DL TREY FLOWERS

(On whether he enjoys practicing his technique)
"Yeah, definitely. You know, just trying to perfect my craft each and every day. I watch film and see something I need to work on or see something that maybe the offensive line picked up on some of my tendencies. I can kind of change them up or have a counter off of it and just try to get better."

(On whether staying late after practice is a reminder to not be satisfied about last year)
"Oh yeah, definitely. You can never be satisfied. That's one of the things I take pride in. It's not - as far as a thing to keep myself mentally humble - because I always count myself as a humble guy. I'm not too high on myself. I'm just a hard worker. It's not about being the last one off the field it's just about perfecting my craft. If I see something wrong with it, [I] just continue to work on it."   

(On whether he expects teams to key in on him this season)
"Yeah, I mean that's part of football. Anytime you have success, obviously guys are going to continue to key in on you and try to manipulate you or double team you or things like that. But I know we've got a lot of great guys along the front, so they can't key on too many of us. The defense is set up where they put us in a good position to be successful. You expect things like that but that's why you've got to continue to work." 

(On his motivation to take another step forward this year)
"I just want to be the best. That's the thing that motivates me the most - wanting to be the best person I can be, the best player I can be. I want to give my team the opportunity to win games and be productive. That's all the motivation I need."

(On potentially higher expectations this year)
"Yeah, expectations are always high for myself. I'm a firm believer that no one should have higher expectations for you than yourself because I'm my own worst critic and I'm going to critique myself and want the best out of myself. It [doesn't] matter if it's high for everyone else, it's definitely high for me."

(On coaching up Deatrich Wise on the field)
"Oh yeah, he's a guy [who is] ready and eager to learn. Great guy. He comes in, he works hard. He's one of those guys that is a hard worker and getting it down in the play book. He's going to be pretty good for us."

DB DEVIN McCOURTY

(on his first impressions of Stephon Gilmore)
"He's been working hard. He's a smart guy. Obviously, you know he's a good player from his time in Buffalo. But as a group, it's been fun just out there meshing and getting to know each other. We've got a lot of our defense in right now, so working through that, and this time of year is key. You know, we start to work on communication, getting to know what guys like, what they don't like. Getting him in here with the group that's kind of played together has been good. I think he's fit in very well, and it comes down to all of us just coming in, putting in the work each day. He's done that."

(on if it is easier to have several returning players in the secondary and only a few new players getting acclimated)
"Yeah, it's definitely something I think we enjoy and we like rather than having to restart, which we've done before, but I think coming in with some type of background and some foundation always helps. We kind of put the pressure on ourselves to kind of pick up where we left off and you don't have to start back with making a lot of mistakes on day one. Even though we start kind of vanilla, we want to come out and be able to even do more than that. So we put the pressure on this group and I think we've gone out and performed well, but I think it's something we've just got to keep working at. It's only June."

(on his first impressions of Brandin Cooks)
"He's a hard working guy, the same thing like Steph. All those guys have come in and worked hard. Obviously, the one thing that sticks out, he's very fast and another weapon, another guy who I think is coming out here trying to just get everything down. You can tell he's hard on himself and he's trying to be the best out there. I've enjoyed watching him so far. It's always fun trying to shut down those guys."

(on the team's offensive depth and the challenge of going up against them)
"Yeah, and I think that's how it's been here for years, though, as far as the competition. Guys just go out there and compete. Obviously, this year, we have a lot of guys that have played football either here or other places and played at starting level and played a lot of snaps. Anytime you get a good group of guys and you have a lot of depth, I think it just adds to your team. For us defensively, we've kind of gotten to that step where we have depth where guys have played a lot of football for us, so we want each group to go in there and be seamless, go in there and perform at a high level and keep it going. It just gets us better as a team."

(on balancing competition with the offense at this time of year while also looking at those guys as teammates)
"This time of year is all about competition. We'll laugh and joke in the locker room, but out here, we get after it pretty well. This will lead right into training camp, but off the field and inside the locker room, we're all really close. We get along, but it gets going out here and it should. I think everyone's out here fighting for a spot trying to improve each day. For right now, it's offense versus defense. We're going to compete and go at each other. It's harder to find a balance now than it is when we get closer to season."