There was so much worthless verbiage on the London trip, these are just excerpts:
Rivers:
On his relationship with Saints' Quarterback Drew Brees when he was with the Chargers:
"It was good. It was really good. We had a handful of golf matches off the field, but as far as the quarterback room and how everything flowed, it was good. I tried o help as much as I could but stay out of the way at the same time. When a guy has his routine as a starter, you don't want to bother him but certainly you want to help if you see something. I thought it worked really well. We pushed one another hard. We both handled it well. We both respected one another and knew we were both just here battling to be the guy. It's worked out for both of us. I think a lot of Drew, and obviously what he's done down there in New Orleans has been outstanding."
On what Drew Brees taught him:
"Yeah. The one thing he did was the routine approach he took. After a big Monday Night win or Sunday Night win like we had in New England, he was doing the same thing on Monday or Tuesday. If we get beat, like we lost those first two tough ones, he was doing the same thing. That was key because you realize it's a long year, you're going to lose some games, you're going to play not as good as you want to in some games, but you come back in there on Tuesday and you're doing the same routine Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. That's the only way to go when you're talking about 20-plus weeks. That was the one thing, although it's not the same routine, we all have our different ways of doing it, is find that routine and what works and stick with it all year long."
On if he expects a high scoring game:
"You never know. I think you prepare every week for it to be a defensive battle and try to win 10-7, and certainly with these two offenses, it could. We have faith in our defense, so hopefully not. But we're ready every week, offensively, to score as many points as we need to to win. We've done that so far three times and haven't done it four times. So certainly this is a big game for us to go out there and play well."
Rivers (Continued)
On how frustrating it might be to have so much talent but the record not reflecting it:
"It's hard to say it's frustrating because we still feel the guys we have in there, even banged up, and the guys that are healthy, that we can go in there and score points, and go out there an win games. I think that's the frustrating part. We walk off the field and go, 'how is this happening?' That's every year. Every team deals with injuries and different things. We're dealing with it off the bat. There are other teams that are too. Hopefully we can get it going and get healthy as this season goes along and be in a position to hopefully be playing in January."
On the running game not being as good as expected:
"You keep working. I don't know if there is one element of the running game to point to. You just keep working and keep grinding. Just keep going. I don't think there is any magic answer I can give you, other than you just keep grinding it out. There will be a time when it will all click and go, and hopefully that's going to be soon. We do a lot of good things. You watch the tape and there are so many good things on there. You look up and there's 14 points. The turnovers hurt us yesterday. At the same time, it hurts you in the amount of plays. I think we had 49 plays. When you have 70 plays you think about how many different things you could have done. If you're controlling the football and not turning it over. It all goes hand-in-hand. We just have to play better in all three phases."
LT:
Just 72 rushing yards against Buffalo. What's your reaction to that?
"We've got to have more opportunities. I think that's obvious. When you don't get opportunities, I think we talked about this earlier, you don't get in a rhythm of running the football. It becomes tough on you to try to do anything if you don't get a chance to get in a rhythm. Obviously for me, 14 attempts, that's not enough. At the same time, we only had 48 plays. We've got to have more plays and hopefully we start to get more plays."
Shaun Phillips:
Why couldn't the defense get pressure on the quarterback (Trent Edwards)?
"Well, I haven't seen the tape from this game yet. I can't answer the question yet on why weren't able to get pressure on the quarterback. Maybe they just did a great job blocking. I have no idea until I see it. I feel like we've been doing a good job throughout the weeks. A lot of times we were half a step away from a sack. Sometimes we get the sack. Sometimes we get the quarterback hit. It's not like the pass rushing has gone bad. It's not one particular thing. It's the back end holding up as well as the front end."
Norv Turner:
What are your thoughts about it a day later?
"The biggest thing . sometimes after the game you make comments and you may be off base and sometimes you're right. Obviously we had two critical turnovers, one at midfield when we had the lead and gave them a short field. We had a critical interception going in (to the endzone) late in the fourth quarter. The other things we talked about: our inability to get them off the field, in terms of creating pass rush. I thought there were times on third down if we had tackled better we could have gotten them off the field and kept them putting together long drives. Then we're not running the ball the way we need to. We need to run the ball better."