Rob Ryan Talks About Disputed First Down Against Steelers and Swine Flu

(On if he is sure he doesn’t have the flu)- “I don’t know. I’ve already had it. I had it for two days. I don’t know whether it’s swine flu or whatever those flu’s are. I call it the cry baby flu. It was sick. My whole family is sick. Wife left town and everybody got sick, so I don’t know what happened. I blame her.”

(On the fourth-and-one measurement at Pittsburgh)- “Like I said, I had the flu and I don’t remember it. I’ll just stick with that. I guess my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be.”

(On if the NFL explained the measurement to the team)- “Not to me. All we do, as assistant coaches, is you turn in plays that you think should be looked at. That’s pretty much my part of it. You hear back from Eric (Mangini) on how they ruled on some things and that’s about it.”

(On the kind of week he had)- “My wife left, kids are sick, hopefully she’s coming back. It’s been a tough week. You start questioning, maybe I should go to church more often, start living better. We’ve had a rough year so far. It just has to get better. We just have to keep working through it. My father always said, ‘Tough times don’t always last, tough people do.’ Right now, things haven’t been going great and it’s unfortunate. We had a lot of guys miss practice this week. Green Bay has one of the better offenses in football. (Mike) McCarthy’s a tough guy and he could care less. He’s probably chomping at the bit. That’s just the way it goes, I guess.”

(On if he thinks Eric Wright will play Sunday)- “I hope so. We’ll have to wait and see on that situation. Obviously we hope he’s out there.”

(On how hard it is to put a game plan together without knowing what players will be available)- “That’s a great question. We put together a plan that gives us a good chance to slow down the Green Bay offense. Last week, we struggled on giving up big plays and that’s not a characteristic of our defense and what we want to be. I thought we’d do much better, but they made some big plays. When you look at the body of work, we ought to be a much better defense than statistically we are. It’s disappointing. We have to play better. We have to play the game the way we’re trying to see it and play it. Right now, with a lot of guys not being out there at practice, you want to paint a picture of the opponent and right now I’m not sure if they have that picture or not. Our coaches are meeting with those guys right now, individually, and hopefully we’ll all be on the same page come Sunday. We need to be.”

(On Brandon McDonald’s comfort level playing man or zone coverage)- “Brandon’s a competitive guy, so I’m sure he’s comfortable playing both. I think he’s given up a few plays, but I think a lot of people have in this league, but he’s made a few good plays. He had a sack last week, a couple of nice tackles, forced fumbles. We’re continuing to play hard. We’re not playing as sound of defense as we should be and what you guys will expect from us, but guys are playing hard. You don’t have three turnovers in the fourth quarter without playing hard. We’re doing that. It’s just not as good as it should be.”

(On Aaron Rodgers compared to Ben Roethlisberger)- “They’re similar because they make big plays. They make big plays on the run when they buy more time to throw the ball down the field. You have to check the number twice to see if it’s 86 or 80 in the slot, because both of them play physical and both are excellent players, Donald Driver and Hines Ward. There are a lot of similarities. Obviously, we don’t want it to be a big play show like it was last week.”

(On if the way to cut down on passes over the middle is to have more of a pass rush)- “Les (Levine), you’re always trying to get some heat on the quarterback. Now, with Roethlisberger and with Rodgers, a lot of times, those guys, you can get to them some and sack them and then they’ll make a huge play on you when they can get away, break a tackle, make a play. It hurts you in coverage, especially if you’re going [with] some zone pressures, where all of a sudden a guy bides some more time than you’re used to and now he makes more plays down the field. If we could just sack him every time, shoot, I’m with you, let’s go sack him every time. Sometimes the player makes a great play and when that happens you are vulnerable. You can obviously look right at that game and see some vulnerability that we gave up in the back end.”

(On how he will replace D’Qwell Jackson)- “I think D’Qwell is a great person and a great player. It hurts to see a young man work so hard and do the things he did, commit himself to this team and organization. To go out with an injury, it’s devastating for him. Watching a young man progress and the things he was doing it hurts for him, because you want to see him do well and that’s why you’re in this business. The bottom line is, it’s hard to replace a great character person and a great player. The next man has to step up and that’s Kaluks (Kaluka Maiava). I think he’s done an admirable job. He’s working hard and he’s trying to do the things that he can do to be a great player himself.”

(On if Roethlisberger picked on Maiava when he got in the game)- “He looked like he was just picking on me, so I was taking it personal. He was just attacking us. It wasn’t versus Kaluks, it was really against all of us.”

(On what he can do to fix the coverage)- “There are some things that we could have done better scheme-wise, obviously. That the guy makes big plays like that, it’s not acceptable. Blame me. The players, they’re playing as hard as they can on what we call and things like that and it wasn’t successful enough. You have to look to the guy that’s calling the defense, and that’s me.”

(On what he can do to prevent the coverage from breaking down against Green Bay)- “You keep working hard and you keep practicing broken plays and things like that, where they may not appear as a broken play where a guy fumbles a ball in the backfield and picks it up and runs. To me, they extend plays, they’re extended plays. Those are hard to simulate, I mean they really are, because all of a sudden you think you have them, now the guy’s outside of the pocket. Now he has more time to throw. He has 10 more seconds. Those things, they’re hard to practice. Hopefully we’ll have an excellent plan for that, because Aaron Rodgers is very similar to Roethlisberger, like you brought up.”

(On if Rodgers’ style of play is like Brett Favre’s)- “To me, there’s one Brett Favre. That’s hard to say. I think Brett Favre, his style is by itself. He could be looking over here and throw the ball here. I don’t see Rodgers doing that. I think what he is, is a developing quarterback that, to me, has grown up quite a bit in the year that he’s started. He sees the field good. They’re struggling with their pass protection, so he takes a good long look to find out where he wants to go with the football and sometimes he gets in trouble doing that also. He’s not always making big plays, sometimes he gets in trouble. He’s a quarterback that has a lot of weapons around him. He has a ton of weapons around him and he’s doing a good job. If you allow him to throw on time, the game’s going to be over quick.”

(On what he sees out of Derek Anderson)- “The only observation that I get is, the guy is a leader. The guy is a great leader. You can see the way he runs the team and things. Again, on Sundays, I don’t really see him much, because were over there trying to get our situations fixed. During the week of practice, you really admire a guy that can lead a team. That’s what I admire about Eric Barton on defense and I see the similar type of thing with Anderson on offense. I think the guys respect him. He’s always in the office with (Brian) Daboll and those things. Sometimes he’s bringing Whopper’s with jalapenos to the rest of the coaches that are still there at night, so I appreciate a guy like that. He’s always around and it’s hard not to pull for a guy like him.”

(On if Mike Adams would start if Wright can’t on Sunday)- “I tell you what, we have several candidates in there that we’ve been working. This just came up today so we’ll go back, we’ll discuss it as a staff and see. Mike Adams definitely has been working at corner and we’re not scared to play him. He’s done a fine job. We have some other guys that we’ve also worked. Hank Poteat’s a veteran and Coye Francies is a corner that we like. There are other options for us, but Mike’s definitely a guy that we’d have no problem putting out there if need be.”

(On being 1-5)- “I think, first thing is you have a lot of pride. We have a lot of pride in the defensive room, and as coaches. Right now, 1-5, no one’s happy about that. We’re all disappointed. I’d like to think we’d be in much better shape than we are. I thought we’d be in a lot better shape, I know that. It’s disappointing when you don’t make the plays. I thought we were ready to make a great game, and I told you guys that last week because I believe it. It’s disappointing. Now, it’s a similar team this week and hopefully we’ll have learned from last week and play better on defense. That’s really what you look for. I’ve been coaching a long time and I’ve been around some great teams and I’ve also been around some teams that weren’t so great. I know we always try to play great on defense. If that’s the case, where we’re not going to do well, then by God, we should play some dang good defense. That’s what we need to do, give us a chance to win and help out. Right now, 1-5 is just not good enough.”

(On a wrestler taking a shot at Eric Mangini)- “I’d talk crap back to him. Who’s the wrestler? Oh he’s tough? Forget it then, I’m not. He’s on his own then.”

(On if he would get in a ring with the wrestler)- “Not if he’s tough. If he’s one of those fake guys I will.”

(On if it is fair for the media to take shots at Mangini)- “I don’t know where everybody takes runs at people. The worst thing you can do is read up on the internet. I do that sometimes and, God, I get pissed off. No one’s happy about anything right now. If they have runs at us, I can remember being in New England when they said they ought to fire us all. In a couple months, we won the Super Bowl. We were posting them up, believe me, our players saw every one of them. They were comical. They were great. Hopefully one day we’re up here laughing.”

(On the announcers saying the safeties were playing too deep at Pittsburgh)- “I’m sure (Brodney) Pool was too deep when he intercepted that one ball too. There are a lot of things that go into what it looks like. If you don’t know the coverage, it’d probably be pretty hard to say what a guy’s responsibility is. Some responsibilities are to play deep, to prevent a shot, from going up over our head and there are others where you can play tighter coverage. If they caught us in one of those over routes, where our safety was so-called ‘too deep,’ maybe he was supposed to be there. Maybe somebody else was supposed to be underneath that route, which I’m sure happened a couple of times. I don’t know, maybe they’re there to add color commentating to whatever the problems are. Maybe they could solve this flu we have going around here too, that’d be great, because I know one thing, that’s tough.”

(On if he had the flu this week)- “Yes I did. I don’t know what the heck happened. It was the worst. Either I was missing my wife or I got the worst flu I’ve ever had, I swear to God. I’m feeling a lot better now, might not look it, but I feel better. This is no joke. It’s a hard thing. When a professional athlete misses a coupe practices, you know they’re not feeling well. We had a couple miss the game and I could see why. Man, I didn’t feel like doing anything except crying and going to sleep, but Mangini wouldn’t let me do either.”

(On if he came to work while having the flu)- “Oh yes. I mean, we’re 1-5, I want to make sure we get a win this week.”

(On not sleeping much despite Mangini saying to get sleep and wash your hands to prevent the flu)- “Yes, I have to wash my hands more. I don’t know, maybe take a shower once in a while.”

(On if any other coaches had the flu)- “I think I was the only idiot to get it. I don’t know, the other guys have better hygiene I guess.”

(On if measurement calls are supposed to be cut and dry)- “I think the rule is, I believe, the ball has to be past the stick. I believe that to be the case, but maybe it’s not. I don’t know. Apparently they ruled that it was past the sticks.”

(On his expression after the measurement call at Pittsburgh)- “It’s shocking. The ball looks different, I guess, from the side. We have Christmas coming up and I need every penny I have.”