New Orleans Saints Head Coach Sean Payton
Media Availability
Friday, December 1, 2017

How'd you feel about the week in practice?
"I thought it was good. Honestly, we're getting into this portion of the season where (we're) getting into divisional games, all of them matter. We're playing a good team that's played well so I thought we had good focus, good energy. Today was good."

Did you do anything this week to counteract the average practices from last week that you talked about after the Rams game?
"No, just attention to detail. All of the specifics that you work on. Our schedule is for a Sunday game. The only change is what time we're playing (later on) Sunday."

Have you seen Devin Funchess evolve a little bit more this year especially with (Kelvin) Benjamin being traded?
"Absolutely, there is a confidence level he and the quarterback have together. He's playing more at one side with the X. He's certainly one of the red zone targets. He's one of the third down targets. I think anytime you see a player evolve in our league, that might really be anyone. There's one game there's confidence, then there's another game and then pretty soon he's playing good football. That's a credit to him. He's really doing well."

We didn't see P.J. Williams while we were out there. Is he doing anything?
"Anything we deal with will just be on the report."

Are there any other candidates to come off of injured reserve this year?
"No Zach (Strief) was the only guy."

Would it be unusual for you to talk to a quarterback right at the 15 seconds at the line of scrimmage and give them a pointer or anything like that?
"Yes, it is Drew (Brees) here you go, 21 personnel, let's go red right. We are going to run 22 Z and Y and go. All right alert your checkdown. And that's probably at 20 seconds. Now if I send in a play with multiple options (maybe). But he gets the play and here we go."

Is there anything you do this week to prepare for the quick turnaround next week with a Thursday night game?
"What we did this week is move back the start time to everything for more rest in the morning knowing that we're going to have this game. This game was flexed to an afternoon, later schedule and then the quick turnaround it's going to be. The focus is on this game though. And then obviously you deal with the short week next week."