On Kerry Carter (RB, #39):

"Without contact he came up to the line and tried to pivot and cut, that one will require surgery so we are going to miss him for the year. I hate that because he is someone we wanted to give a long hard look at and looked very promising. I certainly wish that had not happened."

On Chris Clemons (LB, #58):

"Chris Clemons will probably miss some time. I don't know whether it's two or three weeks, but that's the best guess. That's how we stand with Chris coming out of the game."

On Clinton Portis (RB, #26):

"I talked to Clinton last night when we got home, and had a really good talk. He got on a plane first thing today to go and see Dr. Andrews. He is the person we all have a lot of confidence in besides our doctor's here. He just finished about two and a half hours with Dr. Andrews. I talked to Dr. Andrews on the phone and Clinton before he left. I think the feeling from Dr. Andrews and everyone that has looked at him is that we will continue to look at it, but it will be something that will be sore. As soon as we get the soreness out of there, we feel he can start rehabbing. We would hope he will be ready for the opener. It will be up to Clinton and everyone that is working with him as hard as they can, but that's generally what Dr. Andrews and doctor's here concur after seeing everything. Obviously that is a big deal for us. Hopefully we will have Clinton going as hard as he can on rehab. I talked to him today, he understands and is in good spirits and hopefully that will be something where we get him back as quick as we can."

On Shawn Springs (CB, #24):

"We have Shawn Springs seeing a specialist. He didn't miss any time this week or in practice, but he has had some soreness in his pelvic area, so we have a specialist that is seeing him. We expect to have something on that tomorrow."

On Ladell Betts (RB, #46):

"We had Ladell out of the scrimmage. It was mainly a confidence thing with his hamstring. He felt like he was really close and said coach I haven't tested it 100 percent,' so we felt it was something where you don't want someone unless they can tell you they are ready to go 100 percent."

On Kili Lefotu (OL, #67):

"We have Kili back. I talked to him again today. I think Kili brings it to mind when you see someone like that and it comes to mind what happened. I have a really good feeling about this because my kids played football. Everyone that is out there for us in this organization realizes they all have families, mothers, and dads, people that love and care about them, and they are in a sport where things can happen and guys do get hurt. I think everyone takes it to heart, I know that I do. It scares you to death that something could happen, like what happened to Kili. We take it as an important issue."

On caring for the guys:

"We have a great medical staff with a lot of resources, we send guys wherever they need to go to get looked at, and the first thing I tell people, and I told Clinton, the most important thing for you is what's best for you.' We will go to work with that basis."

On playing starters in preseason:

"With pre-season if you look at where we are, we came to camp late, we've had no real contact in our camps, most of the fans that came out to watch know that. The pre-season games are the first time you can have real contact. For us you put your starters out there, there are 22 guys and everyone knows that everyone of them is super important to the team, certainly including Clinton. As part of the coaching staff you hope to put them out there, love to get them eight or ten plays, and in Clinton's case, one or two carries. You'd like to get them started with some contact and get them in some type of a groove. You always run a risk, it's something we hold our breath on. No one wants to put someone at risk, unless it's something that's super important to the team. We are in the situation where this coaching staff set a game plan of what we want to do with our starters and that doesn't mean that (we don't have one for) anyone that's not a starter, because we don't want injuries there either. Those guys play more in those cases because they want to make the team, and there are some guys we want to look. It's always a balance of what do you do. We have four games like that where you get the guys to get a chance to get a limited amount of contact work. It's always a tough decision. We thought long and hard over it. We have a game plan there. Everyone we put out there is valuable. Certainly your top 22 when you put them out there. You play your players and hope you have a good game plan. The coaching staff works hard at it. You just hate it when someone gets hurt, it doesn't matter who he is, or what position he is on the team. It's a real concern with us."

On defense at the game:

"We felt like defensively when you are at the game it's hard to see anything good. We looked at the film today, our first string defense was outstanding. They ran the ball hard, had two sacks with that group. Our third and fourth downs were at 75 percent. We had five sacks total for the day. We didn't get turnovers, which really hurt us.

On offense at the game:

"What really disappointed us were the turnovers on offense. You turn the ball over three times on offense in interceptions and everyone knows up here your odds are over 90 percent you will lose a ball game when that happens. If you're 1 you're 70 percent to win -1 you're 70 percent to lose a ball game."

On whether the Portis' injury will effect the number of backs the team will carry:

"Anything like that effects the overall make-up of the team. Last year, we carried four running backs, but I think you're always looking and you see things out there in the future and you're going to have to change your thought process. You're going to carry more there or can you still go with four? Those are the kind of questions we are asking and it's a good point. You've got your numbers on offense, you've got your numbers on defense that you're going to carry so you're going to be looking at how you're going to balance that and make it work. Then you've got your specialists so that's the way you look at it. We know what the numbers are roughly on offense and we'd like to stay inside that number. You can move that around; at times last year we went active with eight linemen, sometimes we were seven, so you're constantly looking at it. Things like that can impact what your final (roster) is going to look like."

On whether Ladell Betts (RB, #46) and Jesse Lumsden (RB, #37) will be available for Saturday night's game:

"I think Ladell will be able to go this week, I'm guessing. Jesse worked out today and looked good so we're hoping."

On the description of Clinton Portis' injury given to him by Dr. Andrews:

"I didn't get into all of that with him but he described it to me as just a pop and it's going to be sore. Basically, the prognosis was what I've said to everybody, to hopefully get the soreness out of there and go back to rehab. He definitely told me last night that with a running back that it's a lot better then something getting separated on top (of the shoulder) in some way because that's got to heal over a period of time. There's no good injury, but he described it in those terms. I think the biggest thing is that he talked to Clinton long and hard about it so that Clinton understands it and it will be up to Clinton. I know we'll work extremely hard at it, I know he wants to play so we have an extremely tough guy there. Last year, I can't tell you how many times he got hit where I said, Hey, he's probably going to have to come out for a while and he never does.' We've got a tough guy there so we'll just hope and pray for the best and I hope all of our fans will do the same thing for us."

On the risk of putting the first-string players in pre-season games:

"For a coach, you stop and think about it; we took 22 guys out there, you've got Santana Moss (WR, #89) going down the field, you've got Marcus Washington (LB, #53) playing, everybody's out there, that's what we worry about. You're not picking and choosing on guys, we pretty much said, Our starters are going to go out and play this number of plays,' and I think that's what's tough about it. Do you hold your breath on some of that? Yeah. I think the other side of it, it's a contact sport. We don't go full-go in practice and that's something our fans may be interested in knowing. We don't tackle out here. The preseason is really the only chance we have to step it up a notch and go against good people and do the things we're going to do when we open. Then we'll be going 60-something plays full bore and so the question is always, What are you going to do to get prepared?' Maybe someday we'll come up with something that's better than this, but this is our analysis of the best way to get the team ready and we put everybody out there."

On the performance of Todd Collins (QB, #15):

"Certainly a quarterback always reflects everything that's going on around him. We got some pressure back there on him, which made it extremely tough, but I thought he made some real good throws. It was so rough in there at times and we got a lot of pressure on him. Jason (Campbell, QB, #17) I think did some real good things. At times we got some pressure on him, he made a bad decision there and we got off to kind of a rough start I think you could say."

On the importance of having a running back like Betts behind Portis:

"I would say that Ladell is very important to us and he has been for the last two years. He's run back kicks for us. He's done almost everything we've asked. He's an excellent receiver and the one time he did get to play, he was over 100 yards. We like Ladell Betts. Let me put it this way: I'm glad we've got Ladell Betts. We do need depth at running back for sure and if Clinton for whatever reason, in pre-season or whatever, can't go, then we'll turn it over to Ladell."