Cameron Wake – October 18, 2018
Thursday, October 18, 2018
DE Cameron Wake
(Do you expect to play Sunday?) – “You should find out on Sunday.”
(Why the need for the surgical procedure that ESPN said you had?) – “ESPN said I had surgery?”
(Yeah.) – “That’s interesting.”
(What did they determine then? Was it worrisome to you that you wanted to avoid surgery but felt like you had to?) – “I didn’t know I had surgery. You’ve got talk to ESPN about that.”
(How frustrating was it to have to sit out the past two games?) – “It’s always frustrating when you can’t be out there helping the team, especially when you feel like you could contribute. But at the end of the day, you cheer them on, do what you can from the sideline, help out when you can and pray for a W.”
(There are a lot of young defensive ends now getting a lot of playing time. Do you find yourself going over to them and playing the role of teacher? I don’t know if that’s the right word.) – “I’m just trying to bestow whatever wisdom I’ve gained over my years playing and trying to help them make plays. Obviously we’ve got a lot of talented players who can play the game, young, mid and old. But I think all of us together, we’re kind of all focused on the same goal and that’s making plays and helping the team win. I don’t have to help as much. Guys are on the right track as far as their mentality or the way they approach the game, but wherever I can put my two cents in, I try my best.”
(How have you felt this week in practice?) – “Felt good.”
(Are you 100 percent yet?) – “We’ll see on Sunday.”
(The wisdom you talked about, how hard is it to kind of rely on that when you want to go out there but you know you should hold back a little bit?) – “Every player wants to play every play, but you’ve got to be smart and do what you can and look at the total picture. You can’t be narrow-minded. I think we’ve done a good job of that so far and that should continue on to the rest of the season.”
(Do you expect to play as much as you have been playing where you’ve been taking pretty much half the snaps?) – “It’ll be Christmas morning on Sunday. Everybody will find out all kinds of information and surprises and all of that.”
(How often do these young guys actually come to you on their own, show that initiative on their own and try to pick your brain like you used to do with Jason Taylor back in the day?) – “I guess ‘often’ is a relative term, but I find myself helping out a lot. I’ll say that. We have guys who probably have played in their first NFL game the last couple of weeks. So again, whatever, from the smallest thing to the biggest thing, you’ve got to help out with whatever you can. I’m not the only one obviously. We’ve got other guys who have played many, many snaps in this league and they’re doing the same thing. We’ve got a good mix. You’ve got the young guys mixing in with the older guys and we’re all helping each other out. The wisdom and the youth all combining together and staying focused on one goal.”
(Is Sunday going to be another Sunday for you or is it going to be like Christmas morning for you too?) – “I’m Santa Claus. I know what’s going on. You guys don’t. (laughter)”
(The timeline on this thing, it looks like you tried to play through it in the New England game?) – “I’m always playing through something. It’s football.”
(It looked like you were trying to play through this specifically, at least from what the injury reports were. What was it that just didn’t…) – “It’s football.”
(What made you pull the plug on it?) – “Just like I said, being smart, looking at the total picture (and) not being narrow-minded. I think we did a good job.”
(This position, defensive end, started probably as the greatest strength on the team. To see how snake-bitten you’ve been, including DE Charles Harris, as coach said getting injured on the last play of practice last week, have you ever seen a position that was such a strength be decimated so quickly?) – “I’d have to go into my mental memory books; but unfortunately, it’s part of the game. No other sport, I think, has to deal with what we deal with, 16 games, and every game you’ve ever watched, somebody is getting injured. More often than not, it might be season-ending somewhere on one side of the ball. That’s just part of the business. You hope you can do whatever you can to get back, but as a defensive end, or I’d say as football player mostly, it requires a tremendous amount of physical effort and everything needs to be hitting on all cylinders and if not, you’d probably do better to sit out and get yourself back to that point. The dice got rolled however they got rolled and the d-ends have been rolling snake eyes; but I think we’re a tough group. We’ll got out there and make it happen.”
(We saw so many promising things early with you and DE Robert Quinn. Have you guys talked in terms of – I know you look at a game at a time and not collectively 10 – but as far as the two of you, that your eagerness to wreak havoc essentially on offenses over the last 10 games?) – “Yeah. We do. We talk quite often. We sit near each other in here, we sit next to each other in the room. Being two older veterans in the league, it’s always something that we come to terms with and share information back and forth; but again, we’ve got to go out there on Sundays and make it happen. I think the next couple of weeks, I think we’ll look forward to doing that.”
