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Q: Are you aware at all of your post-bye week numbers and how good they are?**A: I'm not. No idea.
Q: You have 300 yards per game, 10 touchdowns, one pick and the last four games have been wins. Is there any routine you follow? The other day, you said you brought a laptop back.A: No. I think you just try and get rest and come back fresh. Obviously, I think having a week off just to get your mind off of football a little bit, then you come back and you're just excited, re-energized, have a great week of preparation. I thought we had a good practice today, guys were running around, guys are enthused. Hopefully, we'll come out there and play great football.
Q: You said you had no idea how good those numbers were? Does that surprise you at all?A: No. I haven't thought about it. It's not a stat that I look at most often.
Q: The yardages that the Packers are giving up through the air are rather pedestrian, but they're still giving up a lot, but they still get a lot of picks. Do they gamble by going for interceptions? Is that their game?A: I think they're aggressive in their approach. Some of their defenses that they play give guys the ability to be aggressive, to read things, jump some routes and they do a good job of getting interceptions. It also gives them opportunities to get some throws down the field. If you can protect, have time to let routes develop, there are some possibilities to get the ball down the field. They're also good at getting to the quarterback and they get a lot of sacks. That pressure can cause the quarterback to throw the ball before he wants to and with the aggressive play of the secondary, they get some turnovers.
Q: What about the confidence level of this team? Especially going against a Green Bay team that you guys have obviously had some success against in the past.A: I think we're a confident team. We know what our challenge is and what type of team we're going against. We know we have to play very good football and that's what we expect. We expect for us to go out and play solid, play smart football, make plays and that's what it's going to take to win. We know it's a tough challenge ahead of us, but we know what it's going to take and hopefully we can go do it.
Q: You feel like this is a big-game team? You guys seem to rise up on occasions with opponents like this.A: I hope that when games become big, every game is important, obviously. Towards the end of the year, you get in these types of games and you're searching. This is an important one and playing against good teams, we hopefully can rise to that occasion. I think we've done that pretty well in the past. So, we just have to make sure that our preparation, our focus are perfect and go out there and just play the style of football that we know we can.
Q: How different is the Packers' defense from the last time you faced them? They overhauled a lot in the off-season.A: They have a few new faces, some new guys. A lot of it is the same. The same (defensive) coordinator and a lot of their key players are the same. So, it's a pretty similar scheme in that aspect. Last year, it was kind of the same deal. They give up some big plays, they give up yardage in the passing game, but they also make a lot of plays. They get a lot of interceptions, get a lot of turnovers. You just have to be patient and understand that they're going to have some good plays. They might have a great coverage and you're not going to have anybody open, that's fine. Take a sack, throw the ball away. You can't afford to give them turnovers.
Q: How important is Matthews to what they do? We don't know what his status is going to be, but clearly with nine of the team's 33 sacks, he's a big deal.A: Yeah, no doubt. He's a tremendous player and he just seems to make plays. Whether he's getting to the quarterback, he's athletic enough to do a lot of blitzes, they drop him into coverage and still rush a number of people. He's a good player and we'll have to see what his status will be.
Q: Without him, do they change much? They didn't have him against Detroit, were they a lot different?A: No, they didn't seem to be much different. I think they still did a lot of the same things, they still had good players that came in that could still get to the quarterback.
Q: Tom said they would study some red zone stuff over the bye and some of the teams that are good in the red zone. Green Bay is one of the teams that is good in the red zone. As you guys are looking through ways to improve in the red zone, did you guys take note of some of the things they're doing?A: You're going to have to ask the coaches about that. We already installed our red zone package for this week. We'll have to see later in the week.
Q: Did they present any concepts to you guys?A: No. Nothing yet.
Q: What about the last six games of the season? With the Ravens, the Falcons, that's a tough stretch for you guys.A: All we can worry about is Green Bay right now. This is the game that's most important and we just have to treat it one game at a time. We know these last six games are important. They're going to dictate what our future is and whether our season ends up in the playoffs or not. You can't start looking to a game down the road when we have a big one right in front of us.
Q: How has Hakeem looked? He said that he felt as good as he did last season. How did he look today?A: He's looking good and playing well. That's good news for us.
Q: Is that burst starting to come back?A: He's looking solid.
