Q: Coach (Todd Haley) has said that every experience is a learning experience. What can you guys takes from the last couple of weeks, a great win against Pittsburgh and frustrating losses the last two weekends?

MATT CASSEL: “That’s football sometimes. Obviously you want to go out and perform each and every week and the last two weeks, I think the main thing that’s hurt us has been turnovers. We can’t let one bad play lead to another and I think that’s the main things we’ve learned. We’ve just got to continue to stay our course and if something goes bad, keep our composure and go out and try to make a play next time.”

Q: What have you been working on this week?

CASSEL: “We’ve been working on a lot as an offense and a defense. You mean specifically?”

Q: Has there been any extra work between you and receivers after dropped passes, or issues from the last couple weeks that you’re focusing on?

CASSEL: “I think as a coaching staff, as players, we have specific things we want to work at as groups. Really, that comes down to the coaches and receivers together, or the coaches and running backs, or the coaches and the quarterbacks. We talk about a lot of different things. Route running is something we always talk about, trying to stay consistent throughout the course of a game with keeping our balance with the running and passing attacks. So we talk about a lot of that stuff.”

Q: What did you learn from watching the fourth quarter from the sidelines last week Coach (Haley) thought that could be a beneficial thing. Was it?

CASSEL: “I don’t know. As a competitor, you always want to be out there and you always want to go out there and play whatever the circumstance may be. I know the third quarter got away from us and the score was what it was. Sitting there on the sideline, I guess I learned that I want to be back out there as soon as possible.”

Q: Was there benefit to it though?

CASSEL: “I’m sure there’s benefit. As I looked there and watched, it gets me more eager again to get back out on the field come this Sunday.”

Q: Every quarterback experiences dropped passes. It seems like this week there were more than usual the last couple weeks. How do you handle that with your receivers?

CASSEL: “As a quarterback, you just keep doing your job. That’s all you can do, and you try to build that relationship with those receivers and continue to work with them consistently and hard during practice. If there are things that are glaring when you watch the film, we try to point it out, make corrections, and try to make those improvements as we go forward during the week.”

Q: What have you seen from the Buffalo defense?

CASSEL: “They’re playing great pass defense, they really have been. When you watch the film, it’s evident that they’re going to come up and try to challenge you with a lot of man-to-man coverage. I know that they’ve had a lot of injuries throughout the course of the year, but they’re playing good football. People have been able to run the football on them, but at the same time, we have to be able to take advantage of that man-to-man coverage and try to get big-play opportunities when they present themselves.”

Q: You’ve been preparing for Buffalo your whole pro career; does that give you a little more insight?

CASSEL: “I definitely am familiar with them being in New England and being a division opponent the last four years. A lot of what they do on defense hasn’t changed much, so from that standpoint, I’m familiar with them. Then again, our team itself is not very familiar with them so it’s always a challenge to get up to speed with a new opponent you’re not familiar with that you don’t play much.”

Q: How would you personally evaluate how you’ve played?

CASSEL: “I want to obviously eliminate the turnovers and I want to play better. Everybody wants to play better any time you lose like that, you want to play better. There are plays I left out there, so I want to correct that. There’s footwork that I need to work on, so I want to correct that. So you watch the film and there are a lot of things I did well and there are some plays that I wish I had back. That’s just part of football.”

Q: Coach Haley said that you had a really good week of practice leading up to the game. As a player, why is it that sometimes after having a good week leading up to Sunday, things go south during the game?

CASSEL: “I can’t pinpoint something very specific for you because it’s a pretty general question. There have been weeks where I’ve had awful practices and I’ve played the best games of my life, you know what I mean? On any given Sunday, anything can happen. The Denver Broncos, they played a great game, especially in the second half they took advantage of the opportunities that we gave them and we obviously had the turnovers in the third quarter, and like I said, the main focus for us as we move forward is not letting one bad play lead to another.”

Q: Some people have said you hang on to the ball too long. As you look at tape from this season, do you think that you do need to release the ball earlier or do you think that the people that are saying that aren’t seeing what you’re seeing?

CASSEL: “Well I don’t think anybody that sits there, watches the game and tries to evaluate the game, they don’t know my reads, they don’t know one pattern that I’m supposed to be reading, they don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at, so for them to sit there and evaluate and say ‘he’s holding the ball too long, or he’s doing this or he’s doing that,’ they really don’t know what’s going on out there other than the fact that they’re looking at the overall product. It’s easy for someone to sit back and critique somebody from the sideline, but at the same time, it’s different when I’m being coached to do something specifically, I’m not saying that all the time I’m doing it right or perfectly by any means, but at the same time, that’s kind of how it feels sometimes.”

Q: Is a quarterback only as good as the offensive players around them, or the offense in general?

CASSEL: “You look at any successful quarterback throughout the history of the NFL and I think they’ve got a good team around them. You continue to look at the Peyton Mannings and the Tom Bradys and all those guys, in football it’s not a one-man sport by any means. No one player can completely make a difference on any team, everybody has to play collectively together to reach a common goal, and that’s to win.”

Q: There were a lot of drops on Sunday. Do you guys count those, do you know how many there were?

CASSEL: “I don’t know. When we come in on Mondays, they don’t say hey, we had this many drops. This hit the guys’ hands; this didn’t hit the guys’ hands.”

Q: Being a quarterback in the NFL is probably one of the toughest things to do in sports. How do you keep from getting discouraged?

CASSEL: “You just keep moving forward. It’s the same thing, you have the highs and lows in any profession in life. The same thing goes, two weeks ago, we just came off two wins and things are going great and everything was hunky-dory around here. Now we’ve lost two straight pretty handily and everybody’s trying to figure out what we’re doing wrong and how to go the right direction. We have an opportunity Sunday to come back out and change how we feel around here and that’s what we’re going to try and do.”

Q: What causes one bad play leading to another?

CASSEL: “I don’t know. Right now, it just seems like we have something go wrong and then it’s a snowball effect. You saw it in the third quarter. We started the third quarter and we went three and out and then all of a sudden we had the interception and that led to another bad play. Then you get into a bad situation where before you know it, it’s 44 to whatever the score was and we just can’t allow that to happen.”

Q: Is that a confidence thing or is that trying to hard to correct a bad play from before?

CASSEL: “I don’t know. I’m sure it’s a little bit of both. I’m sure it’s people start pressing a little bit when things don’t go right and you’re trying to make plays happen and try to turn the thing around and go in the right direction.”

Q: What did you think of RB Tim Castille’s arm?

CASSEL: “He got a pretty good arm doesn’t he? Any time you have a running back out there and they’re trying to throw passes, and they try to throw them accurately, he did a great job of it in the game and we were all impressed. But he showed that during practice, that he had the arm and he was capable of doing it.”

Q: What does last year’s success mean to you in terms of confidence to get through this?

CASSEL: “I’m plenty confident in my abilities and what I’m able to do. I had some success last year, obviously struggled throughout the course of this year and you just keep moving forward. I haven’t changed. Success hasn’t changed me, failure hasn’t changed me. I’m going to be consistent, so you’re going to continue to see me show up early to work and go home late and work hard and try to get this thing going in the right direction.”

Q: You hear ‘one play at a time’ from coaches all the time. Can you personally play that way?

CASSEL: “There’s no doubt. It’s an important factor that we always talk about as a player and as a team, is to play one play and a time and try to execute that play.”

Q: How tough is that to do?

CASSEL: “You just try to do it. Everybody plays different. Obviously there’s a roller coaster of emotions throughout the course of a game, so to say that a bad play doesn’t affect you sometimes vs. a great play where you throw a 60-yard touchdown, obviously you feel emotional about both of those plays. As a quarterback, you have to have a short memory and move forward.”

Q: Do you feel you’re a different quarterback at all from when you came here on day one?

CASSEL: “I think I’ve matured a lot over this season. I like the saying that adversity leads to advancement. There’s a lot of adversity going on right now and it’s been tough at times, but at the same time, I’ve tried to stay consistent. Like I said, I haven’t changed my approach at all; I continue to work hard and continue to do the things that I have done in the past that have made me successful. I’m going to continue to do that as I move forward and try to become successful as we move forward.”