LOVIE SMITH: Really important things like congratulating the Pearland little league team on making the World Series. That's pretty awesome. Got a chance to, in between meetings, got a chance to watch a little bit of the game. Just exciting as much as anything. No matter what level you play, to get a chance to move up and play in something like that is pretty special. Can't wait to see them kind of finish it up and bring it on home.
For us really the last day of training camp. Describing the camp a little bit, hard, grueling, I'd say most of the guys would say that their tank is empty, and that's exactly how it's supposed to be.
Now we transition into New Orleans a little bit tomorrow, and then just kind of getting into our preseason routine a little bit. Saw some good things. Didn't know about a lot of our players before we started, but now we do. So we have a plan. Everybody won't play the first preseason game, but the guys we feel like need to play and we need to get a look at will play.
I'll take your questions.
Q. Can you talk about Darius Anderson's injury.
LOVIE SMITH: First, it's a tough -- there's no other way to describe it. We feel for Darius. He's a good football player, has been through a little bit. Guy has showed up every day, was doing some good things. We had a plan for him. Unfortunately injuries are part of our game. It's just pretty much a non-contact injury that happened. He's in good spirits right now. He'll get surgery and come back strong as ever.
Q. (Indiscernible).
LOVIE SMITH: That's the emphasis every day, to push it down the field. Yesterday I thought the defense did some good things. Today of course as you mentioned the offense did a whole lot of good things, which is good. We're a good football team. From day-to-day, you want offense, defense to have their day, but for us to win games, we need to score a lot of points. We have weapons. We have the perfect guy signal caller for our football team to start that push down the field.
Q. Do you have any updates on Garret Wallow and (indiscernible)?
LOVIE SMITH: Yeah, I mean, and I'd like to give you more of an update, but Garret went down with an ankle injury yesterday, Kenyon has been out a while. If someone is out for the season, I'll talk about them right away, which I did about Darius. The rest of the guys we don't know exactly what the timetable is, but they'll be back.
Q. When you look at a guy like Derek Stingley who made a couple big plays today, are you just noticing he's getting more comfortable in the system?
LOVIE SMITH: No doubt he's getting better. Of course Dino is working with him. He's a great player, and he's going to help us win a lot of football games. There were some good plays he made today. Great one would have been him catching that interception and running and scoring with it. But we like everything Derek has done since he came in the building.
Q. Yesterday the depth chart was released. How much of that change non-injury wise if you don't play a lot of guys as far as the preseason?
LOVIE SMITH: The depth chart was released yesterday. They told us we had to release the depth chart. From me to you, we wrote some guys down right now based on not finishing a drill in training camp. Once we get to preseason games, that's when the depth chart will mean a little bit. Right now, it's kind of -- we have a little depth rotation and kind of go from there. Don't put too much into the depth chart just yet.
Q. Who has really stood out to you at left guard?
LOVIE SMITH: It would be hard to say stood out. You've seen the rotation that we have, and we're getting a lot of guys reps right now, but as far as stand out, the guys are showing up right now. Again, guys, I can't really point -- it's about guys coming to practice. Everybody is getting better. We can talk a little bit more about how we really play after we play somebody else.
Q. Jonathan Owens has been cut numerous times, had a torn ACL, practice squad --
LOVIE SMITH: I don't know about all of that. Since I've been here I've liked Jonathan. He was one of our starting safeties at the end of last year. I can vividly recall him playing well against the Chargers. That's the Jonathan Owens I know. He's been in the building every day the building is open. He's going to help us win a lot of ball. He fits the profile of what we're looking for at the safety position.
Q. Going into New Orleans are you looking for certain rep counts or --
LOVIE SMITH: All of the above. Yes, first preseason game is pretty much the same across. Some guys aren't going to play, some guys, yes. None of our guys will play the entire game, not the first one. We have a snap count, whatever you want to say, play count, on what we would like to do with the game. A lot of this, though, since we don't scrimmage anyone, some teams scrimmage people. Some of the players that we don't really know about, that's how I see us using these preseason games, to get good live work, especially on some of the guys we don't know. I know what Laremy Tunsil can do, I know what Brandin Cooks can do, Christian Kirksey. I could keep going on. Those guys won't play a lot, but those guys in those next lots, that's who we want to see play.
Q. Why did you not have any joint practices this year?
LOVIE SMITH: Just don't believe in it. To me I like going live when you have officials, you can control it, and when somebody does something really bad, there's punishment for it. Never have liked it. Haven't done much in about 20 years, and we don't plan on doing it.
Q. I want to ask about the trade y'all made.
LOVIE SMITH: Well, the tight end position we feel like we need more bodies and more guys that -- we have some move guys, but we're looking for some kind of wise in-line kind of tight ends that can also catch the ball a little bit, too, and we feel like Adam will give us that. We know a little bit about him, and he was available, and just know guys, we're -- Nick and the crew, we're constantly looking at guys that might be available to add to the mix. We've gone through a lot of practices now, and we feel like we need another guy at that position. Teagan has been banged up a little bit, so that's why we went that direction.
DraftScripts by ASAP Sports
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports