Tampa Bay Buccaneers 23, Houston Texans 16
Q. The turnovers you gave up?
DAVID CULLEY: The first priority on offense is not to give up the ball and we gave it up way too many times. One is too many. Doesn't matter how many you get on defense, when you turn it over on offense your chances of winning are very slim and that was very disappointing and that's something we have been doing a good job of up until tonight.
Q. How did Anthony perform?
DAVID CULLEY: He's been a warrior for us all training camp. I like what he brings to the table and he's a guy that can handle the line of scrimmage which is very important for us. Obviously for us to be able to run the ball the way we want to run the ball, having our tight ends be those kind of guys is very important for us and I thought tonight they did a really good job.
Q. Was it you that told Justin he would get a chance to do the kickoff tonight?
DAVID CULLEY: I did but he has been all training camp, ever since I've been here, even during OTAs he talked about wanting to kick. I don't know what it is, if it's something from Stanford or whatever it was, but he has this thing about wanting to kick.
He kicked tonight and had we got in a situation later in the ballgame, if we got to the plus 24-yard line, he was going to kick a field goal. That was his distance. He was going to kick a field goal and he was excited about that. Unfortunately we didn't get down there when we needed to get down there late in the game.
Q. Was he campaigning it for it on that fourth down?
DAVID CULLEY: He wasn't campaigning for it because he knew that we were going to go for two in that situation, told him he's not there for PATs and he's there for field goals.
Q. Do you have an update on Johnson, why he didn't play, Murray and also --
DAVID CULLEY: Zach?
Q. Yeah.
DAVID CULLEY: Zach was personal reasons. We didn't want to take a chance on them and getting a pull or anything, and I think if we were playing a regular-season game -- they were ready to play. Especially against their group, in the whole first half did a nice job of us running the ball and which we went into the game wanting to do that, made an emphasis of wanting to do that and they did a nice job of doing that, and he was a big part of that. And it was good to see him get those opportunities, because our backs, we wanted to give them some carries in this game and we were able to do that and you saw what they were capable of doing.
Q. The second drive, took almost ten minutes off the clock; that the kind of drive you want?
DAVID CULLEY: I want that drive but we want to finish that. We got down there that time, I think we ended up having a pre-snap penalty, which put us in a second and normal and then we got put into a second and long, which was a big difference for us, and you can't have those down there. You can't have those and then, you know, we end up going four downs and not being able to get in.
Q. The situation --
DAVID CULLEY: Most definitely.
Q. What was the difference in terms of not being able to protect the ball?
DAVID CULLEY: I have to look at the video but the most part of that is they did a good job of stripping, now think, the one that Tyrod had, he was trying to make a play, and you know, he was trying to get down and the guy came and ended up taking a ball from him, no excuse for that, but they did a good job of that just like we did, and it happens, when that happens, though, your chance of having a chance to win a game goes way down and we understand that.
Q. You said before the game that you were intended for the first string offense to go -- didn't look like Tyrod didn't comeback --
DAVID CULLEY: It wasn't the first string so much as the first group we had and we had a count for him. He had not had as many plays to that point, once he got to that pitch count that he had, it happened to be during that third series and we were going to play Davis whenever that pitch count came and that pitch count came in the second quarter.
Q. They did a good job throwing downhill, I know it's preseason, but is there more downfield stuff that you haven't shown yet, explosiveness in the offense?
DAVID CULLEY: It's there. I think the thing going into the game tonight was we told our front people is we wanted to establish a run is we wanted to consistently establish the run and we did that tonight and we did that for the whole half and that's the thing now, we have to throw the ball better than what we throw the ball tonight.
Tonight the emphasis was consistency, run the ball against a very good up front.
Q. Going against Tom Brady --
DAVID CULLEY: Well it doesn't matter who is back there but when you get them backed up the way we had him backed up, you expect to get the other team off the field and we weren't able to do that but it happens in this league.
Q. What about how you handle pressure? It was an issue coming into the game, talked about handling blitzes?
DAVID CULLEY: Tonight was much better, much better. Late in the game they got us a couple of times on a couple of things but knew they was getting ready to throw the ball and brought some pressure. Todd Bowles is known to do that and he knew we had a rookie back there and we knew it was going to come. We did a much better job than the last ballgame.
Q. Injury happened in the game --
DAVID CULLEY: It happened in warmup.
Q. Any concerns about game one?
DAVID CULLEY: No concerns at all. Again, as I said with Lonny and Eric, if we had to play, if this was a regular-season game, they would have played tonight.
Q. Johnson had a few carries but not the last game. Are you trying to keep the workload even?
DAVID CULLEY: Balance it out to get a good evaluation of all of them. He's very good in the backfield and proven that in his career and he's been good with the ball in his hand and going into this ballgame he had not had the ball in his hand that much and we wanted to make sure that happened tonight.
Q. What did you think of the way Bud ran the ball?
DAVID CULLEY: Buddy has been that way all through training camp, he's tough, all our backs are that way. That's what he does best. He's a very physical runner and when he goes down -- and our up front people get him to the line of scrimmage, it's always a positive play for us and he breaks a bunch of tackles.
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