Gary Kubiak's Monday Press Conference: Texans Defeat Dolphins

Courtesy of the team's official site, here's a transcript of Kubes' complete press conference from yesterday afternoon. As usual, I've pulled a handful of quotes to spark discussion here. Away we go...

(on ILB Tim Dobbins) "(Tim) Dobbins is out of the hospital, doing good. He ran with the team today. All indications are he’s back on the field Wednesday just got a real good shot. Like I said, his neck was bothering him a little bit but everything looks fine."

(on other injury updates) "No. (Brian Cushing) was back out there today. (Bryan) Braman is actually back to work today, should be ready to go on Wednesday. We’re fine. We came out pretty good."

(on the offensive performance against Miami) "First off, we had horrible field position to start the game. I think we started at the 5, 10 and 13. They did a good job of keeping the game on our end early. They moved the ball on us the first drive. We moved it on them. Missed a field goal, that flipped the field position again so after that once we got the turnover I think we scored six out of seven possessions so that’s a darn good thing. The biggest thing I was disappointed in offensively was how we ran the ball, which wasn’t very good at all and how we finished on the 1-yard line and how we finished the game the last couple drives. I think that’s a mark of a good team. Everybody knows you got to run it to finish a game you still line up and run it. We didn’t do that yesterday."

(on RG Antoine Caldwell and RT Derek Newton on the line Sunday) "I don’t look right and left, you know what I mean? That’s been a big question throughout the course of camp. Obviously they are two new players for us. That was (Derek) Newton’s first start in the NFL; so some good, some bad. I think we knew that going in. That is what we’re going to get. (Antoine) Caldwell has started some games, but I’m looking at it the big picture. We didn’t run the ball well whether we ran it right, left or up the middle. So when I talk to them I’m talking to all five of them. I’m not talking to right or left and we got to play better than we did in the game."

(on having WR Andre Johnson healthy) "Boy, I tell you, he got off to a great start. I think I said this to you all a couple times; but Andre (Johnson) the last 10 days of camp has really looked like the Andre I remember from four or five years ago; I’m talking about from a work standpoint at practice. Andre is a guy that needs to do it in practice to do it in a game. That’s the way he is. He had an excellent week last week and it showed in the game. I think he still probably played a couple too many plays than I wanted him to play. Me and (Wide Receivers Coach) Larry (Kirksey) are gonna try to keep an eye on that, keep him fresh. I think he played 49 plays but they were 49 darn good ones. So he’s off to a good start."

(on the special teams play against Miami) "We didn’t play good at all. We didn’t. When you get beat, you have to let things go and go get after the next game. Good teams, when they win, they’re able to be hard on themselves. So we have to start today with that. We did not play well on special teams. We didn’t cover well. We didn’t return well; something that we had been doing pretty consistent during the preseason. We had some guys playing some special teams getting going again that need to be big special teams players for us. Whitney Mercilus needs to play well for us; Mister Alexander. Throughout the course of the preseason, we did protect some of those guys, when we’re looking at young players and it showed yesterday. I don’t think some of the key guys on special teams were on top of their games. We didn’t come out of this game feeling very good about how we played but we make the corrections today and hopefully we’re a lot better next week."