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Head Coach Tony Dungy Press Conference

  HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (general comments) “After finishing the tape, it was a good win to get.  I didn’t realize at the time how tough it was.


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HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (general comments)

"After finishing the tape, it was a good win to get.  I didn't realize at the time how tough it was.  We hung in there and fought and I'm really proud of a lot of our young guys who finished up the game, and did it very well.  Winning 14 games was something we really talked about.  A team record, and very proud of them for that, and I think we finished the regular season in the right way.  It was a real special victory.  Offensively, I thought QB-Jim Sorgi did a very, very good job.  Their plan was to blitz us a lot, that's the way they play.  We knew it was coming, but I thought he handled it well and made some big throws and he kept his composure.  Some of our young offensive linemen, Matt Ulrich and Kurt Vollers, went in and played pretty well without having a lot of time to get themselves ready.  I thought our young tight ends that finished the game did a good job.  So it was pleasing to see some of those guys in a pressurized situation.  On defense we made just enough plays.  The last drive was 20 plays and seven-and-a-half minutes and we had some chances to get them stopped along the way.  We had a penalty on second-and-16, which hurt us.  We gave them a fourth-down conversion, but the goal-line stand and winning it that way was probably the best way it could have happened.  K-Jose [Cortez] kicked well.  We had three kickoff tackles inside the 20 which is the best we've covered all year.  A lot of things positive came out of the game.  Now we're going to really look at practicing this week against ourselves and getting ourselves as sharp as we can.  We'll wait until this weekend to find out who we're going to play.  I think we're all pretty pleased about the way the regular season ended."

HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on if the benefit of clinching home-field advantage so early was being able to rest injure players)

"I think very much so.  The guys that really needed rest got it.  We'll never know how it's all going to play out, but I think with the long preseason and Japan and everything, to be able to rest guys that need it down the stretch is going to be good for us in the long run."

HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on if there is concern since they will have not played a meaningful game in 5 weeks)

"No, not really.  I think you always want to be in situations where you're playing highly competitive games.  That's probably the thing we'll miss, but we had a good stretch where we had to do that and got it done.  I think we'll be able to get our sharpness back."

HEAD COACH TONY DUNGY (on if there is concern about the recent lack of a running game)

"Not really, our situation and the way we play really is dictated a lot by what the defense does.  This game, we knew we weren't going to get many chances to run because of the way they played.  Our thought was that we'll block it up and make some big plays in the passing game.  San Diego was much the same way.  We knew we were going to see a lot of blitzes, a lot of seven and eight man fronts where they're pretty much going to force you to throw.  When we get all of our weaponry back on offense and we get our receivers out there, if people want to play us that way, we'll be content to throw.  If we see some defenses like we saw at the beginning of the year to take away that passing game, I think our run game will be fine."

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