John Harbaugh Press Conference

On what went wrong in the game on Monday night at Pittsburgh and how he can fix it: “What went wrong was that they had two returns for touchdowns and we dropped a kickoff return. You fix it like you do anything else. It’s a process. We’re in the process of putting our units together. We’ve got a lot of work to do on some things. Other things we’re further along on, so it’s part of our process.”

On whether the schemes he runs in the preseason are the same schemes he runs in the regular season:
“Yeah, we have an installation that we put in and we run them throughout the preseason just like they [the offensive and defensive units] do. It’s an installation schedule, so we’re on the schedule right now. The basic schemes are in and then we just build off of those throughout the season.”

On what the 1^st quarter of the Pittsburgh game was like for him:
“It wasn’t one of the more enjoyable 1^st quarters that we’ve ever had. You feel like you get gutted, you know? But it wasn’t any worse than the Dallas game a couple of years ago, or the Giants game 5 years ago. It’s a preseason game and the thing about special teams, and I think football in general, sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. And the bear ate us on Monday night. It’s a great opportunity though to teach our guys and I think that’s what it really is. If it was going to happen, it couldn’t happen at a better time, the first preseason game. So, you just take it as an opportunity. There is no greater teacher than experience.”

On whether the mistakes they made were a result of guys not knowing the schemes well enough yet:
“So much of it is having been in those situations and understanding how fast the whole thing is and where you have to be relative to the returner. On the kick return, we had three guys go down there and smash that wedge. The problem was they weren’t aware of where the returner was at. So they hit the wedge, but they don’t get off the block and make a play and really it’s as simple as that. And then you’ve got pursuit issues where guys don’t keep the ball inside and in front. So understanding the angles, understanding the speed, that’s something that you just can’t explain to somebody. They have to do it. It’s really a good opportunity to see that up close and personal. It’s painful. It’s a painful lesson, but it’s a good lesson.”

On whether it’s tough for some guys because they didn’t play special teams in college:
“Sure, I mean it’s all part of it. If we put you out there, you wouldn’t understand it either. It’s all new, just like it’s new to somebody that hasn’t done it before. But it’s not something they can’t learn. We have a good group, a good group of young guys. Those guys are going to be good special teams players for us, so you just have to keep coaching and keep teaching and they’ll be alright.”

On whether anybody got the reserved car spot at NovaCare for special teams player of the week:
“That’s regular season. (Jokingly) I think they have a yellow boot on your car in there right now actually.”

On whether anybody received special teams player of the game:
“We don’t do that. We don’t have any of those kinds of things during the game. There are guys who played well. Within the scheme, what you’re trying to do is you’re trying to put together a unit performance. So you’ve got a series of individual performances in there, 11 guys. Eventually we’ve got to get them coordinated to where we have a good unit in form. So we don’t have that yet, but we will.”

On whether it’s tough on him at this time to form a unit knowing that there will be roster cuts and some of his guys won’t be there by the start of the regular season:

“We don’t expect to be a finished project yet. The Steelers aren’t a finished project yet either, but they made a couple of great plays. We’ve got guys out there who, really what they do in those situations may determine [Head Coach] Andy’s [Reid] decisions too, so you stack guys next to each other who are competing for those roster spots and see what that role plays in the final decision. For certain spots it’s a big part of it. For other spots it’s not a big part of it, but there’s only one way to find out. You’ve got to put them out there. You can’t practice this stuff live. You can’t generate that speed in practice because you don’t have pads on. It’s just not that fast. That’s what preseason is for, so we have to look at it that way.”

On whether he will be tweaking the coverage schemes for the upcoming game against Baltimore:
“You tweak it through the whole preseason. We’re moving guys around all the time, just trying to find out where guys play well. Is he better at the contain guy or is he better as a force guy? Is he better as a gunner? What does the guy do best? So we’ll be flipping those guys all through the preseason. Hopefully, getting into the last preseason game you kind of have an idea of where you’re going to be, but it’s all part of the process. We’re not a finished product. That’s for sure. But we need to be a finished product pretty soon, so we have to move quick.”

On whether the face of the special teams unit is different in transition from last year without guys like former Eagle Ike Reese and injured S J.R. Reed:

“It’d be great if you could pick up where you left off. I guess the NFL is not really like that and it’s probably even most pronounced in special teams, by far than the other two phases. You just don’t have an opportunity to pick up where you left off. Basically in many ways you start from scratch. That’s how we approach it. First minicamp, we start from scratch. We start putting the thing together from the foundation on up and that’s part of the process. You never expect to have too much carryover from the year before.”

On how P Mark Mariscal did in the Pittsburgh game:
“He had two really good punts and four punts that weren’t so good. You’d like to make that into 5 punts that were really good and one that wasn’t so well. The thing that Mark’s done is he’s had a great camp. Transferring the great camp, the practices to the games is the key for those guys. And really if you look at [P] Dirk’s [Johnson] history, that’s what he learned to do. It was a process. Mark’s still a young guy, but he needs to come out and transfer the great practice performance into the game performance.”

On whether there is more or less carryover this season than in other years:
“That’s a good question. I haven’t even thought about that. It seems like it’s hard every year, but we’ve never had two kicks go back for touchdowns in the first preseason game, so I guess that would be the measuring stick. It’s probably harder for whatever reason.”