Quotebook

By JOE SMITH, Times Staff Writer
Published October 29, 2007

From Bucs coach Jon Gruden

On Jeff Garcia: "He made some plays, I'm sure from his perspective, I'll let him speak for himself, I think he'll agree that maybe there were some plays there that he normally makes that he didn't tonight. That's part of football. He gives our team a chance to win, he competes his brains out and it's just too bad. We had some opportunities there that we let get away from us."

On if he feels the Bucs gave a win away: "A number of guys played some key positions tonight they probably never in their wildest dreams expected to play the roles they did. Some didn't do very well; some did, some didn't."

On what displeased him most about the game: "I thought we had 10 or 12 plays, big plays, big opportunities to make them. I didn't think we cashed in on some opportunities that we normally do. That's the difference between winning and losing. They're making one-handed catches for touchdowns."

On the dropped passes: "Yeah, we did, and it was the combination of a good football team we played today and it was, I think, a situation where we had some looks that we normally cash in on, and today we didn't do it."

On Jacksonville QB Quinn Gray not turning the ball over: "That was a winning edge for them. I thought they came out and ran the ball with success early, and it really helped them and ran it 13 or 14 times in a row to start the football game. Field position was hard to come by in the first half and we turned it around in the second half, but he did do some good things."

From Jaguars coach Jack Del Rio

On the effort: "I really felt like you just witnessed a team empty their bucket. ... It wasn't the cleanest game I have ever coached, but certainly one of the most satisfying victories in terms of getting a complete effort. We had backups for backups, we had emergency guys that were thrown into spots and kept fighting, kept coming and kept banging away."

On starting the game with 14 consecutive run plays: "I didn't realize it was 14 in a row. I know we wanted to come out and be very deliberate and run at them, and we did that."

On his secondary: "They were called on quite a bit. Their quarterback had been red-hot, he has been throwing it 70-plus percent, he hadn't turned the ball over; we got three tonight."

[Last modified October 28, 2007, 23:36:41]