Quotes: Erickson confident, mindful of injuries

ON THE BYE WEEK:
“We practiced Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and had pretty good sessions. We played a lot of our young guys and got them a lot of turns. We were able to rest some of the guys that were hurt; we got a lot done. Thursday we spent quite a lot of time on Colorado, as we did Monday, more than we normally would on a Monday. It was good. Then we recruited of course. My coaches went out Wednesday night after practice and went to different areas to recruit and watch games and stuff over the weekend. Then they got back in here Sunday and we started over. Personally for me, I watched a lot of games on Saturday.”

ON THE BYE WEEK HELPING CAMERON MARSHALL’S ANKLE INJURY:
“It helped quite a bit. In watching him practice yesterday we got a chance to see. He moved around better than he has all year. Again, we have tomorrow, Wednesday and Thursday. Rest really helped him. It helped a lot of guys. We have some guys that haven’t missed games but were beat up with shoulders or ankles or whatever and that period of time really made a difference. With Cameron, you could really see a significant difference with what he did yesterday.”

ON COLORADO:
“I think they’re a football team that has some injury issues as we all know. It depends on who is playing for them. For us, it’s a game that we just have to focus on who we play. They’ve got some explosiveness offensively. (Tyler) Hansen is a good quarterback. They’re going to come in here fired up, ready to play. They’re a football team that’s injured and really young, but like anything in football you better play your rear-ends off or else you aren’t going to win.”

ON OMAR BOLDEN’S AND TEAM’S OVERALL INJURIES:
“Omar is better. He was actually on the scout team the other day. He’s moving around pretty well. I don’t know if or when he will play. It’s up to him and the doctors. I know he wouldn’t play this week. It’s week by week with him. (Evan) Finkenberg, I don’t know that he’ll play this week either. He’s close, but we’ll see as practice goes on. We’ve had some other guys that are beat up, but I don’t think there’s anybody else that won’t play other than those two.”

ON THE ADVANTAGE OF BYE WEEK PLACEMENT:
“To me it depends on when the bye is. This particular bye, win or lose, was better for health reasons more than anything. We have some guys banged up and after the seventh game, after halfway; we needed it just for that. It had nothing to do with what happened against Oregon.”

ON VONTAZE BURFICT’S FIRST-HALF OFF THE SEASON PLAY:
“He is getting better all the time. He started out a little tentative. He started getting the feel the last three or four games. He’s played really well. The last half of the season I expect to see him playing better and better. Leadership-wise, there are a lot of things he’s better at than he’s ever been. Again, we have a lot of games left. We’re looking at this thing and there’s still another big part of our season, so he’ll get better and better.”

ON TENTATIVENESS OF BURFICT:
“I mean just the aggressiveness early because of a lot of different things. It’s been pretty well publicized. I think that he’s playing like ‘Tez right now and becoming more aggressive is what I’m talking about.”

ON OVERVIEW OF FINAL FIVE GAMES:
“Just one game at a time. We have some goals that we can achieve. We will not achieve them if we do not win the next game and the next game and the next game. There are a lot of tough games ahead of us in our division and in our league. We just have to focus on Colorado right now and then go onto the next one, which is what we’ve been doing all year. Obviously, in this league, a lot of things can happen as you’ve seen. You can play really well and then all of a sudden you can get on a bad streak. We have a lot of things in front of us that we can accomplish but we have to go out and accomplish them one game at a time.”

ON Steven Threet IN WASHINGTON D.C.:
“I haven’t talked to him since I got back, but I know he was going back there on that concussion deal. Steven is a very well-spoken guy that has been through it. He does us proud as far as that goes. He has done a tremendous job coaching and helping Brock (Osweiler) out as far as knowing what we’re doing and coming from another voice from a guy who just got done playing really helps too.”

ON BROCK OSWEILER’S FIRST-HALF SEASON PLAY:
“I believe he’s played well, really well. Like everyone on our football team, we all have to get better through the next six weeks. There isn’t any question about it. Where he’s at, for his first time starting really, he’s making a lot of plays, he understands what’s going on and he doesn’t make very mistakes. He understands what we’re doing. I would give him a shiny smile.”

ON THE OFFENSIVE LINE:
“We’ll go with (Dan) Knapp at left tackle. Aderious (Simmons) played pretty well. You can tell he’s a little rusty. He’ll get better and better as time goes on. We’re back to where we were at the start where we were before Aderious got hurt where we had three pretty healthy, good tackles. If Finkenberg gets back this week then we’ll be back to the same place in the offensive front.”