Archives for July 29, 2013

‘I’m going to make a bold prediction after only one day of practice. This defense will be a lot better than last year’s unit. Last year’s defense was very passive. Expect this year’s unit to be very aggressive. The unit registered a couple of takeaways and got good pressure on the quarterbacks. I have a lot of faith in defensive coordinator Mike Pettine. I think he will be able to turn the defense around.’

‘”Our philosophy is, once it turns to football season, myself and our personnel staff, we’re support staff. We are supporting Coach in whatever he needs. Any type of tools that we can give him to go out and win games — that’s what we try to service him with.”‘

‘”We’re working EJ in,” said coach Doug Marrone. “We’ll get the reps to 50-50. … I don’t mean to be cliche about it, but there were some good things in it. Again, this is our first time throwing to receivers in a long period of time. We have to work on our timing. We had a lot of work pre-practice before we got into the team work. But again, we’re going to have to do a better job, receiving, throwing, protecting, and just work to get better.”‘

‘Faced with that sort of unbending optimism, how could anyone suggest a losing record? It’s late July, and anything is possible. In the great, democratic NFL monolith, everyone has a chance at glory when the teams arrive in camp.’

‘”It’s not a disappointment from a standpoint of, ‘Gosh, I wish the player was out here for the rest of the team.’ It’s more of a disappointment for the individual,” Marrone said. “Mario’s put in a lot of hard work, went in the playbook and did a lot of work this offseason.”‘

‘Veteran Kevin Kolb got most of the first-team work and took 36 snaps to 28 for rookie EJ Manuel during 11-on-11 work.’

‘”I could probably just pull out a tape recorder from the last three years and hit play; it’s nothing new,” Kolb said, the inference being that he has always had to battle for everything, just like this season when he has to compete against first-round rookie EJ Manuel. “But it’s obviously a new offense and a new place. Whatever happens, of course, I’m here for the team and I’ll do whatever it takes.”‘

‘There wasn’t an empty seat in the Growney Stadium grandstand, fans stood across the top row of the Polisseni Track & Field grandstand and a fanatical group of jersey-wearing, Shout-singing, name-chanting diehards hugged the fence to watch the 130-minute practice on Sunday night.’

‘It was a pretty typical practice, but fans were treated to a few exciting plays during the 1-on-1 and 11-on-11 drills.’

”’What I look at is it’s really which players can we put on the field to win now,” Marrone said, after being asked if the Manuel has the edge because he’s regarded as the team’s future. ”A lot of people talk about the future. And really the future for us as coaches and as a team is now.”’

”’Mario reported to our athletic training staff that he had a sore foot,” Marrone said, following the two-plus hour session at the team’s training camp facility in suburban Rochester. ”So what we wanted to do was hold him out of practice and let our medical staff evaluate him.”’

‘Hills is a tackle, who was selected by Pittsburgh in the fourth round of the 2008 draft. He’s appeared in 11 games during a career split between the Steelers, Denver and Indianapolis.’

‘Per team policy, terms of the deals were not released.’

‘As far as when a decision must be made by Doug Marrone said, “You like to sit there as a coach and say you’d like that decision to come out in front of you, but again, really if you could get 10 to 12 days prior to that first game, that’s when you’re going to get pressed for time and have to make a decision on a quarterback because that’s when you’re going to start preparing, 10 days out for that first game.”‘

‘You have to wonder how much disappointment there was that Williams couldn’t be out there for day one. Marrone said, “It’s not a disappointment from the standpoint of ‘Gosh, I wish the player was out here with the rest of the team’. It’s more of a disappointment for the individual. Mario’s put in a lot of hard work and he’s really been in the playbook, done a lot of work this offseason, so I always have a disappointment for the player because I think we tend to forget how much work they put in and you have a player that definitely wants to be out here.”‘