Mike Tomlin Press Conference – Week 5 – Titans – 2011

New and significant Injuries: James Harrison has a fractured bone around his eye socket. He is having surgery and will be out a couple of weeks. Cortez Allen, right ankle sprain, questionable. Casey Hampton Right shoulder contusion, limited. Rashard Mendenhall, right hamstring strain, limited. Mewelde Moore, left ankle sprain, severe, questionable. Aaron Smith right mid-foot sprain, questionable. Jason Worilds, left quad strain, doubtful. Ben Roethlisberger, foot sprain, probable. Doug Legursky, J. Scott, McFadden and others who have been injured are expected to return this week.

Lawrence Timmons will play right OLB for James Harrison and Larry Foote will start at ILB for Timmons.

More After The Jump!

After listing injuries, Tomlin addressed last week’s game for a minute saying that he felt like they were in the game, and made some plays, but that they dug too much of a hole early on to win. He said he saw some encouraging things, but they didn’t make enough plays to win. Now, I realize that dwelling on a loss is not going to fix anything, but if that’s truly how Tomlin feels about the game, I feel like we weren’t watching the same game.

Tomlin then went on to do his usual accounting of every single player on the Titans, spending a particularly long time talking about Hasselbeck and how great he’s been thus far. He talked about Chris Johnson and how preparing for him is “doubly” important due to how poor the Steelers have been at stopping the run (my words).

Keisel is anticipated to be back this week.

Redman will take the majority of the snaps early in the week while Rashard nurses that hamstring injury. If Mendy can’t get healthy enough, Redman will be the starter. They are bringing in some RBs for practice purposes only this week. Tomlin says Dwyer needs to be ready to go.

Sounds like Ed Bouchette asked about the open OLB spot due to Harrison’s and Worilds’ injuries. Tomlin had already talked about that…

Tomlin keeps calling last week a “sub-standard performance.” He basically says that they will not panic just because they lost. They know that they can play better and that is what they will focus on this week. Tomlin says that it is likely that they will practice with pads two times this week, since you are allowed to do that at least one time during the regular season. He implied that now is the time to use the two padded practices in a week because of how bad they’ve been playing in terms of fundamentals.

When asked if Worilds would have been the starter in place of James had he not been hurt, Tomlin said he would have definitely been in the discussion. My guess is yes, he would have absolutely been the starter. Makes more sense than moving Timmons.

Tomlin blames the lack of success in the run game with Mendy compared to Redman and Memo on the fact that they never had a chance to get the run game going in the first half since the Texans had the ball 21 out of the first 30 minutes. Tomlin says he likes what he sees with William Gay and Keenan Lewis playing CB instead of McFadden. Now that it sounds like McFadden will be back in full swing this week, Tomlin says they will let how he practices dictate how much he plays this week.

Someone asked about Woodley and how he’s played this year. Tomlin seemed annoyed by the question and quickly stated that Woodley has played about 2-2, probably the same as how Tomlin has coached and how the rest of the team has played. He has not done enough to be successful.

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