Reporter - ...

Sparano - Nope. Don't have news yet.

Reporter - When did you realize that you were still alive? Cause in the post game you sounded like you didn't think you were.

Sparano - I had no idea until later on. Last night.

Reporter - How was your reaction to that, Tony?

Sparano - Still alive. That's my reaction. We're still alive, gotta win a game. A lot of things gotta happen. So, just worry about winning a game instead of anything else.

Reporter - I was watching the tape of yesterdays game, I'm sure you've watched it over and over, at least in the first half was disheartening of anything you've seen this year or was that?

Sparano - It was disappointing. Disappointing, yeah.

Reporter - Will you talk a little bit about... and Reggie did manning that little linebacker spot for the entire game?

Sparano - They did well. Both of them had some plays I am sure they're gonna wish they had back. From a communication stand point I thought that they did pretty well. Missed a few tackles, not only them, but there were a couple tackles in there that I'm pretty sure they wished they had back, but thought they played well.

Reporter - Coach, Lex Hilliard getting thrown in the air and when Ricky went down, can you talk about this?

Sparano - ...played pretty good yesterday. They did. First of all, thought he blocked very well he only had one rep out there in protection. I think he played 43 plays, and he had one rep that was not a great rep. But ran it hard when he had the opportunity, caught it and ran it very well, made some big 3rd down plays and I thought blocked extremely well. Had no mental problems. Thought Lex did a nice job. Came in a stepped up really well.

Reporter - How do you address the missed tackles?

Sparano - Well missed tackles hadn't really been a problem as of late. Obviously during... we have to create more awareness there from a drill stand point and do some of those things during practice week. But that really hadn't been that big of a problem, I mean, last week against Tennessee we tackled that running back pretty well -- he was a hard guy to tackle... a couple of 5, 8, 10 yard runs he had in there. Tackling wasn't the issue before. Became an issue this week but it was an issue. We missed 10 tackles in the first half of the game, which lead to 207 yards after the catch. That was 306 total offensive yards, and 137 of them were after the catch, and a large part of that was due to missed tackles. You know, little hitch screen they throw out there the guy talks off on his second play of the game, which should be a 2 yard gain. So, we had two guys there, we missed the tackle.

Reporter - Poor execution, like a missed tackle. Were you surprised you lose in game 15 instead of 1?

Spanaro - What I'm surprised of is that, and this is my fault, this is what I'm disappointed in me for, is that I take great price in the fact that we our team hard enough and our team gets better as the season goes on, and we didn't get better in that phase, we didn't get better fundamentally yesterday. We didn't tackle well enough. There were some things we didn't do fundamentally well yesterday. I take that personally myself.

Reporter - Chris Clemmens got in there a little bit how'd he come out?

Sparano - Chris played about 14 plays, made 3 tackles, played pretty well, for the most part, played pretty well. He had a missed tackle, actually it was on special teams, you know, his missed tackle, he played 20 plays there was a real factor on special teams yesterday at times. In the ball game, I thought our coverage units played extremely well, again, yesterday. He played pretty good. The game wasn't too big for him out there.

Reporter - Tony, this team is said to have done a lot of bouncing back and regrouping this season. How difficult do you think it'll be to regroup from yesterday?

Sparano - Well, let's say this after what happened out there yesterday, I would hope it's not very hard to regroup and to bounce back. I think that there is a lot of pride for players in that locker room, I really do believe that. They've been gritty and feisty the entire year and that didn't happen yesterday. Necessarily in the first half of the game I don't necessarily think that was the reason why. Some of this happened, but I just gave you some of the reasons why, but I know there is a great deal of pride in that locker room and they are a pretty resilient bunch. I think that when you're feelings get hurt a little bit, there is only one way to answer that, you need to bounce back. So that's what we'll do, that'll be the challenge.

Reporter - Coach, when a three four defense is doing what it's suppose to be doing, are the safety's suppose to be leading through the tackles, or are the tackles…

Sparano - No, no. I would say that it depends what you're doing from a coverage stand point and whether or not the safety's are involved one way or another, you know if you're old school th

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Press interview with the Miami Dolphins head coach Anthony "Tony" Sparano.

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