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Carolina Panthers Head Coach Ron Rivera
Conference Call with New Orleans Media
Wednesday, December 4, 2013

I’m assuming your team is still preparing for a potent Saints offense despite what you saw against Seattle.

“Yeah without a doubt. Believe me, that was a little set of circumstances I think and a little bit about the playing environment. Most certainly though, because last I looked, there’s still Drew Brees and Jimmy Grahamand Pierre Thomas and Darren Sproles and Marques Colston. This is a good football team, so sometimes strange things happen.”

Defensively, your team is playing top-notch. How well do you think your matchup against the Saints will go considering that you have faced them a lot before and are somewhat familiar with their weapons?

“Yeah but still, you do match up against individual players, but a lot of it has to do with the execution. You’d love to catch them in an off-night again, most certainly, but you never know. It will come down to the execution on both sides of the ball.”

For your team, was there a singular time or event where everything just kind of flipped? Or did it just gel over a period of time and this is where you guys are right now?

“I think it has gelled over a period of time. This team has gone through a lot, not just since I’ve been here, but before I got here. Struggling the way we had the two previous seasons before I got here, the last two that we went through. I think it was just a matter of time. We were able to get the players that we were kind of looking for, the type of players. I think we’ve had three really good draft classes. We’ve done well in free agency and those guys are now kind of coming to fruition. Our quarterback has to learn and grow. I think expectations in this league are so out of whack because so many people are having success right away that they expect it constantly. That’s just not the way it is. It’s hard to win in this league and to win consistently like you have in New Orleans, that’s where you want to get to. You want to get to that point where it’s not one year up, one year down, it’s four, five, six, seven years in a row.”

Even though you won five out of your last six, one of them coming here in the season finale, there was a question mark about your return. How much did that set up this year?

“I don’t know if it necessarily set up this year as much as it was all about this team continuing to grow and develop and getting the draft picks. If you don’t have the players and you don’t hit on your draft picks, it doesn’t matter what you did the year before. That’s going to be key, again not to look too far ahead, but next year. Going into the ’14 season it will be the seam thing: how well we do in the draft and how well we do with free agency.”

Do you have to go on a riverboat since your name is “Riverboat Ron” while you’re in New Orleans?

“It’s unbelievable. This thing has taken on a mind of its own. It’s kind of gone all over the place and it’s one of those things that the moniker is what it is as far as trying to describe some of the decisions I’ve made. I kind of look at what I’ve done as just calculating it. But I will say this: my wife and I are going to try to figure out a way to use it to help benefit some of these charities out here that we work with. We’ve got to just keep rolling with it I guess.”

Read more: Ron Rivera and Luke Kuechly talk about Sunday night's matchup

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