Colts coach Jim Caldwell (10/18/2010)
Are injuries holding the team back?
I don’t think so. I don’t ever believe in making excuses. I think you see week-in and week-out that we have guys step in and play. Pat Angerer did a fine job stepping in and playing for [Gary Brackett]. There’s that old adage, ‘Excuses are tools of incompetence. They are used by monuments of nothingness and those that specialize in them are seldom good at anything else.’ I believe that. We do not go out crying, ‘Woe is me.’ Our job is to win, to get it done, plain and simple.
On the state of the Colts' return game:
Today, where are we? We just keep working. We have some guys that are capable. It’s one of the things we’ve got to get sorted out in the next couple of weeks before we get going again. We weren’t completely pleased with our performance all the way across the board last night, so we’re looking to improve it
On the amount of fumbles from special teams Sunday night against the Redskins:
In any area (you can’t have fumbles). But you’re absolutely right; you just cannot turn the ball over. That’s the most important thing. The first and most important thing to do is catch it, the second is to secure it and the third thing is to get yardage. Obviously, we didn’t do that quite as well as we’d like to have done.
Caldwell cont.
On if the speed of the hurry-up offense affected the success of the Colts run game:
I think that what helped the run game is that our offensive lineman did a tremendous job. I think they took the challenge of really making certain that they wanted to run the ball well against particularly the looks that teams are now giving us nowadays. I think they did a tremendous job. Those guys played hard and well together and certainly gave [Joseph Addai] and [Mike Hart] some opportunities to run, created some creases and I think did a very, very good job. More so than anything else, I think that may have been the case.
On wide receiver Pierre Garcon’s one-handed catch:
Obviously, that was a great catch. Now there certainly have been some tremendous ones and maybe some of the best ones have been in practice, but that one was quite extraordinary to be honest with you. Probably it is fairly close to Marvin’s (Harrison) one-hander that he did in Tennessee, and Marvin has had some great catches. Reggie has had some great ones. He had a one-handed catch on the far sideline against Baltimore probably in 2004 or ’05 that was a heck of a catch. So, there have been some great ones around here and that is certainly added to the list. By the way, there were two other catches that were of note as well. (Aaron) Francisco was a heck of an interception with one hand and then also, with his left hand, Jerraud Powers on the interception, cutting in front of the receiver and making that catch. There were a couple of pretty good catches out there that were really important obviously through the course of the game.
On the missed tackles:
Yes, (there) were far too many and it certainly made things a lot more difficult that way. He was able to ramble for extra yardage on numerous occasions that kept drives alive. (It) certainly helped them establish pretty good field position that had we gotten him stopped in the backfield, where we had him quite a few times, obviously I think we might have been able to get them off the field a little more often. Although, I think overall the defense when you look at two interceptions, three sacks, some key stops and then I think they were 4-of-13 on third downs for 31 percent. So, I think they had a pretty good overall game, but those things made a difference. We just cannot miss that many tackles.