Interview: Buffalo Bills S Donte Whitner

Blogging the National Football League, Blogging the NFL

Cincinnati Bengals QB Carson Palmer, WRs Chad Johnson and T.J. Houshmanzadeh, and RB Rudi Johnson make up one of the NFL’s most feared offensive machines. All the Buffalo Bills did in a 33-21 victory today was shut them down, giving up just 14 of those 21 points and only allowing 28 rushing yards. I spoke with Bills hard-hitting safety Donte Whitner about the big win.

DAVID: Donte, Coach Jauron talked about stacking wins this week and with this one, you get your third straight. After the 0-3 start, to find yourself at .500 is just outstanding.

DONTE: It’s very good to get back to .500. The confidence is high in this locker room. The confidence is high with the coaches and the players. We’re starting to feel good about ourselves and we’re starting to realize that we are a good football team. And now we have to go out there and prepare and play like it every week. For all of us, it makes us realize what we really have here. We have a good football team that is gonna make that playoff push.

DAVID: What adjustments did you make after the Bengals first offensive possession because they went right down the field and it was a much different ball game after that.

DONTE: I don’t know what it is — that first drive in football games. Our first drives are kind of slow and then we start to pick it up. That’s something we’re going to have to work on in practice. Coming out, if it’s more blitzes on the first drive or whatever, we just gotta get guys going faster.

DAVID: I think your defense really made a statement to hold that high-powered offense down the way you did. That’s a good offense with exceptional players.

DONTE: Well, we want to earn some respect. Nobody’s giving us any respect and everybody’s looking at stats and everything else and what guys are saying. We’re just gonna let our play do the talking and then we’ll earn that respect. We’re gonna play hard and every team that comes in here is gonna realize that this team plays hard. So we want everyone to know that we’re gonna play hard and we’re gonna play until the last seconds tick off the clock.

DAVID: Well, Donte you talk about stats. The Bills are near the bottom of the NFL in yards allowed, but the real stat that matters is points allowed and it’s a completely different story there as you are up there with the league’s best teams in that category.

DONTE: The rest of the stats really don’t mean anything. How many points you score and how many points you give up ultimately decides football games. I’ve never seen a team win a football game by rushing for 300 yards or passing for 500 yards. Those numbers alone don’t win football games. Points win the football game. You can have 1,000 yards and six points and you’re not going to win. We really care about those points. We don’t want to give up those points. We might bend a little bit, but we’re not gonna break. That’s how we want to do it.