Ed Thompson: So have you come down off the cloud from your victory over
the Chiefs?
Anotine Bethea: Oh yeah, we're off the cloud now.
ET: What do you think really made the difference in how well the defense
performed out there?
AB: I think it was just everybody understanding what needed to be done. It's
the playoffs, and if you lose you go home -- and I don't think anyone's ready to
go home. We just flew around and played football like we should have been
playing all year. And like I said, I guess it was a good time for everyone to
come and play a good game.
ET: How much fun was it for you having Bob Sanders back out there next to
you?
AB: It was fun having Bob out there for everybody. Everyone was happy to see
him out there being that he's been injured for a couple games this year.
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| Colts safety Antoine Bethea picks off a pass intended for Chiefs WR Samie Parker (Andy Lyons/Getty Images) |
ET: Tell us how you were able to make your big interception last week…
AB: It was two minutes left in the game, so you knew they had to pass. And on
my side it was Tony Gonzalez, so I was really thinking he was going to go to
him. But a lot of our guys were keying on Tony Gonzalez, and when he looked over
to Samie Parker I just broke on it. The play before, Jason David told me to look
at the corner because he's going to have to get out of bounds to stop the clock,
and that's the way he was throwing the ball - to the sideline. And I just got a
good read on it.
ET: How much did all of the hype surrounding Larry Johnson and how he was
going to be "your worst nightmare" fire you guys up?
AB: It fired us up a lot. We've been hearing that all year and we knew what
type of players we had on our side of the ball. We knew that they had a good
rushing attack and we knew they were going to try and run Larry Johnson, so our
main thing was first stop the run and make them throw the ball. Then we could
get our front four to get to the quarterback. So I think we did a good job of
stopping the run and then we were able to let our front four loose.
ET: Can you explain how the defense was able to step up its game in just a
single week's time, because I'm sure fans were sitting there wondering why this
talented bunch of guys weren't able to do this every week...
AB: I don't think there's too much to explain. I think the best thing we can
say is that we're going to try and go out there Saturday and do the same thing.
There are three parts to the season: the preseason, the regular season, and the
playoffs, and the preseason and regular season are behind us. So we just have to
look forward towards our goal which is to make it to the Super Bowl.
Check back on Friday for our SCOUT Q&A with Antoine Bethea, where he'll talk about the Colts' big game in Baltimore this weekend in a Scout.com subscribers' exclusive! Sign up for a 7-day free trial at your favorite team's site today!