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Mike Pouncey – August 12, 2017 Download PDF version

Saturday, August 12, 2017

C Mike Pouncey

(How did it feel getting out there and finally getting action? I’m sure you’ve been dying for that.) – “It felt good to get out there and start communicating with the guys, just get back playing football, get the feel for all the physicality of it. It felt good to be out there today.”

(How much of a comfort level do you think you need to have with QB Jay Cutler?) – “We’re good. We’ll be working through walk-throughs. We’ll work sporadically throughout practice. Jay’s a pro; I’m a pro. We’ve both been doing this for a long time, so we’ll do (well) whenever we’re both in there.”

(Have you and QB Jay Cutler been working on snaps already?) – “Yes, we have.”

(How much time have you and QB Jay Cutler put into snaps over this week?) – “I don’t know the exact number, but we’ve worked on it a lot. He’s comfortable. I’m comfortable. We’re just, right now, getting used to his snap count and we’ll be ready to roll.”

(How significant of a step do you consider this being able to participate in a full practice?) – “Considering where I was when this whole process started, it felt great to be out there today. Honestly, it’s a blessing. I was excited to be back out there and I feel good right now after all the work we did today.”

(You look like you’ve got a legitimate sweat going on.) – “Yes, first time in a long time. (laughter).”

(How much were you looking forward to this practice?) – “Today? I couldn’t even sleep last night. I don’t know if I was nervous or just excited; but I was just ready to get back out on the football field and I was ready to – I hate to even say it – but just make the mistakes again. The only way to get better is if you make mistakes and today was my first true test if I can go back out there and play football, and it went well.”

(Is it the case that you physically can’t or shouldn’t go through a full practice or is it just trying to take it progressively?) – “I guess the way we put it is that we don’t want any setbacks. A lot of times, a lot of guys are on the ground during practice, so we try and avoid all that stuff; but it’s not anything to do with the injury that I had. They’re not worried about that. It’s all the way healed back up. It’s just that we want to ease back into it since I’ve been out for eight months.”

(But you feel good to go doing the full workload of a game right now or would you need to build up to that?) – “No, of course. I feel ready. I’m ready to go. Whenever they tell me to go out there and play, I’ll be ready to play.”

(I don’t know if I missed this, but how resilient is this team given everything that’s happened?) – “It’s been awesome. These guys come in each and every day, work their tail off, and it kind of seems like we started where we left off last year. We’re a fourth quarter team, and we saw that in the preseason when we came back and won that game (against Atlanta). It was exciting to see all the fans out there and to go out there and win that game was big time for us.”

(Do you guys point back to last year and the way you rode out some of the injuries in the middle of last year, right now? Now you’re dealing with them in August.) – “Well in training camp, you usually deal with this kind of stuff, where guys are in and out, there’s a lot of banging going on. So I think that kind of just rolled over into our season last year where it’s just next-man-up kind of mentality. We had a lot of our star guys go down and the guys that came in played really well for us.”

(What do you think about your new quarterback Jay Cutler?) – “We like him a lot. He’s a good dude. He’s been a proven guy in this league for a long time. He’s a guy that we’re really excited about working with.”

(Do you feel additional responsibility this year to kind of pull that offensive line together because it’s so many new guys, and guys are rotating in and out? That’s on you?) – “Well yes, obviously. I’m one of the leaders of our offensive line group and I want us to do really well. We feel like if you want to win games, you’ve got to do well up front on both sides of the ball.”

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