Defensive tackles Amobi Okoye and Travis Johnson prepare for their first preseason road game at Arizona Saturday during Thursday's midday practice.
Texans head coach Gary Kubiak (on whether it is convenient to have an indoor practice facility) "We are going to play inside one this week and we needed to work with some noise, so it was good work for us today."
(on how his players played during the noise drill in the Methodist Training Center) "They did really well. I think I said to you guys a few times, I see maturity in the football team. When it gets loud and you get inside and it gets a little crazy, that's something that's hard to adjust to. They really were focused today and came out and did a good job"
(on the progression of the team) "We've still got a long way to go. There's no doubt about that, but I think we have more poise. I think we're more mature. Our football team is getting better. We're better right now this time than we were at this time last year, but we all know we're working toward opening day and we're going to find out in the long haul. We've got some guys that are coming together and working extremely hard."
(on the rotation of players for Saturday's game) "We're going to put a play count on our ones. They're going to play anywhere from 20-30 plays, wherever that takes them, then they'll come out. Then the twos will play basically the remainder of the second quarter and the third (quarter), then we'll play our threes in the fourth (quarter). (Jared) Zabransky will be the quarterback playing in the fourth."
(on whether he's looking for different things this game than the first game) "The first game we wanted to look at everybody. The second game, we've slotted a couple of guys. When you look at Danny Clark, for instance, we want to see him work with the ones. We're working Scott Jackson playing at our right tackle with the twos this week. We've slotted some players in some certain spots and basically the work picks up for everybody. We still need to see a lot of players so we've got a lot of unanswered questions and we've got to see a lot of players."
(on whether most of the work is done) "You never quit working, but we've had an excellent camp. We've held up body wise better this year than we did last year. I think that's a credit to Dan Riley and them. They did a heck of a job with those guys this offseason. We're pretty clean right now. We've got a few guys on IR; everybody loses a few players. For the most part everybody is ready to go this week. We have three guys that will not travel this week: Jameel Cook, Anthony Weaver, and (Charles) Spencer will not make the trip."
(on what the focus was for practice today) "The focus was focus. Making it a little crazy in here, making it a little loud and seeing if guys can still do their job. The quarterbacks were handling the ball, handling the crowd noise. I don't think we jumped offsides one time today. It's not game day, but it's definitely an improvement and that's something our team has got to be better at this year."
(on what he wants to see during the game Saturday) "I just want to see us take a step forward. We're still going to play a lot of guys. I want to see us go on the road and handle ourselves with poise, which we did not do last year. To be a consistent team in this league, it doesn't matter where you play, you've got to be able to play the same and I want to see our team take a step in that direction."
Texans quarterback Matt Schaub (on what he wants to get accomplished during the game on Saturday) "We want to win and we want to score points and we want to play mistake free, penalty free and turnover free and go out and score lots of points and get a 'W.' That's our goal; go on the road and demonstrate the skills to win at this level on the road."
(on if he feels he had a good week of practice) "I definitely did. I felt our whole team, we really responded to last week's game. We corrected some things we needed to correct and are ready to go out there Saturday and demonstrate that in a game environment."
(on if he feels he grew from game one to game two) "Definitely. We come out and we look at our mistakes from last week and each day we learn from them and correct the mistakes and move on."
(on if it's nice having the Methodist Training Center bubble to practice in) "Sure, I mean, it's a monsoon outside, it would be tough to be out there right now sloshing around. But, you know, there might be games where we are outside in the elements, so we have to be used to that as well."
