Willie's Words of Wisdom

Give Willie Martinez credit for this: He's not shying away from the criticism.

Martinez spent about 15 minutes with reporters Tuesday night and didn't duck any questions -- even if he didn't exactly give the most specific of responses to all of them. Here's a taste of what Martinez had to say about the team's recent defensive struggles.

On why his D can stop the run, but not follow through on slowing the pass...
“You go into a football game and you’re trying to make an offense be one-dimensional. The offenses are so good now, there’s different variations of spread, and they’re different than some others. But if you do a good job as far as trying to make them one-dimensional, now you’ve got to gear in and do a better job in pass coverage, putting more pressure on the quarterback in the passing game and execute and make plays.”

On why the team performed so badly against Arkansas' passing game...
“They threw the ball very well, and obviously he’s an outstanding quarterback. They caught the ball well. And as a defensive back, if they’re going to throw the ball deep and you’re there, you’ve got to make a play. They made the plays and we didn’t. They were in position to at times to do it, and we didn’t do it. Bottom line – they executed and we didn’t. Those are the kind of things – sometimes you want that. You want the ball to be thrown deep and just chunk it where it’s 50-50, and hopefully your kid is going to be in position to make a play. They made them and we didn’t. That’s the price you pay when you’re playing man coverage. We’ve got to get better pressure on the quarterback when those times do come. But there are some times, too, where even if you brought pressure, they’re just chunking it and throwing it and the timing is there and they made the plays and we didn’t.”

On how to improve the secondary...
“Everything is tied in together. You cannot have good pass coverage if you don’t have good pass rush and vice versa. You just have to concentrate on the total package of being more effective of pushing pressure on the quarterback with our front four and be more disciplined in coverage.”

On how to handle the play-action...
“We’ve just got to be more disciplined. I’ve got to do a better job as a coach and continue to coach it and put our guys in position to make plays, and we’ve got to execute better, when you go against a team that’s good. The good teams will make you pay, and we’ve got to clean it up. I’ve got to do a better job of coaching it, and we’ve got to do a better job of executing it. There’s no excuses other than to just play better.”

On whether he is frustrated with the poor fundamentals for the second straight year...
“We just have to keep working. At the end of the day, you’ve got to tackle better, you’ve got to make plays in space, and execute the defense and play better on a consistent basis.”

On whether he thinks this has the potential to be a championship-caliber defense…
“Again, we haven’t played our best. I can tell you that much. We are not even close. We’ve got to keep working, and that’s what we’re doing right now. We’re trying to get better in everything we’re doing. Get better fundamentally, and it’s got to be the whole group. You’ve got to have 11 guys on the same page and executing all at the same time. It doesn’t really matter if there are three or four guys doing it. The thing about it is, when it happens in the secondary, everybody knows. When you’re out in space, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who messed up. So you just can’t do it. We’ve got to be more disciplined.”

On how he handles all the criticism…
“I don’t pay attention to it, but obviously it’s not fun playing the kind of defense that’s not what we’re accustomed to playing around here. I’m very happy that we won. Bottom line, that’s what it is. It doesn’t really matter if one side of the ball played well or this group played well, at the end of the day you want to win. You want to do whatever you can to help the team win, and we want to play better defense. So yeah, we’re not happy about it.”