Transcript of ESPN's Monday Night Football Conference Call
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Full audio replay August 30, 2012 Transcript of ESPN’s Monday Night Football Conference Call With Mike Tirico, Jon Gruden, Lisa Salters and Producer Jay Rothman Today, ESPN Monday Night Football play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico, analyst Jon Gruden and sideline reporter Lisa Salters participated in a media conference call to discuss the 2012 NFL season. They were joined by MNF producer Jay Rothman. A full audio replay is available at ESPN MediaZone. The transcript is as follows: MIKE TIRICO: Good morning, everybody. Love getting back with our team. It's tremendous to have Lisa with us, worked with Lisa at the NBA over the years. She's a great friend, terrific at what she does and we are excited to have her. Working with Jon is a treat and will continue to be such. Our team is very cognizant of the history of Monday Night Football. There's nothing that's had a run like this on the history of American sports television and it has been a great six-year experience so far. Look forward to many more with Jon, Jay, our producer, and all of the talented folks. Our schedule is much better and I think the games will be better, including the Bears. The Bears are a team I think will have a great year and we see them three times, all against marquee opponents. The Texans, my choice in the AFC, we see them a couple of times against the Jets and Patriots. I'm excited about the schedule, people we are with and look forward to kicking it off here in a week and a half. JON GRUDEN: Very excited about the upcoming season and doubly excited about the team I'm on with Mike and Lisa, Chip Dean, Jay Rothman and the team of experts, it's truly the best and it's a lot of fun and hopefully we can bring a lot of quality, hard-fought type football games to our fans. We are really excited about it. LISA SALTERS: Obviously I am just honored, humbled, thrilled to be a part of the team. Like Mike said, I've worked with Mike for a few years now, so I feel really comfortable with him and he's always been a great friend and a great leader, whether it be the NBA or the NFL. Jon Gruden, the passion that he brings, every day, not just on game day, you learn so much. He's like Hubie Brown, except for the NFL. Just so smart and so talented. It's a great team with Chip and Jay and all the other folks behind the scenes. It's a great team and just in the couple of weeks that we have been doing the preseason, I've just been honored to be a part of it and to see what a family it really is. Nobody is above anybody else and everybody helps each other out. I think it's going to be a great season and I'm looking forward to it. Q. Your feelings about opening with the Ravens, and what they bring to a telecast, either in the style of play they have or the reputation they have. Can you talk about the Ravens a little bit as a primetime TV team? MIKE TIRICO: I think they are outstanding for the main two reasons; the guys who will someday be in Canton, Ray Lewis and Ed Reed. It's very rare that defensive players become the face of the franchise for multiple years in this era of the NFL, and they have certainly done that. And it's rare that defensive players bring people to the TV. When you promote a game, usually you're promoting the quarterback or the wide receiver. With the Ravens, you promote their defense, and in the team sports that I've been lucky to be around, the college level and the NBA for last 10 years and now the NFL, It’s hard to find an individual whose personality imprint has become the calling card of the team like Ray Lewis has with the Baltimore Ravens. So from that standpoint, they have become a very interesting team. I think they are appealing for many reasons. Is there enough offense? (Joe) Flacco and (Ray) Rice keep getting better. The atmosphere is always good there. I know visiting with the owner Steve Bisciotti at the owners' meetings the last couple of years, there's been a great desire to have Monday Night Football back and we are looking forward to starting the season with what's going to be a great division game and that Baltimore atmosphere. I think to this point with the Ravens, they are a dropped pass from the Super Bowl last year and most of the key people are coming back, so we are starting right out of the gate with a team that is Super Bowl or else this year and I think that will just add to the experience. JAY ROTHMAN: The only thing I would add, from the stadium perspective, it's a great stadium for television for night games there. Lastly, I would say in an AFC North battle, they are always great and hard-fought games and they always mean a ton. They are a treat to cover. We are pretty fired up to be opening up there. (after follow up question…) The crowd is colorful. The camera positions in terms of the angles we get are great. Our overhead, SpideCam system just gives us really great shots because the crowd is close to the field; and it's intimate, colorful. And the huge HD screens are a lot of fun to play with and fire up the crowd and they are very visual for television. We love being there. It's a great place to be. And they love having us, so that's just as nice. Q. Jon, as you know, 10 teams are going with a starting quarterback with one season or less experience. Nobody has spent this time of young quarterbacks than you or Jay. I wonder what the factors are that go into that acceleration of getting guys on the field right away and are we going to see those days of Rivers and Brees and Rodgers, holding the clipboard for a season or two? Are we going to see those days again or is it just getting on the field as fast as you can? JON GRUDEN: It's no coincidence that Jay and I's QB camp helped these young guys get ready. We probably deserve as much credit as anybody already. (Laughter). I think if you look back at the Drafts, there may have been a period of a couple years there where the quality of quarterbacks and the quantity of quarterbacks maybe wasn't as good. Maybe there were a couple down years, and those are cycles sometimes. Sometimes you have a year where four or five outstanding young players come in together and sometimes you go through it for years before you get a dominant player behind the center. College football is changing, dramatically. There's a lot of no-huddle offenses. There's a lot of check-with-me-at-the-line-of-scrimmage. Coaches are demanding more and more from these quarterbacks at a high tempo. They are coming into the league, much more accomplished in terms of throwing the football, recognizing defenses, and with this 20-hour-a-week schedule in college football, the quarterbacks have taken charge of their football teams in the off-season. They are running workouts. They are running passing academies on their own, so they are becoming dynamic readers. I think it's really enhanced the play at quarterback, just the style of college football. I really think when you meet Cam Newton, when you stand next to some of these physical prospects, they are so big now, they are bigger than ever, guys like Ryan Mallett, they are 6-5, 6-6, they are taller, stronger, faster than they have been and again a lot of that is because of the style of offense that's being run in college football where the quarterback is a runner, as well as a passer. It is, to me, one of the most astounding statistics that I've seen in football in the last 25 years is the amount of young quarterbacks that are now playing early, but playing well. Q. Just from the outside looking in on what your brother, as a rookie coordinator was able to do with a rookie quarterback last season so effectively, what most impressed you about what Jay did there? JON GRUDEN: I think Jay (Gruden) became a fabric of the team first of all. They played good defense. They played to win games; not accumulate statistics. He did a good job I think of featuring A.J. Green, getting him in some positions where he could play the ball and get some one-on-one opportunities. (Jermaine) Grisham became more and more involved. They have some young, dynamic players. But I think he became a fabric of the team and he fit right in with the offensive staff. He didn't come in with a new staff; he came in with a lot of coaches that had already been there. And I think the Cincinnati Bengals football team deserves a lot of credit. But Jay is good with people, he's certainly good with quarterbacks, and I really think he's going to be an outstanding coach for years to come.