I was out of the country for a period of time but followed everything closely through other people in our organization and we’ve made the decisions that we felt were right for the football team and we’ll continue to do that and be as diligent as we can going forward.
That has never been a priority for me and I want the players to deal with a harder situation in practice than they’ll ever have to deal with in the game. Maybe that’s part of our ball security philosophy.
I would say that during the course of the game, I honestly never – it probably has happened on an incomplete pass or something – but I’ve never touched a game ball. It’s not something I have any familiarity with on that.
However bad we can make them, I make them. Any time that players complain about the quality of the footballs, I make them worse and that stops the complaining.
So many different things happen in a split second during the course of the play, just like it is for a quarterback. The more of those things that you can do right, slow down, get the most important things, not get distracted by all the stuff that’s happening, but just really zero in on a target.
We do the same thing with all our players. We take a look, as I said, at their personal family life, we look at the history of what they’ve done in high school and college.
Whatever success I’ve had it is because I’ve tried to understand the situation of the player. I think the coach’s duty is to avoid complicating matters.
I obviously understand that each team has the opportunity to prepare the balls the way they want, give them to the officials and the game officials either approve or disapprove the balls. That really was the end of it for me until I learned a little bit more about this .
I’ve learned about the inflation range situation. Obviously with our footballs being inflated to the 12.5-pound range, any deflation would then take us under that specification limit.
I think everyone is a case-by-case basis. Whatever the circumstances are that come with any individual, they exist and you have to make a determination as to what your comfort level is with that person and the characteristics that they bring.
