On how his chest feels right now: "Sore. I don't know if it's kind of on a scale of whatever but, obviously, at my position it entails me throwing and rotating and doing that. It's sore in the main parts. It's something that you go through during the season, just making sure that you take care of your body and you're ready to play, and when you get back out in practice, make sure that you practice to that high pace and up-tempo to prepare you for the game."
On whether he feels like the injury is getting better: "I do feel it getting better. I know that it's not going to be healed in a week or two. It's going to take some time, and really, it's not just one particular spot, it's a couple of spots. We're just doing the right things; make sure we're treating it twice, three times a day. When I get out there on the field, make sure that I'm playing my style of play and just having fun doing it."
On whether it's harder for him to throw left because of the injury: "That's how it was earlier in the week. It was (harder) earlier in the week. It got better as the week continued on, and when I got out to practice on Friday I felt a whole lot better. When you have a chest or shoulders you have to open up throwing to your left, and early on in the week and the middle of the week I wasn't able to do that without feeling pain. Now, playing in the game, I felt comfortable doing it but yet still feel soreness in that spot as well as a couple of other spots. But we've been working with it Monday, Tuesday, (we'll be) working with it today. We're going to continue to treat during the week and be ready to throw on Sunday."
On whether he feels that this team needs to learn how to win close games: "I do. You can't go through the course of a game and play three or three and a half quarters of good football and then don't capitalize at the end. You don't win too many games like that. Especially when you get opportunities to put teams away, you have to be able to put them away. You hate to keep saying the same things that you have to learn from it, we have to get it done. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, the job has to get done. If that would have gotten done then we wouldn't be sitting here in the position we are, but the good thing about it is that it's early in the season. They are correctable mistakes, and the mistakes that we made weren't costly but yet still it would have helped us in our situation. To come out against the Redskins making sure that we understood what those mistakes were, and then to be able to put it out there on the field and do it the right way."
On whether he's surprised by the number of close games that the Eagles have lost over the past three years against teams when they have been predicted to win: "I am kind of shocked. When you play this game it's not the teams that you upset, it's the teams that you're supposed to win, those are the games that you're supposed to win. You don't want to get to the end of the year and look back and say, 'We should have won that game or we wouldn't be in the position that we are.' The same thing kind of happened last year when we played the Bears. We had the game won and they drove down 90-some yards to win. If we had won that game maybe we would have been in the playoffs. We had the opportunity to take advantage of those games that you're supposed to win, make sure that you win those games, and the games that I guess people expect you to lose, you win those games as well, and what that does is it provides more confidence for you going into every other game knowing that whatever situation there may be in front of you, that you will be able to overcome."
On what the difference is between winning and losing those close games: "We could sit and say experience, but I think that's too easy. Guys have been in competitive games if it's here, if it's college, if it's somewhere else, we've been in competitive games so we know what to do. We have to be able to gel together at the right times, eliminate those mistakes, and be able to get things done together and be able to end it the way that we are supposed to."
On whether the Redskins defense looks different this year: "Not necessarily. (They) may not be blitzing as much as they used to, but they have full confidence in those corners in playing a man. We knew that we were going to see that probably a lot this year and that it was going to be a challenge for our receivers and our tight ends. Who knows, if (RB Brian) Westbrook comes back you know they are going to try and do things to try and disrupt Westbrook in the passing game. So, it's important for us to be able to create separation and make plays down field in the passing game, be real efficient, and also being able to convert on third downs to come out with touchdowns and not just field goals."
On whether his injury is just pain or if it is an injury that restricts what he can do on the field: "That's kind of a tough question to ask. It's pain, but yet still we all have pain doing something. If the play was called, then I would have done whatever I had to do to help, but in those plays that we called, we should have scored. There is no way around it. We've called those plays before and we've scored. We didn't last weekend, and we can sit here and say that we should have passed the ball, we should have done this, we should have done that, but it comes down to it that we should have gotten in the end zone."
On whether this next game is a must-win game: "Yeah, I think it is a must-win game. I thought the Pittsburgh game was a must-win game. Anytime that you come off a tough loss in a game which you should have won, it's important that you be able to come back and bounce back on a positive note against your next opponent and continue on with consistent wins. This game could be something that we could feed off more than to the rest of our game, but it's important that we come into this game and make sure that we do everything that we are supposed to do individually to win."
On whether the Bears game would have ended differently if Westbrook had been in the game: "No. The guys that we had in the game made big plays for us. Westbrook is a great player, but it's a team game and everybody has to play together. Maybe things would have been different, maybe not. We don't' know. With (RB Correll) Buck(halter) carrying the ball, we feel confident that he can make big, big plays, and he made a lot of big plays in that game. So, to say that discredits a lot of what Buck and (RB Lorenzo) Booker and the rest of those guys can do for us. We would love to have Westbrook out there, but he was banged up and couldn't go. We had full confidence in those guys to step in, in his place."
On how impressed he is with the progression of Redskins QB Jason Campbell: "It's exciting to see his progression. The unfortunate part for him is the fact that he's had so many coordinators so he's learned a couple of different offenses, and it looks like he's comfortable now in what (Redskins head coach Jim) Zorn is presenting to him. He's giving him opportunities to get back and get the ball out of his hands. I think he's seeing the field a lot differently than he did before, and I think a lot of that is just his experience in playing the position at this level. Hopefully he doesn't play that well against us, but it's still good to see the way that he has been handling himself so far."
On whether Campbell ever asked him for his advice on running a west coast offense: "No. I didn't get a chance to talk to him when Zorn was presented the job. We just kind of talked about how to progress in this league and how to build a great work ethic and to continue to stay positive when things are down. He's a guy that is willing to do whatever it takes in order to help his team win, and as you can see right now, he's doing a great job."
On how the loss last week affected the confidence of the club and whether there were demons from last year that reemerged: "I didn't really see any demons. I don't see demons, I'm sorry. But the situation that happened last week, it's a tough situation, but it can be erased by us just going out and doing what we are supposed to do this week. I don't look at it as a consistent thing. I look at it as just something that happened in the game and we weren't able to overcome it, so we'll just go out and correct it this week."
On whether throwing the ball so much last week was a little bit too much on his shoulders without some of his starters out there: "No. We didn't have many problems against Pittsburgh when Westbrook went down. We haven't had (G) Shawn (Andrews) all year, and we've kind of spread the ball to the rest of the guys. The other guys have made plays for us. We've felt like we can throw the ball over the Bears and we did. (There were) a couple of miscues and mistakes, but yet we were still successful throwing the ball. Running the ball, it opened up a lot of lanes for us in our run game. It all depends on the front, the scheme that you're playing against if you're going to have the opportunity to throw the ball. A lot of teams do that, we prepare the same way, so things could be different this week (or) things could be the same."
On whether he indicated earlier that the Eagles would have Westbrook back on the field Sunday: "I did. But again, it's pretty much similar to how I feel, if it's pain or if it's soreness. If it's pain sometimes you fight through it. You have to know what you're able to do, if you can be yourself. With Westbrook, if he can run straight that doesn't mean that he's going to be out there and be the same Brian Westbrook that everyone knows that he can be if he can't cut. He's a slasher. He's a guy that makes moves. He has to be able to put pressure down on his ankle, and he didn't feel like that would be there. This week it'll be interesting just kind of watching him and how he's progressing. He's definitely been feeling better, so we would love to have him this week as well."
