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Executive Vice President/Head Coach Mike Shanahan
On guard Chris Chester’s injury:
“He’s got a mild ankle sprain. I believe it’s the left ankle. You never know with ankles. Hopefully, it’ll be all right here in the next day or two.”;
On his concern about the health of Chris Chester:
“You’re just hoping that it’s mild and it’s not too serious.”;
On if Chris Chester’s injury requires an MRI:
“No, I don’t think so.”;
On wide receiver Anthony Armstrong wearing a yellow jersey with a question mark as his number:
“I told him to put a yellow jersey on because he’s got an AC second-degree separation. Anytime you want to go practice and get some drill work, yet if somebody hits it or bumps into it, even your own player or a coach, and that just reminds people that he’s off limits and kind of stay away from him.”;
On if he has ever seen a player wear a question mark on his jersey:
“I haven’t seen the question mark before. I’ve got to admit that was something new.”;
On what outcome of the first preseason game would satisfy him:
“Number one, we’re healthy. We have to evaluate a lot of good players…You always try to win football games, but more importantly you’re trying to evaluate everybody so you can come up with the best 53, 61 players. You’re always trying to make progress and get a chance to see everybody play.”;
On what he would like to see from the play of quarterback Robert Griffin III:
“Like I said, you want everybody to play well, and it’s a collective effort. I want everyone to play a perfect game. That’s what you’re shooting for. You know it’s not going to happen, especially in the first preseason [game], but that’s what you’re looking for.”;
On how many snaps he will play the first team offense:
“12-20, somewhere in that area.”;
On if he has already decided which players will not play:
“There are a few guys ruled out, but we’ll talk about that tomorrow. I just want to make sure I talk with [Head Athletic Trainer] Larry [Hess]. The guys that probably didn’t practice today won’t play in the game.”;
On if quarterback Kirk Cousins will play with the second-team offense:
“I’m not going to go through the depth chart now, but no he won’t. He’ll be [with] the third unit.”;
On his advice for a rookie quarterback playing against a Bills defense that gave Washington trouble last season:
“There is a reason for that defense giving us a lot of trouble last year, but they’re a much improved football team. [They] helped themselves through free agency and the draft. Like I said, what you’re looking for is to evaluate some of your players. These players are working extremely hard trying to learn the offense, trying to learn the defense. Now you see them in game situations and see how they react. And so you’re trying to see people that can shine in the situation.”;
On his specific advice for Robert Griffin III:
“Just prepare yourself. Know the plays that are being called and go out there and try to just concentrate play by play. Let the plays happen; don’t try to make it happen.”;
On his message to the team after offensive tackle Trent Williams hit cornerback Josh Wilson:
“I was just talking, but I thought that a shot on one of our defensive players…we could have hurt him. I talked to the one player saying, ‘We get very competitive out there, but you can’t hurt your own players.’ There’s a fine line [between] being competitive and being smart, and I thought that shot one of our players took was not the right type of shot. I talked to them about taking care of each other, being competitive, but at the same time being smart.”;
On the conversation he and Robert Griffin III shared towards the end of practice:
“I was talking about what happened as well as trying to figure out what play it was, honestly. We went through similar situations today when something is wrong – two-minute drill, on the 40 [yard line] on the 50 [yard line], down by two, down by six. Every situation is going to be different. At the end, we had fourth-and-four and we had what we call ‘Geronimo,’ which is where we come off the sideline and kick a field goal. It was a couple people on the defense who couldn’t get that done. But the mindset was a lot of people on fourth-and-four are not sure the amount of distance, and he might spike it and the game is over with and we have to run our field goal team out. So those are scenarios that happened today and we were talking about that at that time.”;
On his familiarity with the quarterbacks in camp:
“You’re with these guys all the time and they are like your sons. You spend time with them and you grow together. It’s been fun.”;
On comparisons between Jay Cutler and Robert Griffin III:
“Everybody wants to compare and I understand that, but I think what you do during camp is try to find what people do best, and you try to adopt your offense to what people can do. It’s a learning experience at first and second year. You get a chance to look through practices and obviously the preseason games to see what he’s most comfortable with and that’s usually the direction to go.”;
On Robert Griffin III’s expectations of himself:
“I don’t expect him to be realistic about it, and I’ve been doing this for a long time. So, I think I’m a little bit more realistic than other people only because you’ve gone through it a number of times with different people. You want them to be able to believe in themselves. You want them to have that arrogance like they are the best at what they do, and the great ones do have that confidence level.”;
On comparisons to John Elway and Steve Young:
“I’ve had people compare them because I've coached these quarterbacks before. I talk about some of his abilities and strengths and hopefully they could live up to those expectations. You do that by performing on the field and it’s very early to talk about that, but we talk about the ability, we talk about the work ethic…A lot of different factors are involved.”;
Quarterback Robert Griffin III
On the team’s anticipation for the first preseason game on Thursday:
“Oh, I think everybody is ready to go against somebody else. That’s the beauty of training camp. You come to get game-ready and stay in shape. But after a while it can get monotonous, so you want to strap it up. Some of those defensive guys want to hit somebody, and we want to go score some points on offense.”
On making his NFL debut Thursday:
“I’m going to be ready to go. I think the team is going to be ready to go. It’s going to be fun. It’s football. That’s what we do. That’s what a lot of these guys on this team have done for a living for a long time. I get a chance to get my first crack at it. I’m not going to make it too big to where I can’t seize it. I’m just going to go out, have fun and do what [Head] Coach [Mike Shanahan] asks me to do.”;
On being nervous leading up to the game:
“I think I’ll be more anxious than nervous. When you’re anxious, you can’t wait to go succeed. I look forward to going out [and] being successful as an NFL quarterback for this franchise. So in that sense, yeah, I’m anxious to go out and get it started.”;
On injuries along the offensive line:
“As a quarterback, you’re going to have to play with guys that are down. Injuries happen. I barely know a lot of these guys on this team, but all the offensive linemen that have gone down… I try to make sure that I’m right there with them. I was injured once before. I know how it can be. These guys are fighting for their lives, not just to stay in college. This is a living for them. They’re fighting to take care of their families. So I know when they get hurt, it means a whole lot more.”;
On gaining familiarity with the offensive linemen:
“We all feel really comfortable with each other. That’s why we drafted offensive linemen in this draft. That’s why we stocked up on them, because injuries occur. But hopefully, those guys can all come back, be healthy and be ready to go for the start of the season.”;
On how his timing will be affected by playing in a live game:
“It’s just about knowing where you need to go with the ball. A lot of times in practice, you can’t really tell, because Coach is making the defenders stop pass rushing. They’re not going to hit you in practice, because you want to get those reps that throwing the ball and things of that nature. I’ll see whether things open up a lot more with the pass rush or whether things get clogged up a lot more. It’ll be interesting to see what happens. By no means am I looking to run a lot in the preseason or in this preseason game. Hopefully, I can go out, we can protect, we can throw the ball around and be successful.”
On if he holds the ball longer in practice to get more repetitions going through reads:
“Yeah, guys are sitting in your lap in practice, because they stop. The offensive linemen know they’re going to stop. The defensive linemen know they’re going to stop. It’s just precautionary to make sure that you don’t hurt your quarterbacks, not just myself, but Rex [Grossman] and the other guys as well. You want to make sure you get through everything, but once it becomes live contact, guys are going to hit you. We’ll see what happens.”;
On how many snaps he wants to play Thursday:
“If we could get one good drive put together – go put some points up or just a really good long drive – I think that’d be good enough for me, anywhere from six to 12 plays. But I think we do plan to go a little longer than that. I’m not sure. For me, it’s whatever Coach wants to do. Hopefully, we can go out, be successful and get off the field.”;
On if the coaches have shown him film of last season’s game against Buffalo:
“No, they haven’t shown me that tape, but they do have a really good, really stout defensive line [and] good linebackers. When it comes to defense, they definitely know what they’re doing. Not that they don’t know what they’re doing on offense. Don’t print that one. It’ll be a good test for us. However long it is, however long those guys are in the game, we’ll definitely be ready to go.”;
On if he is getting the ball out as quickly as he wants to in practice:
“I think sometimes in practice I try to err on the side of not throwing the ball into coverage a little bit too much sometimes in practice just because our defenders know exactly what’s coming at them every single day. They’ve known this offense for a long time. I think in the games things will open up a lot more, and I’ll be able to get it out of my hands. It just comes with time. You have to learn when to run, when not to run, when to get the ball out of your hands and when to throw the ball in the dirt.”;
On coaches putting the offense in difficult down-and-distances in practice:
“I think it just helps me learn what Coach is going to call in those situations, first of all, so I can kind of get my mind set on what I need to be ready to do as far as play calling goes. Second-and-15 is not a great down for any offense. It’s a great down for defense. A lot times we’re out here in practice in second-and-15 or third-and-15. We might get one first down out of four tries. In this league, according to them, that’s a good ratio, but we want to get it four out of four times in practice. I think we’re working towards getting it to there. Some practices are going to be geared towards allowing the defense to be successful. It’s just our job as an offense to make sure we can still go out and compete.”;
On difficulty of practice:
“I don’t think it’s been more difficult than I’ve thought. I’ve heard many quarterbacks have been really bad in practice and great in games. I don’t want to be one of those, but I definitely feel like there are practices when you practice really well and there’s practices where it’s not the best day you’ve ever had. That’s just being a player. You’ve just got to make sure you come back the next practice and rebound from that.”;
On quizzes given to quarterbacks Robert Griffin III and Kirk Cousins:
“It’s just to help us learn the offense. They can be long. Some of them were really long. It’s just to help us know where we are supposed to go with the ball, what the receivers have on every single play and I think it really helped. We don’t do them as much now but in rookie minicamp and OTA’s, we were doing them a lot. I think it really helped us.”;
On best advice he’s received from a veteran quarterback on the first preseason game:
“I haven’t really gotten any advice about that yet. It is the preseason and you can say it marks the beginning of your NFL career. I think that advice will come when we play New Orleans.”;
On his comfort level with the playbook and defenses:
“It’s really good. Our defense has been doing a great job of mixing up looks, giving us a whole lot of different coverages and really blanketing a couple of our receivers. I think our receivers are doing a great job of being really competitive and fighting for the ball in a lot of situations, even when the defense knows what is coming.”;
On how he feels about his decision making:
“I feel fine about it going into the game. I know where I need to go with the ball, what I need to do in given situations. It’s just about playing. You have to go out and play the game.”;
On if he is looking forward to the physicality of the game:
“No, not really. To be honest, if I don’t get hit in the preseason, I would be very ok with that. Its football, you play it and hits are going to hurt. Sometimes guys are going to unload on you. You just have to be ready for that. I am not going to go in the game “saying I hope Marcell Dareus hits me as hard as he possibly can.” That’s not going to come out of my mouth. I look forward to going out there and playing. If I get hit, I get hit. If I don’t, thank God.”;
On the throws he feels most comfortable with:
“There are always those routes as a quarterback that you have. A lot of times you can’t get to those routes every single time because then everybody is going to know what’s coming. There are routes that I feel good with and there’s routes I don’t feel good about. It’s just my job to echo that to coach and to continue working on the ones I don’t feel so good about, so that when it comes down to it we can pull anything out of our bag of tricks and go for it.”
On the attention he receives as a Redskin compared to the attention he received at Baylor:
“I mean we didn’t have fans at practice every day. It’s great. This is Baylor times a trillion as far as the fans go. Baylor was great and there’s the same kind of excitement, but it’s a bigger city. You know, D.C., all the fans here, the Redskins are really motivated for their NFL team. It’s good to see.”;
On how he is holding up physically:
“Physically I feel fine.”;
On his passing mechanics:
“Footwork wise, I’ve said it before, you can always get better. You can always get better at footwork and all those things and I think the film shows that I’ve been getting a lot better, whether it’s with three-step, five-step, seven-step drops, footwork in the running game, all those types of things, continually getting better. And that’s what you look for as a football player to make sure you’re still making progress.”;
On if he promised the offensive line beignets:
“Not yet, but if that’s going to motivate them to keep me off the ground and keep us on the field and getting first downs, then I might as well.”;
On the writing on his cleats:
“Yeah, I wrote ‘HTTR’ on them, Hail to the Redskins, on my cleats last week and really for the past couple weeks just because I want people to know it’s not just about me. It’s about the Redskins. It’s about everything that we embody, what we’re trying to go for. I have ‘Seize the moment’ and ‘Seize the day’ on this pair of cleats just because you want to make sure you come out every day and get better. Make sure no matter what happens, whether you have a bad practice or a good practice, that you learn from it and you continue to go out and be better. I think a lot of us made the most of this day today and we feel good about that.”;
On if he wishes the first preseason game was at home:
“It would be ideal if every game was at home, but it’s not going to be that way so we have to go on the road and play football.”;
On if it is better to get the first road game out of the way:
“I mean I have no idea. I don’t try to put too much into those types of things. We’re going to get ready for the Buffalo Bills whether it’s a home or away game and I’ll be ready.”;
On what would satisfy Redskins fans on Thursday:
“A couple good drives, all touchdowns, 70-yard touchdown throws to [wide receivers] Pierre [Garçon] and Josh [Morgan], all that. These fans are going to be excited so I think if we go out and put together a good drive, get the ball to Pierre, [tight end Chris] Cooley, [wide receiver] Santana [Moss], all those guys get a touch, I think the fans will be satisfied. And, of course, win the game.”;
On why he hasn’t been throwing down the field often during training camp:
“I think it’s because the defense has been taking it away from us. They’ve been constantly putting coverage over the top. You have to take what the defense is giving you and we’re not going to game plan our own defense. If we game planned our own defense we probably could take more shots down the field, but Coach [Mike Shanahan] decided not to do that. Maybe I’ll convince him one day to do it, but right now we’ll just continue to work on the things we need to work on.”
On if his family will attend the game in Buffalo:
“I think so. I don’t know if my dad is going to come. My mom will be there, my fiancée, my sister, and my uncle and a couple aunts.”;
On if his first preseason game will have more pressure than his first college game:
“You guys are putting more pressure on the game than I am. It’s going to be fun. First pregame, even if it is a preseason game, but [it is] your first pregame, your first travel with the team, so it’ll be an eye opening experience and I look forward to it.”;
On making ‘rookie mistakes’:
“[I] just don’t look at myself as a rookie and don’t make it acceptable. A lot of times you can make a mistake as a rookie and everyone is going to say ‘Hey, it’s a rookie mistake. Rookies are going to do that.’ The way I look at it, you have to not take that and say ‘All right, they’ll give me a pass because I’m a rookie.’ Sometimes you have to be hard on yourself make sure you don’t do those types of things. I know everybody out here on this team wants to be successful right now. Is that going to happen? That’s up to us, so I don’t want to be the one to go out there and make rookie mistakes, quote unquote, and say ‘All right, it’s was fine, I was just a rookie.’”;
On his rookie skit:
“It was fun. It was good. I can’t boast and brag about it. You have to ask some of those guys. It was pretty funny.”;
On if he performed The Temptations:
“Yeah, we did do The Temptations. I had a couple other guys join me on stage and we had a lot of fun with it.”;
On if his skit was better than [quarterback] Kirk Cousins’ skit:
“No, probably not. By far, that was hilarious. It takes a lot of guts to do what he did and it was funny. I was rolling.”;
On how he feels about being compared to other quarterbacks by Mike Shanahan:
“I’m fine with it if that’s what he thinks. I don’t ever shy away from expectations or people trying to put pressure on me to be great. I’m going to try to go out and be the best I can be. So whether that’s John Elway, Steve Young, or Robert Griffin III, I’ll make sure I do that.”;
On if he wishes he could be in the Olympics:
“No, not at all…Congrats to Sanya Richards and Usain Bolt, winning the 100 and the 400 [meters]. It’s pretty exciting to watch those races. I think the 400 hurdles is tonight, so I’ll be watching.”;
On how many people he knows competing in the London Olympics:
“I know a bunch of them. I trained with Sanya [Richards] at Baylor, because she trains at Baylor with Coach [Clyde] Hart. I’ve run against a bunch of those guys. In the track world, we’re all family and I’m really proud of everything that they’re doing.”;
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