Videos, excerpts from our three coordinators' weekly Thursday news conferences.
SPECIAL TEAMS COORDINATOR BEN KOTWICA
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Kotwica on any regrets using the three-flyers formation at Carolina that led to the fourth-quarter punt block...**
Hindsight's 20-20. Obviously, anytime you have a critical mistake like that, you regret that action. We were being aggressive. We wanted to get a guy out in coverage. We had done it earlier in the game successfully. It's a look that we had ended up practicing and felt confident in our guys. Give them credit, they executed and we didn't. I have a lot of confidence in the guys in that room and we made the correction and we're looking forward to moving forward.
OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR MARTY MORNHINWEG
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Mornhinweg on QB Geno Smith's rate of development...**
Everybody progresses at a different rate at really all positions, but particular the quarterback. We've talked about this before. There's a select few who come in seamlessly and are on, typically, fantastic football teams, these types of things. And there are others that, man alive, it might take a year or two. Shoot, there have been some really good quarterbacks where it's taken longer than that. One of the good ways to do it is as the quarterback progresses and gets better, the team gets better and better and you've got something special. So that's sort of my vision on that type of thing.
DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR DENNIS THURMAN
Thurman on if it's a blow to his pride that his defense is ranked 12th overall in the NFL with two games to go...
No, wins and losses are what really matter. Do you look at those things at the end of the year? Yeah, you look up and you see where you are. But I just subscribe to the belief that wins and losses will always trump where you rank offensively or defensively. It is a source of inspiration and you do want to finish high if at all possible. But more importantly, you'd like to see your players continue to develop, the unit continue to develop, and moving forward, if you're getting better, those things take care of themselves.
