanted to see Phillip Adams and before his injury, Phillip played pretty well obviously making a pick. So we were excited about that."
On who makes the decision to pull a player: "Group, we discuss those decisions."
On why the defense is struggling: "Knew that question was coming. I said last week, points allowed is a team stat, which is true. Secondly is this, and we did perform better when they got in our red zone yesterday. The most frustrating time I've had personally this year was the last drive. I was frustrated. And it was a mix. It was we took our turns. We took our turns doing things. We performed better when they were close to scoring last week. That's all we can control is one game at a time. When they get in the range where they can score, we have to stop them."
On addressing missed tackles: "We've worked tackling the whole year. We've done that from day one – tackling and takeaways, so those are the two things we talk about. Some of it, like I said, when you get to this point in the year, is knowing where your job is and being in position and not being surprised by things. We hope that we can continue to be in positions where we're not surprised by things because that's part of the tackling."
On if the limited number of allowed padded practices affects ability to teach tackling: "Good question. I like that question because there's a lot of things on tackling that go on. Number one, at all levels, you want to teach players player safety. There's a lot of different ways of teaching tackling that you can do without pads. We've done a lot of those things. We've got to continue doing more of those things and people, coaches, players, NFL, all levels, need to continue to work and research how to do that. We feel we have some pretty good ways to do that and we need to get better at them. That will be, of course, an emphasis in the off-season with, in addition to player acquisition, to find more ways to protect the player by teaching them the correct way to tackle."
On Miles Burris: "Miles is going through the ups and downs that a rookie linebacker does where what he did very well yesterday was when a certain run play or pass play happened, the next time that it happened were his two tackles for losses and the other things that he did well. So he does learn. That's the good thing that's going on with Miles. There's times in space where I think he's thinking too much. We actually talked about it after the game. But overall, we're pleased with where he's gone his rookie year. It's in that middle where your legs get tired where you've played more games than you've ever played. After Thanksgiving, rookies get in that little slump. You tell them it's coming and they go through it. It's their body clock. They haven't played football that long straight through. It happens to a lot of guys in their first year in the NFL. But overall, we're definitely pleased with where Miles has gone."
On preparing for Peyton Manning: "You have to have enough so that he doesn't know where to go with the ball right now. So the middle part of your question kind of answered it – you have to have enough that you can execute your calls and he doesn't know exactly where to go all the time. And then when the play is there, you better make it. In the first game, we had a lot of times where he threw into coverage and we need to make those plays. We need to make those plays. That was the difference in the game; they made more plays than us on those type of coverages. We have enough in our system to hopefully put guys in position to make plays and that ultimately is the job of the coaching staff, put players in position to make plays."
On if he's been through a situation before where the head coach has had to leave: "This is a pretty unique season both on and off the field, I'll say that. There's a bunch of adversity. The true character of a team and a man and a coach, whoever, is to, no matter what the circumstances, be a pro and handle your business. I've been a part of a lot of different situations within this league and in coaching, but there's some unique things that have happened this year."
