Part 2
Q: What are you going to do with the CB spot opposite Patrick Surtain?
EDWARDS: “There’s a rotation, obviously, and if you play right corner it doesn’t mean you can’t play left. We are just going to evaluate them day-to-day and you can’t worry about it now. There’s a lot of things that can happen between now and opening day.”
Q: How many guys are going to rotate through that spot with the #1 unit?
EDWARDS: “We can rotate them after a while and as we start to compete more in OTA’s that will probably happen. We’ll move some guys over there and see what happens.”
Q: What about rookie CB Marcus Maxey, will he be part of that mix?
EDWARDS: “Yeah, but right now he’s injured. That’s the shame of it because he’s missing time, but he’s been in the classroom learning it mentally. But he’s got to get back on the field.”
Q: Do you feel like you want Ty Law or need Ty Law?
EDWARDS: “I think at the end of the day, anytime you can get good players on your team that helps you. As a coach, you always want good players. But at the end of the day it has to be a good match between both parties, that being us and Ty Law. Right now that’s the least of my worries. I’m going to coach the guys who are here. I haven’t talked to Ty. I’m coaching the team that’s here and we’ve got some young corners here that I think can play.”
Q: Are the Chiefs interested in obtaining Michael Bennett from New Orleans?
EDWARDS: “I wasn’t involved in the conversation about Bennett. At this time of year there are a lot of people who call about players. We call about players. That’s what you do during the off-season. At this point he’s not here, we haven’t brought him in here, and we haven’t talked about him collectively as a group with the powers that be. There becomes a little bit of a rumor. All of a sudden you call some somebody or they call you and all of a sudden people get excited. We don’t need to get excited until one of these guys shows up on campus. The Chiefs players are the Chiefs players who are here right now and those are the guys that I am going to coach.”
Q: Is there a Priest Holmes update?
EDWARDS: “Right now if he had to play, he couldn’t play. He hasn’t passed the physical or whatever it may be.”
Q: What do you think about Saints RB Bennett as a player?
EDWARDS: “I think he’s a good player, but we’ve got good players here. I think sometimes we lose sight of the players that we have here. I’m going to coach the players that we have here and that are my obligation. Let’s get the players here to play up to their potential and play at a consistent level where we can be a playoff team.”
Q: When you took over you said you thought Priest Holmes would be back, can you still say that today?
EDWARDS: “I still feel that way. I could be wrong, but until he tells me anything different I’m planning on him being in there playing.”
Q: What do you think of your safety position right now?
EDWARDS: “We’ve got two veteran guys and another guy in (William) Bartee who has played a lot of football and I think that’s a good thing. I think we’ve got some young guys who have got some potential and I think a lot of people lost sight of that. I think everyone was concerned about the corner position, but I was more concerned about the safety position when I got here. When I looked at who was back there and we didn’t have a lot of depth at that position. Safety is a position where they’re in the box doing a lot of tackling and a lot of hitting. You lose one or two of those guys and then you’re asking a corner to go back and play safety and that’s never a good situation. I think we’ve upgraded ourselves there with some depth, with some young guys that have some ability and we’ve created competition which I think is important.”
Q: Would you say that the starting safeties from 2005 are entering as starters in 2006?
EDWARDS: “They’re starters until somebody beats them out. Those two guys, believe me, they’re not giving up that role. And that’s good, I don’t want them to. If someone is going to be a starter, then they have to earn it, it’s not something that’s going to be given to you. I think the guys that we have are two good safeties and with the guys who are backing them up, we’ve got great competition back there.”
Q: How about the offense centered around LJ this year?
EDWARDS: “The offense is the offense. The offense is centered around how you move the ball. As Hank Stram said a long time ago, ‘we need to matriculate the ball down the field.’ And how you do that is how you do it. Every week is different. Sometimes it’s running the ball more than you throw. Sometimes it’s passing more than you run and hopefully we run it more than we throw. If we can do that we’re controlling the clock, which is controlling the game and you’re not getting the QB killed.”
Q: What about Nick Reid from University of Kansas?
EDWARDS: “He’s getting better. I think he’s a full speed guy, which is good on defense because you’ve got to be able to play full speed. He’s a pretty knowledgeable guy, very smart, very coachable. He’s got the traits and he’s a tough guy. All those things help him. Now there are a lot of good linebackers here and he’s going to get and opportunity and that’s all you can ask for.”
|