We didn't get the only thing that matters, the ring, but we won some games. The whole time we knew we'd have to pay the piper.

We pushed the envelope for a number of years there, trying to win as many games as we could. And we won a bunch of them.

Now, our team is talented but very young. We lost a number of really good players and it takes time to replace them, if you can. We're working our way through that.

Being up in Philly, and going to four straight championship games, I played some of the worst schedules you can imagine. But it is what it is. We just take one game at a time. That's not an excuse to give away a ball game you should win.

It doesn't mean that we hit on 100 percent, that doesn't mean that every guy that enters the locker room is an angel. But that doesn't cause you to waver from the fact that you still deem it important, and you still look for it and you fight to get it.

Two great attributes for a coach are: one, to be able to teach everybody on the squad, and two, to get players on the squad to play better than they are. Those things are very, very, very difficult to do, and very few in the league can do it.