Dick Vermeil Game Quotations

We didn't work any harder or any different. As we said all along, that one game that we broke down last week was a tribute to the New York Giants, but that was not us when you've gone 20 games in a row without giving up a 100-yard rusher. The 20 was a lot better reflection than the one as far as the kind of defensive football team you are.

I don't know when Johnnie Morton hasn't been a No. 1. He's started almost every game he's ever played. Now, he's not Isaac Bruce, in that style of receiver. But he's a fine receiver, and you can move the chains with him. He'll make some big plays.

I don't think one game proves anything other than we're going in the right direction. It's a very euphoric experience to play well and limit a team to no first downs rushing and those kinds of things. But that's behind us. We're playing a totally different kind of team this week that presents different kinds of problems.... Doing it once in a while isn't the way you gain credibility. You have to do it often.

He has the ability to slow the game down, and he executes extremely well, ... He has to have a supporting cast, and I'm talking about the offensive line. Quarterbacks like Kurt Warner need good pass protection. He's not going to panic. He's going to hold onto the ball and go through the progressions.

He wants to play. I trust him because I know how unselfish he is. If he didn't think he could step in and run our game plan, he would tell me. As you saw on the practice field today, he's very sharp. He knows what he's doing.

I think we will be battling all the way through the final minutes of the 16th game of the year to determine where we play.

Look at that game and Denver doesn't look like the same team because Miami didn't allow them to be.

We just did not play well ... just multiple things, multiple wounds. Best thing about the game is that I don't think we got anybody injured. We got some feelings hurt, but I don't thing anybody got injured.

The pressure of a game doesn't really . . . I'm not saying it doesn't bother him -- it doesn't affect him negatively,

We scaled things down as the game went on because (quarterback) Trent (Green) was getting hit back there. We went backward in what we could call.

Conversely, when you lose a football game and you fly home and look at it, it's not as bad as you thought it was. We know we aren't there yet. But we all feel we have the talent here to continue to get better.

Normally, when you win a football game and you really feel good about it flying home, you look at tapes and it's not quite as good as you thought it was,

The big thing, ... is what these kids are all made out of. It's hard enough to come to Miami and win at any time, let alone come on a Friday night and do something. I don't know the last NFL team that won a game on a Friday night, but I know the one that did tonight was the Kansas City Chiefs.

That's his best game of the year, ... and he's coming on at the right time.

They put together a great game plan, and they executed. They knew what they had to do, and they tore us apart.

It was bothering him a little bit. And on that turf in there it's harder than being on the natural grass. It was precautionary and it wasn't game day.

It's hard to single out one game as more important especially within the division, ... This is an important game for us because it's a home game - it's a division game.

They couldn't have picked a better team to send down there and play well ? that's the way we're approaching it. We'll go down there and play our best football game of the year. The guys are in a good frame of mind. They accept it. We would have liked it to be a different way, but we have no choice.

Their running game can be tough to stop. So far they haven't been humming like it normally is, and you just have to keep them in that mode. They're very patient and persistent and keep doing it.

The kind of guy Joe is and the coach he was at the time he left, I think he got like all of us do: You miss it. You miss the competitive parts of the game and the people involved in the game. I told him he wouldn't have any problems if he surrounded himself with good coaches and good people.