FRIDAY MEDIA AVAILABILITY: CHARGERS – WEEK 13
Head Coach John Harbaugh
Opening statement:"OK, good to see you guys. I appreciate you being here. [We] had a good day. [We were] indoors again because the fields are still frozen. We should get out tomorrow, which will be fine. But we're getting prepared for a tough matchup on Sunday."
Coach, now that you've had 11 games to look at it – the points of emphasis on illegal contact, defensive holding – how are you with how it's going, the officiating with that? (Gary Mihoces) "[It's] hard to read; every week is different. You just have to get a feel for how they're going to call it in that game. We've done a good job. We don't hold at all. We've done a good job of making sure we don't grab jerseys and things like that. Our team has done a great job of that. Plenty of teams have pushed it and they hold anyway. Sometimes it gets called, sometimes it doesn't. Obviously, there has been some contact downfield. We've been a part of that, which was tough to swallow, which I still don't understand, but maybe they'll explain it to us in the offseason again."
Real quickly, somebody in the league told me that a big impetus for this was that so many coaches were sending in questions last year – "Why wasn't this called?" or "Why wasn't that called?" Were you one of them? (Gary Mihoces)"We all send in questions. We all want to know why stuff gets called. We want to understand so we can teach our guys how to play, but that seems to be very elusive."
I'm guessing this might be one of the first times it's happened in your coaching career, but DT Timmy Jernigan was accidentally late for building a snowman. Does he receive any kind of "snow fine?" (Jamison Hensley) (laughter) "Somebody knocked over his snowman, too, of all things. I mean, rumor has it. What kind of a person...? (laughter) But those fields are valuable. We have to keep the fields ready. We have to get them ready. But it's all good; he had a fun time. You know, it was all day with him. He was out there as soon as it started snowing. He couldn't believe it. He was videotaping it sending it home to his family. He had never seen snow before. He said the only other time he had been out of the state of Florida was at away trips for the [Florida State] team. So, it was just fun watching him enjoy it. He was like a little kid."
[Are you] encouraged by WR/RS Michael Campanaro, first week back at practice after about a month? How is he coming along? (Luke Jones) "He's coming along. It's a process with a hamstring [injury]. You can't really push that thing too much. What usually happens with hamstrings is [the team trainers] are pretty conservative, and then all of a sudden they come back and tell you he's ready to go. But he did practice this week. It wasn't all the time as fast as we want it to be, because we don't want a setback. I imagine I'll find out Sunday if he's ready to go or not, and if he is, we'll see. That's really the best we can do right now."
