(on if he was considered for the Ravens head coach job in 2008 and the sense he had after meeting with them) “Yes, I interviewed for it. I’d been in Indy at that time for about five years, and often times guys that worked there had been very successful. Bill Polian, Chris Polian, Tom Telesco, all those guys. They all talked about different organizations that did things the right way, and they always talked about Baltimore when you look at all the stats in terms of teams that were able to draft well and do a great job with their personnel, got their teams ready to play. When you play there’s always a battle. It certainly felt that it was one of the better organizations in the National Football League. It was a lot of fun and interesting exercise for the interview.”
 
(on what he’s trying to find out when he goes on an interview) “First of all, before I go, I research. I research them from a personnel standpoint. That’s the nice thing about this league, they have a guy in house and his job is to know every single team in the league and their personnel incase someone’s released, you can decide if you’d like to pick him up or not. There’s a guy in house that’s an expert, so I’ll usually confer with him and talk about their roster and blend that with what I see and what we’d be able to do from an offense, defense, special teams standpoint, but then also, how they operate. I knew there were going to be some sticking points in different groups in terms of how I see things, and I wanted to make certain those things were brought forward so there weren’t any surprises. I also try to find out if there would be any surprises on their end of it, things they wanted me to do, or a certain protocol they wanted me to follow, things of that nature.”
 
(on his contribution to quarterback Joe Flacco) “That’s probably a great question for him. That’s the thing about that position in this league, if you don’t find a way to improve every week and every single week, in every facet, you’re going to find that you have a weakness that develops that the opposition can take advantage of. If the opposition sees that you don’t read coverages then they’re going to disguise you of that. If the opposition sees that you can’t handle the blitz, they’re going to give you some problems with the blitz. If the opposition sees you throw one side of the field better than the other, they’re going to shove one side down and overload their coverages. You cannot go into it focusing on just one efficiency. What you try to do is make certain that as a complete player, you want to go across the board and attack all of those areas. Even if they’re areas that you’re good at, you want to continue to improve, because it’s so completive. We’ve tried to make certain that we do all the little things right. There’s an old saying that ‘Big things will take care of themselves.’ Fundamentals, foot work, ball handling, ball security, accuracy, and timing, those are the things that evolve into quarterback plays.”
 
(on Joe Flacco’s demeanor in clutch situations) “He doesn’t get rattled. He has a real good grasp of what’s going on around him. He’s highly observant and it doesn’t change from situation to situation. What does change is that he performs well in big games, and I think it’s because of the fact that he doesn’t get so hyped up that it affects his play.”
 
(on the media getting hung up on numbers and if the coach or the player cares about that) “There are numbers that certainly count. The ones that matter are the loss counts. ‘That guy knows how to win games, he knows how to win.’ That’s the important fact that I think a lot of times people miss from time to time. That should be the focal point. He’s won more games on the road and in the playoff’s than any other quarterback in the history, I think that’s correct I’m not certain. He’s won more games than any one in our business for the first five years. Anytime you start saying that he’s in a top two or three category in this league, he’s doing something right.”
 
(on Joe Flacco being confident in himself) “He gets excited about ballgames because he loves to play. He has great passion for the game, but it doesn’t disrupt his focus and concentration. He does have a pretty settled and calm demeanor overall. He has poise.”