FLOWERY BRANCH — Indianapolis quarterback Matt Hasselbeck spoke with the Atlanta media via conference call on Wednesday.
Here’s what Hasselbeck had to say:
Q: What do you see from Atlanta’s defense?
A: Atlanta is a good team. It's a young defense. They are very talented at spots. They are playing some coverages that you would recognize from Dan Quinn. You look at the guys on his staff and you see why these guys fly around the way they pursue the ball, the effort that they give. I think really it's an under-rated secondary. They've got some young guys. They are not household names yet, but they are talented. They use a lot of different people. …To me, their defense is a top 10 defense and they are playing really well.
Q: Will your experience help you in this game?
A: The coverages and blitzes you study them during the week. You prepare. There are rules within an offense. I don't know if it's that big of a deal. Hopefully, the experience, you can rely on it. I've got a tremendous about of respect for DQ as a coach. He was there with two different head coaches with me in Seattle. He's a guy who all of the guys respected, whether if he was your position coach or even if you were on the other side of the ball. He was just a really, really good football coach with a great reputation. I was looking at the staff this morning. Just looking at the staff, it's a good group. It's a talented team. Tons of respect on my end. They don't do a whole lot of tricky stuff necessarily, but what they do, they do it really, really well. It's kind of what I believe in offensively also. You kind of worry more about yourself and a little less about the opponent. That's a great recipe to become a great offense or a great defense. You can see it starting to go there in Atlanta.
Q: Do you see any parallels between the Colts and the Falcons’ seasons with both teams trying to get back on track?
A: As players, I don't think you look at it in a big picture like that. To me, every week is a new week and you're just trying to go 1-0 that week. We don't sit back and say, oh we won two in a row or we lost two in a row. That just doesn't' come into how we think. It's a new week and that's why you'll see upsets every week around the league. I don't know what they preach there, but what we preach here is that our next opponent doesn't care what we did last week. They don't care if we won, lost or if we were on a bye. They don't care. They are preparing for us and we've got 60 minutes to try to win a football game.
Q: How are you adjusting to new offensive coordinator Rob Chudzinski?
A: That has been a big adjustment. Pep (Hamilton) is a good football coach. He was the leader of this offense. It is very different without him. Chud, very obviously is a very good coach, and has a ton of experience and a ton of success as player caller and as a coordinator. We just had to pull it together on a short week last time. This week we had the bye week to get some more stuff hashed out, just figure out the details on how we are going to do things. That is an adjustment and it's a work in progress. I've been a part of teams where they've made a coordinator change during the season. It's hard on everybody, not only because the personal relationships that you build.
Q: How do you try to use wide receiver T.Y. Hilton and Donte Moncrief?
A: I don't get too caught up with that. We have a bunch of receivers and tight ends. We have backs. I'm more of a guy who reacts to what a defense does and the ball goes where it goes. I'm not necessarily trying to feed one player. If we have eight different guys that have catches at the end of the day, that's totally fine with me. I'm not at all concerned about what feeding Donte. Or feeding Dwayne (Allen) or feeding T.Y. However, it comes up, it comes up.
Q: How’s the run game? How’s Frank Gore been playing for the Colts?
A: Frank Gore is great, great guy and great player. I played against him for so many years when I was in Seattle. I just have tremendous respect for the kind of runner that he is, being the tough, hard-nosed football player that he is. …he's great at blitz pickup. He's exceptional at blitz pickup, probably the best that I've ever seen.
Q: Did Matt Ryan break some of your records at Boston College?
A: By his sophomore year, he broke them all. He's a great player. I can't say enough good things about Matt and his wife Sarah. They are legends. It's Doug Flutie and Matt Ryan and then there's a huge drop off after that.
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