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Monte & Clyde

© St. Petersburg Times,
published September 30, 2001

On whether the Vikings offense has lost a gear:

"No, they're out of synch a little bit. A lot of offenses go through that. The Green Bay Packers have gone through it. Seattle is going through it right now. The Rams went through last year a little bit, so it happens. Hopefully, they wait another week before they get back in synch."

On whether too much has been made of the Bucs' failures in the Metrodome the past three years:

"You can talk about it so much that you're actually paranoid. We're trying to take the approach to just go out and play ball. We've got to do that. We can't go out there and think, "Oh my gosh, remember what happened in '98?' We're not in '98 or 2000. This is 2001, and we've got to go up there and take the approach we did in Dallas. You can't play scared. You can play some mind games with 84 (Randy Moss) and 80 (Cris Carter). But if you're not careful, they'll play mind games with you."

On whether he believes the Vikings will try to get rookie running back Michael Bennett on track:

"I think they'll try to get the running game going a little more. What's happened is that people are playing cover two and playing just seven guys in the box. If people bring up the eighth guy, then you're going to leave Randy Moss in single coverage. If they get the running game going, that would make it a little tougher."

CLYDE CHRISTENSEN

On whether the Bucs offense will be rusty from the 21-day layoff:

"For us to not come out a better football team than we were when we went into this off week should not happen; unless it's our fault. We got to practice against a great defense, and they should be rested. We had six hard-nosed practices, and they had six days off. So they got the best of both worlds."

On how the Vikings defense can compete after losing John Randle and Dwayne Rudd to free agency and now safety Robert Griffith to injury:

"They're opportunistic. Somehow, they always get turnovers, and we've always turned the ball over to them. We've gone in and said if we don't turn it over, we've got a chance to move the football. But they've always gotten a couple of turnovers from us. Carolina was down in the red zone on the 10-yard line and get a ball that goes down to the 3. And a guy coughs it up, and it goes out of the back of the end zone for a touchback. So I think Dennis Green's teams are opportunistic. That's hard to prepare for."

On whether he believes the Vikings will bounce back from their 0-2 start:

"No question. They're home, and it's a must-win for them. And they've won an awful lot of must-win games. We've struggled up there. We haven't beaten them in three years. To think it's going to be anything but an absolute barroom brawl I think would be a big mistake."

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