Lewis: I thought that everybody involved did a better job of being where they needed to be. We were getting on the assigned guy and seeing the looks the receivers make and the proper breaks, the quarterback delivering the ball, with the timing. A little bit of carryover in some areas, running game-wise, would be helpful.
Q)Chad (Ocho Cinco) said you are encouraging him to smile; do you like his attitude so far?
Lewis: He's trying his very best. He's working hard at it. It's a funny thing, but there was a receiver across the field last Sunday (Terrell Owens), who had only one pass thrown to him. One completion, one catch, and it was a big play. That's what you have to look to. The quarterback is coached to throw the football to what he perceives is the weakness of the coverage through the design of the play. He doesn't survey the field. He has reads and he has progressions he has to get through, and unfortunately, sometimes the coverage may dictate that you don't get as many opportunities as you wish.
Q)You play in the same stadium where you played three weeks ago; is that going to be an advantage?
Lewis: It should help. As you said, we'll know the surroundings, we'll go to the same locker room. I heard we'll have different clubhouse guys. But anyway, it is going to be familiar. But once you kick the football game off, that stuff goes out the window. It's 11 on 11.
Q)Last time there you had problems with the headsets. Has that been fixed?
Lewis: That's a league thing, and hopefully we won't have that issue. It's out of our hands and hopefully they'll address it. It was reported to them because they were the ones telling us that there might be a problem going into it. Hopefully we don't have an issue with it, particularly on third downs.
Q)Can you comment on the rumors that the 49ers are interested in trading for T.J. Houshmandzadeh?
Lewis: Boy, that's a bad rumor, huh? I mean, let's just talk about it a little bit. No. 1, you're going to get a club in trouble for tampering, and that club has already been penalized once this year, very harshly. No. 2, what club in its right mind would trade for a player that's going to be an unrestricted free agent? Again, if you're going to start a rumor, make it a good one. Make it something that makes some sense to people inside the NFL. You know? It's unfortunate.
The thing I hate about it is that that headline gets on the Red Zone or whatever those sites are, and that makes it look like a story, when it's not a story and it's unfortunate it ever got posted. If we would count back, there's probably seven, eight, nine, ten of those that have been on that particular site that come from one particular group, and that's unfortunate. Let's try to do a better job of reporting facts and so forth that way.