Asked about Peyton Manning and how he is different than any other player he has ever been around:
“I compare him to Ray Lewis. Ray Lewis of defense is Peyton Manning of the offense. Ray knows how to turn a team around, he leads the team. He creates an environment that brings everybody’s level around him to something, I mean you can t see it. It’s like seeing the four star general going into all the troops and all of a sudden it just changes the whole attitude of the team. I have seen Ray do that and also I have seen Peyton Manning do it. His work ethic is tremendous; he is a student of the game. It’s like having an offensive coordinator there leading your offense. When you have that that to me is an unbelievable situation for any team to have. That’s why I believe we were able to do what we did to the Ravens and the Jets because he can adjust right there on the field. During the halftime, because as a kicker I don’t meet with anybody, I am sitting there listening to Peyton and its pretty cool to see him do those things at halftime.”
Gregg Williams has his hands full
Asked how difficult it is to scheme Peyton Manning and get ready for him:
“Every year, every game is different and every series is different. I do believe that the more information you are able to collect on people, on styles of offenses, it’s helpful. All those years going against him is helpful for me, but more importantly I can reduce the clutter for our players because you don’t chase ghosts. Because I understand what he is and what he wants to do. He is such a tremendous football player on how he throws the tight throws in, he makes you be exact. One of the real positives I have to say is that’s our every day routine down here. When you are playing against in practice as good as a quarterback as Drew Brees is, it forces you to be more exact, it forces you play at a higher level of practice. To be quite truthful, the biggest thing I had to overcome when I came here was to get ready the scout team that was here defensively. Sean Payton and I are very, very good friends, but usually offensive head coaches really don’t know what I do anyway. They want their defenses to be scout team defenses throughout practices and make themselves look good and I am not buying into that crap. I am telling you that right now. We had to get our defense to understand that when we are going out to practice every day, we are going out to win every single period and every single play. So we went through OTA, mini-camps and training camp and just kicked the crap out of our offense every single day. It really made our offense better. They had to defend themselves against us and it made us better and it gave us more confidence playing against somebody of that character and high profile like Drew Brees is. I am hoping that will carry over into having to play the tight throws like Peyton Manning’s. It’s going to be an interesting chess match; our guys are going to play hard I know that.”
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