Archives for August 7, 2012

‘When I first started playing in 7th grade, they put me in an offensive lineman’s uniform for the spring. When the regular season came around, I worked all summer on my hands because I wanted to be a tight end. I was always a little bit smaller, never a super big guy, but I ate a couple of cheeseburgers and now I’m a tackle. The rest is history.’

‘”It’s always going to be in your head, no matter what,” Roosevelt said. “But you have to come out here and do what you love doing. Do what you do every day, that’s playing football and going out there and competing. If you come out and make plays, then everything will fall into place.”‘

‘”Somewhere around 15, 18 plays, something like that,” Gailey said. “That’s what the plan is going in. If they’re in the middle of a drive we might keep our [starters] out there. If it’s 13 [snaps] and they’ve played well, we might get them out at the end of a series.”‘

‘”I was excited,” Sheppard said. “Whichever way it is as long as I have a job in the league and I’m able to compete on Sunday’s, I’m happy. But of course I’ve been in the 4-3 scheme my whole life. Now going into coach Wannstedt, he’s one of the gurus of the 4-3 defense, so of course I was excited.”‘

‘”It’s a new team, new season, it is kind of like I am a rookie all over again,” said Anderson, who finished with 10 sacks for New England last season. “I’m out here having fun.”‘

”’I would say that we won’t push David, we won’t push Eric,” Gailey said.’

‘”I can explode and come off the ball for one and I’m not worried about getting injured” Merriman said during an appearance on the WGR Morning Show on Monday. “When you’re playing that way and worried about something possibly could happen if you do a certain thing, you can’t play. There’s no way to compete like that and I wasn’t competing for those years.”‘

‘”We had a good day,” said McKelvin of the secondary’s opportunistic play. “We came back and tried to straighten things up before we get into this week for this game. Straighten up missed alignments and try to get everything perfect going into this week’s game.”‘

‘More than 20,000 tickets still remain for the preseason contest and are available for purchase.’

‘On looking forward to how the defense will match up against Redskins QB Robert Griffin III: Somewhat, but you do not game plan for this game. That guy is going to make his plays, just because he is a great athlete, great player. I want to see if communication is good. If effort, if our tackling is good. Those are the things that you are looking at. The fundamentals. Much more the scheme than how many plays are made or not made. You want to make them, do not get me wrong. But you want to see the fundamentals take place in the ball game this week on both sides of the ball and in the kicking game.’